Namibian education system language policy - 5 things that could go wrong

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 probably thinking, “What’s the big deal, kids in Europe are taught in their mother tongues?” Well, that is true. However, most European countries have at most four languages. The French teach in French, the Spanish in Spanish and the Germans in German. Namibia has 13 local languages, or is it 11? All I know is we have enough languages to field a soccer team. This change in policy might just be a stroke of genius, I don’t like it and I am very critical of it. But, you never know it might just work beautifully. However, it could also go terribly wrong and fuck up the future for a whole generation. Below is a list of five things that could go wrong with this policy.

1.       The implementation syndrome

Any Namibian will tell you, this country is not short of ideas. Even though our government is always saying that we don’t have the capacity to develop the nation. Namibia has no shortage of ideas, we have so many graduates sitting at home unemployed that we could provide a labour force for Swaziland and Lesotho. We have ideas, the problem has always been how those ideas are put into practice. Implementation, a word that does not exist in the Namibian government’s vocabulary. There is not one national project that has not almost been fucked up, every national project in the last 10 years has been hampered by glitches. TIPEEG, an economic stimulation and job creation project has been so plagued by implementation glitches that it can probably be labelled as the largest waste of money since the Oshakati-Omungulume road. A bitumen surface road that had to be completely removed because it fell apart due to shoddy work by the local contractors.

This language policy hasn’t even been piloted, never. At the moment the biggest challenge seems to be the translation of teaching materials into local languages and language choices in local schools. At present only Afrikaans has teaching materials that are fully translated, will teachers be able to teach without textbooks in local languages. At the same time, how will the language selection work? Towns and cities are known as cultural melting pots, so how does a school select a local language when every class has at least 8 different ethnic origins? And won’t separating kids into classes according to their language only succeed in separating children in an openly tribal oriented nation? At the moment, all ethnicities in Namibia are forced to interact in schools because English is the medium of instruction. How will things be if kids from different ethnic backgrounds never interact? What about kids whose parents would prefer them being taught in English. The implementation horrors are so many that I start getting goose bumps thinking about them.

2.       It’s still the same teachers

So the government thinks that because the teachers will be teaching in their vernacular, the results will improve? If the same teachers who were in the system when kids where failing whilst English is the medium of instruction are still in the system when the change to local languages takes place, will the results dramatically improve? There is a difference between teaching Pythagoras theorem in a language and actually teaching Pythagoras theorem. If you can’t fully explain what you are teaching then it doesn’t matter which language you are teaching it in. The ministry of Education has always shied away from investing in teachers and improving their capabilities, most still struggle with computers. World class players being coached by a useless coach will play like crap, which is obvious. The Ministry is so concerned with improving results that most of the money goes to secondary phase education when the real problem is at primary level. Unless the ministry puts more money into training and improving the level of skills for primary school teachers, the kids will still fail. This time they will fail in their mother tongue.

3.       The other factors are still there

What are other factors? Poverty, unemployment, social inequality, lack of parental supervision, learning disabilities (dyslexia) and social distractions. Kids from towns and cities usually flunk school because the distractions are just too many, their discipline is none existent and parental supervision is missing. These things will not change anytime soon, a look at Namibia’s Genie coefficient will show you. We have one of the highest income inequalities in the world. Bottom line, most parents struggle to even put bread on the table, what do they have to invest in their children’s education? Some would argue that primary education is free? But does it mean because it’s free, it becomes better quality? I will be honest and say that unless your kid is a genius, you’ll still need to dip into your pocket and buy some additional reading material to help the child achieve their best. In the end, you realise that kids from stable middle class families or higher still on average outperform kids from poor backgrounds. That’s not rocket science. I know that this point is debatable, but if you have gone to a public school in Namibia, you will understand what I am saying.

4.       Teen pregnancy, alcohol and drugs

Why haven’t I included these in the section above, because a kid in school has no control over their parent’s employment status. But choosing whether or not they engage in sex, drink like a fish snort their lives away is well within their control. This mostly applies to high school kids so I’m not really going to do into depth because the language policy is targeting the primary education phase.

5.       The switch over to English

English will still be taught, but as a normal subject. This is effective from grade 1 – 5, in grade 6 the system switches over to English as a medium of instruction. I am not going to mince my words, this is where this plan is going to fall flat on its ass. To expect a kid in grade 6 (12 years of age) to suddenly learn everything she/he has been learning in his/her mother tongue and carry it over and start building on that by learning in English is a tough task. Personally I would prefer that the switchover happens in grade 4. So mother tongue instruction is effective from grade 1 – 3 with English as an ordinary subject and then switching to English as a medium of instruction in grade four. Because at that point, you have four years to get any problems sorted out before the kid goes to high school. The optimum knowledge acquisition of the child is between the ages of 7 – 13, I think (speaking under correction). Trust me when I say that if you go to a Namibian high school without the proper basics then you will fail, barring a miracle. I have seen it first hand, if a kid doesn’t gain anything from primary school, then making it past grade 10 is a miracle.

Only time will tell if the new language policy will work or be another government experiment that goes wrong and destroys a generation. Only time will tell if this is a brilliant tactical move or an ill-advised roll of the dice. Personally I would have preferred it was researched and tested before it was implemented.