The BCP’s must first think before going public about their plan and call to introduce mother tongue in primary schools as a medium of instruction when elected into power.
1) If the policy was to work, then all ethnic languages in Botswana should be published so that text books of all tribes in Botswana could be available.
2) The major challenge will be lack of textbooks, trained teachers and a mixture of pupils in a class of different tribes and even teachers of different mother tongues in a school.
3) If such a policy will have to be operational, then teachers like those from the Bakgaladi tribe will have to be transferred to Kgalagadi so that they teach Kgalagadi language which could end up encouraging tribalism in the Country.
4) The ministry of education will be required to find out the details of how many pupils are found in a class and which language they speak.
5) Fact is pupils speak mother tongue at home, that’s the very first language that they learn from their parents hence, should be taught and speak something different from what they are used to.
6) If pupils from standard 5 classes and below will be taught in mother tongue, it simply shows that when they reach upper classes they will still have problems even in the construction of English sentences which make them
perform poorly in national examinations as English is the medium of communication.
7) Mother tongue speaking is always a reason why schools from rural areas perform poorly in languages compared to school found in urban centres.
8) The policy will even affect teachers at large because they are from different tribes and yet are teaching in a school with pupils of different tribes.
9) We are in digital era and laptops and computers are in use even at primary schools, how will they operate them as they do not recognise local languages?
10) To the BCP and anyone pushing for “mother tongue education in schools” I say to you; A good grasp of one’s mother tongue is an essential base for a child’s identity and their educational development, but teaching it in schools will be a stab on the technological advancements and the push for national integration.
11) What are some of the reasons being given by the proponents of this archaic policy? I don’t see anything that can stand the test of time. This policy will just awaken the demon of tribalism. Everyone will start going back to their enclaves and be reminded which tribe they belong to.
12) Teachers who are not from the dominant community in such a school will be somehow discriminated against as they cannot teach despite having the necessary training on early childhood development. What about those whose parents belong to different tribes? Will the young children learn the father-tongue or the mother-tongue? Even in the village there has been a lot of inter-tribal marriages.
13) Just when I thought we should all be looking forward to digital curriculum, The BCP is lambasting us with ‘mother tongue policy’…..! Give us a break……
14) A Bantustan (also known as Bantu homeland, black homeland, black state or simply homeland) was a territory set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as part of the policy of apartheid.
Ten Bantustans were established in South Africa, and ten in neighbouring South West Africa (then under South African administration), for the purpose of concentrating the members of designated ethnic groups, thus making each of those territories ethnically homogeneous as the basis for creating “autonomous” nation states for South Africa’s different black ethnic groups.
15) There is a call by the BCP for government to introduce a policy that pupils in lower classes be taught in their respective mother tongues. I am not sure the real motivation for this policy change, though some of us actually learned in our mother tongues.
16) As a parent with children in the lower primary classes, I was naturally interested. Why on earth would you want to teach in mother tongue? Is it so that the children can understand the concepts better? Is it so that we can retain our culture? Is it so that children can learn mother tongue or is the BCP just being mischievous?
This new policy proposal by the BCP will re-awaken the tribal identity? Most people are able to communicate in either Setswana or English, however broken it is. This policy is misplaced and it belongs to only one place ­-the archives as the subject of history.
Most of us who live in urban centres, rarely speak mother tongue. Instead the mother tongue is mixed up with bits of English and Setswana; this is despite having been taught in mother tongue in the first years of primary schooling. I think it is foolhardy to expect the performance of public schools to become any better at this rate. It is like moving two steps forward and one hundred steps backward.
I remember that during my secondary school days at Shashe River Secondary School it was evident all students who came from schools, tended to group together based on one major thing -tribe and by extension the language spoken by people from that tribe. Children need to have a different exposure than we had, even back in the village.
They need nothing but the best and although it does not mean every window of opportunity to learn mother tongue should be discarded, it should be in a way that it has minimum or no impact on their classwork and their respective learning.
I am proud of my cultural heritage, but I would not like to limit what my children would like to achieve in future. Should they want to learn mother tongue or father tongue, they will learn when the time comes.
We can’t trade with mother tongue in this globalised era, culture is dynamic, I am Kalanga, but we do not have opposition members who can think logically, they just oppose/blame without giving realistic options.
In Botswana Setswana is spoken by at least 78.2% of Batswana as a home language; an expression almost synonymous with mother tongue. English on the contrary is spoken by about 2.2% of the population as a home language.
On any given day listen to Gabzfm, Dumafm, Yaronafm, and RB2. The dominant language is English. Radio Botswana, though it has a fair amount of English, it largely uses Setswana. The print media is also dominated by English.
Consider our newspapers: Mmegi, Monitor, The Botswana Guardian, The Botswana Midweek Sun, The Sunday Standard, The Telegraph, The Weekend Post and the Botswana Daily News; they all report in English.
Check the magazines whether international or local, they are dominated by one language only: English.
Go to parliament and take a number of copies of parliamentary hansards and see that parliamentary debates are predominantly in English in English.
Consider our laws; you will find most here: http://www.laws.gov.bw/. All of them are in English.
Cases in court are tried in English – the lawyers, judges, accused and witnesses interact in English. English has also become a dominant language in many churches. Churches like the Seventh Day Adventist, The Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church use both Setswana and English for sermons, notices and songs.
A similar pattern may be observed in various evangelical churches like Apostolic Faith Mission, Assemblies of God and Pentecostal Holiness Church where church notices and sermons are given either in English or Setswana with interpretations.
The English Bible is much more common than the Setswana one. The point with this linguistic characterisation is that although English is spoken by about 2.2% of Botswana’s population it is used in most of her domains. While Setswana is spoken by over 78.2% of Botswana’s population it is used in very limited domains and is seen by some as an impediment to the development of minority languages.
I have heard the complaint that speakers of minority language raise; that they have been thrust into the education system which is alien to them since it teaches in Setswana which they do not speak at home.
I find this contention most bizarre because these concerns emanate from persons who do not complain about English, which does not only dominate the curriculum, but also dominates all spheres of their lives. The teaching of Mathematics, Agriculture, Social Studies and Science is not in the Setswana language in schools – actually the Setswana terminology for such subjects is still rudimentary.
It is in English. But why is it common for minority language activists, including some researchers, to overlook the English problem/challenge and zoom on the matter of Setswana as an impediment? If you listened to their arguments, or read their research papers you would assume that the English language was far much easier to grasp for students than Setswana. You will also assume that instruction in Botswana schools was in Setswana and not in English.
How are we to explain this fixation and bitterness towards the Setswana language? It appears the problem is in part an ethnic one. Those who complain against Setswana and not English are in effect complaining not against the language per se, but against the Tswana speaking people. That is why some of them in language debates seize on matters of constitutional provisions which recognise certain tribal groups to the exclusion of others.
Language in this case for them is just the face of a tribe or tribes.
This sentiment is not new. Alidou (2004) has argued before that in post-colonial Africa, in avoidance of ethnic wars, African governments ironically retained colonial languages which were viewed as neutral means of communication. Perhaps with constitutional reviews that many are calling for, we may see Setswana being marginalised as a national language as English dominate our discourse completely.
Perhaps that would be considered a fair scenario when Setswana is no longer used as a national lingua franca, and in its place English takes over.
That would be a dark day, when Africans cannot use one of their languages to communicate between themselves but instead prefer a European tongue.
The BCP is being mischievous……!
BEWARE; THE BCP WANTS TO DIVIDE BOTSWANA WITH THEIR ARCHAIC POLICY.
A VOTE FOR THE BCP IS A VOTE FOR TRIBALISM.
