All Africa – Ernst Frederick Kotzé, Nelson Mandela
“There is an ongoing debate across Africa about the ideal language of instruction in education. This tends to centre on whether children should be taught in their home languages or in languages that are more widely spoken and are considered more universally “useful”. In many countries, former colonial languages like French, English or Portuguese have been adopted as the language of instruction in schools. There is growing evidence that this policy may not be in the best interests of African societies in general. A fundamental question is being ignored in this debate: what is the purpose of teaching and learning languages in the first place? Quite simply, there are two functions of language – communication and access to knowledge. Each must be pursued as an objective in its own right rather than being lumped together.”(more)