AN IDEA BEFORE ITS TIME

There is the story of the cat and the mice. It goes that one mouse suggested a fabulous idea of belling the cat but later on all the mice in the land could not come up with an effective way of implementing the young mouse’s idea.

                     Kenyan school children in class/ photo,(concernusa.org)

Fast forward to Kenya in 2014 and the Ministry of Education has declared a war on illiteracy by announcing that all children in lower primary classes should be taught in their mother tongue. They will later be taught in English as the main language of instruction in upper classes and High school before proceeding to tertiary institutes of learning.

According to a research that has been conducted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, children taught in their mother tongue during the basic years of education perform academically better than their counterparts who are taught in English.

Indeed one of the millennial developmental goals for Kenya by the year 2030 is education accessed by all and what better way than to ensure that every child is literate by using their mother tongue in learning. Don’t the Chinese learn in Chinese and the French in French?

Now back to the mice. The cat is illiteracy and the Ministry of Education the intelligent mouse. The mother tongue policy is indeed a great idea but is the Ministry equipped with the needed know how to go about it?  Uganda has gone through the same. It is a country with more than thirty languages and it is said that its government has produced material in twenty languages. What has the Education department in Kenya done so far?

Another limitation that hinders the belling of the mouse is that there are some subjects that cannot be taught in mother tongue. The writer of this article is not implying that lower primary pupils be taught physics and chemistry but according to the jubilee manifesto, these are the same pupils who should be given laptops. English is the language of Science and technology. One can only wonder how our children will learn.

In countries like the Philippines preliminary activities were carried out including training teachers on adapting to the new curriculum and developing materials. They also made teaching materials that were appropriate culturally.

What does this mean for the Ministry of Education in Kenya? Kenyan children already have it hard enough. Over populated classrooms, few teachers, broken desks, learning under trees and carrying around heavy back packs. Adding the issue of language is a good idea but the stake holders involved should go back to the drawing board.