Chronicles of Fly

A month or two ago, or even three; time feels like it’s moving slower these days. The Namibian Education Minister announced a radical change in language policy, English would no longer be the medium of instruction in the lower primary phase. This means that from grade 1 – 5 children in the Namibian Education system will be taught in their mother tongue. I know what you are thinking, you’re probably going, “Why not? Children should be taught in their local languages.” Which is not necessarily a bad thing, research has shown that mother tongue education improves language acquisition and learning in general. However, no research has ever been done in Namibia to prove this. As it stands, there is no empirical evidence to prove that mother tongue education will work in Namibia. We seem to be copying South Africa who have a similar policy in place, South Africa has also lowered pass requirements from high school to improve results (not pointing fingers, I’m just saying). You’re prob...

Let me start this here piece of writing off with a wee humorous comment (Insert Scottish accent). “Life is full of surprises, and they’re usually Zimbabwean,” says Khaya Dlanga, marketing guy for Coca Cola South Africa and a known person on South African social networks. Zimbabwe is also full of Blessings, Hastings and even Settlement’s. In Zimbabwe Lovemore has a brother named God-knows, Innocent is clever, Clever is innocent (See what I did there?) and Excellence has a sister named Progress. In case you didn’t get the joke, those are all first names. So I pose the question, what is in a name? Do you even know what your name means? In Namibia, John John is the same person, Paul is Simon’s last name and Gertrude is not the name of a vegetable. I don’t know how they do it in Zimbabwe but Name-ology in Namibia is very simple. Name-ology is the study of how names are assigned to individuals, in case you were wondering. I know what you’re thinking, Name-ology, that’s totally ficti...

The honourable minister of Education David Namwandi's plan to change the medium of instruction from English to Vernacular languages is not a bad move. Let me do a quick intro: The Namibian Education Minister announced a radical change in language policy, English would no longer be the medium of instruction in the lower primary phase. This means that from grade 1 – 5 children in the Namibian Education system will be taught in their mother tongue (Native language). But like all grand plans it needs to take input and be fine-tuned. Most countries that implement this policy only have one or two prominent Vernacular languages, not the 11 or 13 that we have. Suggestion 1: Teach the kids in their mother tongue from grade 1 - 3, but make sure that English as a subject clocks twice as many hours as the other subjects so the kids can switch to English with more ease (improvise by adding drama, poetry and film as teaching aids). Suggestion 2: Instead of waiting until grade 6, t...