- By Chiedu Uche Okoye
Sir: A man, who cannot speak his native language, is a cultural alien; and as such, he cannot be socialized into his people’s culture. Language, we know, belongs to the non-material aspect of culture. So, idioms and proverbs, which are inherent in a language, help to mould the personalities of young people within the cultural setting where the language is spoken.
So, a man who cannot speak his native language is not moored to his people’s culture. He is an outsider in his own cultural milieu.
A young person’s mastery of his native tongue will enhance his cognitive ability and his understanding of his immediate natural environment. Studies carried out by scholars show the advantages of teaching school children in their mother tongues during their formative years.
Those studies show that when school children are taught in their native languages, they will understand complex concepts and phenomena, easily. And the experiments carried out in Yorubaland by scholars in the area of education psychology have proved that kids taught in Yoruba language in the southwest performed exceedingly well. The results of those studies have fuelled the agitation for the adoption of the educational policy that stipulates that school children should be taught in their native tongues.
But that policy- which is teaching school children in their native languages-has its disadvantages, too. Although it is being romanticized by advocates of the use of indigenous languages as mode of instruction in our schools, it has numerous downsides, which demand dispassionate evaluation and dissection.
Are all Nigerian languages so developed that they have words for terms used in all specialized areas of learning? And do dialects in a language, such as Igbo, have a common orthography? The answers to these questions are categorical no.
Therefore, imparting knowledge to school children, who speak different dialects of a language, will be a difficult task for a teacher, as the children will find the teacher’s teaching unintelligible. For example, some Igbo people cannot understand Igbo language dialects but their own dialect. So it can be seen that most of our native languages are inadequate as modes of transmission of knowledge to school children.
Again, a public or private primary school located in a cosmopolitan city will have a population of pupils that is composed of pupils from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Such a school can be called a mini-Nigeria because most of our ethnic groups are represented there. Making a choice regarding the language that will be used to teach the school children in the school will pose an insurmountable problem to the school administrators.
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More so, the school teachers require training in the indigenous languages to enhance their proficiency in the use of those languages for pedagogy. Giving them the fundamental training in native languages will cost our government a stupendous amount of money.
So when the pros and cons of using indigenous languages as languages of instruction in our schools are juxtaposed side by side, it will be discovered that the disadvantages of that proposed educational policy far outweigh its advantages.
Our clamour for the adoption of indigenous languages is predicated on the fear that the non-use of local languages in our schools will make them become extinct. But such fears are unfounded and baseless. Nigerians who live outside their ethnic groups speak their respective native languages. And surprisingly, some Nigerian youths who were born in foreign countries speak their native languages, fluently. Can a language that is used daily by its owners become extinct?
Let us not sacrifice English language, our official language, on the altar of linguistic moonshine, which is canonized as the promotion of native tongues. From Australia to America, and from Ghana to London, English language is spoken by a great number of earth’s inhabitants. It is the language of diplomacy, the language of commerce, the language of law, the language of laity, and the language of science.
To jettison English language as the language of instruction in our schools will impede the growth we are making in the area of education. We should not forget that education is the bedrock of national development. So it behoves us to board the vehicle that will take us to our destination in no time.
•Chiedu Uche Okoye,
Uruowulu-Obosi, Anambra State.
