Teaching in Kiswahili is a Big Step
Backwards to What?

Chambi Chachage

When the chairman of the CEO Roundtable speaks notable people
notice. After speaking eloquently on “Is
Africa really “rising”?” Ali Mufuruki has now spoken about the new education policy. For him
“Tanzania’s
Latest Big Change is a Big Step Backwards”.

This is how he describes the step: “This change has
led to the replacement of English as a medium of instruction in primary and
secondary schools with our very own Kiswahili.” He then adds this interesting disclaimer: “As someone
who was educated in a developed foreign country that uses its own indigenous
language as a medium of instruction from Kindergarten to University, you would
expect I would be supportive of this big change”.

Interestingly, two informative reviews of the policy from
experts of education seem to interpret the (actual) change differently. Dr.
Aikande Kwayu is more in line with Mufuruki, they only differ in terms of
welcoming the change: She
writes: “The emphasis of Kiswahili as the language of instruction (in
addition to properly teaching English) is a wise move highlighting the true
spirit of Tanzania and correlates with the underscored importance of educating
people for peace. Research and literature has it that language of instruction
should be what is spoken at home – in our case it’s Kiswahili. Teaching our
kids in Kiswahili will improve learning to the masses in Tanzania”.

However, Prof. Kitila Mkumbo’s interpretation indicate
that nothing much has changed in terms of making a solid decision about the
language question. In other words, Tanzania is still maintaining what we have
referred to as a ‘sera ndumilakuwili’ (‘schizophrenic
policy’) as far the medium/language of instruction is concerned. This time,
though, it has been packaged in a policy language that easily appeals to those
in favor of Kiswahili.

Prof. Mkumbo categorically states that the “policy is evasive” in regard to the language of
instruction. “On the one hand”, he elaborates, “the policy seems to heed to the
consistent call that has been made for years by some educationists and
Kiswahili zealots to use Kiswahili as a medium of teaching and learning
throughout the education System”. After citing policy statement
3.2.19, he points out that, “nevertheless, the policy also stress” that “there
is a need to strengthen the use of Kiswahili and English languages as languages
of instruction at various education levels”.

By way of translation from the original
Kiswahili version, Prof. Mkumbo also notes that policy statement 3.2.20 states
that the “Government shall continue strengthening the use of the English
Language in teaching and learning at all levels of education and training”. Out
of this observation he thus make this poignant observation: “Effectively,
therefore, the policy recognises both languages (Kiswahili and English) as
media of instruction in our education system. As such, the policy is not
helpful to the campaigners of using Kiswahili as a medium of instruction in
Tanzania”.

Having read all these three interventions,
among others, what is clear is that we all want Tanzanians to be both fluent in
English and Kiswahili – and, if possible, other languages too, both local and
foreign. Our bone of contention, then, is how to achieve that given that the
current reality is that we are “backward” as far as such bilingualism – let
alone multilingualism – is concerned hence my query: A big step backwards to
what?

Mufuruki informs us, tantalizingly, that
he “was educated in a developed foreign
country that uses its own indigenous language as a medium of instruction from
Kindergarten to University”. He also affirms that he has “always believed that
being able to acquire and to impart knowledge in local languages is a mark of
progress and cultural maturity, not backwardness or weakness”.  Then he confirms that “most developed nations
from North America through Europe, Asia and Latin America to Arabia use their
own languages as medium of instruction for all stages of schooling”.

So why does he go out of his way to buttress his
argument on why we are not yet ready for the big change by quoting at length
someone who simply dismiss all this on the basis of an uninformed take on why
it is important to teach – as in communicate knowledge – in a language that
both the teacher and student are more familiar with? Who said switching to Kiswahili
is simply about patriotism and (cultural) nationalism? Can Biyi Bandele, “the
London based African blogger”, whom Mufuruki agrees with in regard to this big
change tell us how the British switched from Latin to English as the ‘language
of knowledge’ without having to first translate each and every Latin
(scientific) word?

Bandele is
thus quoted in Mufuruki’ intervention as saying this about our new
education policy: “Until every single Mathematical theorem and every single
theory in astrophysics and cosmology, and in medicine, and in chemistry, and in
every single sphere of knowledge is written or available in translation in
Kiswahili and Igbo and every other African language, I personally will always reject
and abhor that easy [and easily comforting, xenophobic language] that dresses
itself in the ultimately empty, and cheap, and hokey, and cheaply sentimental rhetoric
of noble nationalism. I’ve been to Tanzania, and I’ve been to Zanzibar. And I’ve
been to many countries in East Africa. What Tanzania needs now, what East
Africa needs now, and what Africa needs now isn’t another instance of
brainless, reflexive, macho posturing [which this is]. What we need, what we
really need, is to have tens of thousands – millions – of our best minds,
schooled, not only in Swahili, Hausa, Xhosa, and Yoruba, and every major
African language but also in English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and
in Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, Farsi, Chinese and Japanese, and in every single
language on this little planet called earth, where knowledge, not just cheap,
populist, propaganda, is disseminated”.

Now who said that in order to communicate the
knowledge about a Mathematical theorem in Kiswahili, you have to first write or
make it available in Kiswahili? What matters is to be able to communicate it
and make others understand. As long as the teacher/educator has read (and understood) a theorem
– whether it is Pythagoras
that comes from a Greek Mathematician and hence the Greek language or about Algebra that comes
from a book an Arab Mathematician wrote in Arabic – in whatever language, all
that is needed is for him/her to be able to communicate it to students in a
language they all understand very well.

I took Mathematics in both O-Level (where I got an A
in the National Examination of Tanzania) and A-level (where I did not reproduced
the A but still got a decent grade) that were examined in English and I remember we used Kiswahili to teach
other even though we were using books that were written in English – even some
of our teachers used Kiswahili when they realized we didn’t understand them. For
example, one did not really have to know the etymology of ‘differentiation’ and
‘integration’ to know what they really meant and how to actually differentiate
and integrate. We could explain what these Calculus concepts meant and proceed
to communicate – and understand each other – easily in Kiswahili by saying, for
example, ‘diferentieti’ and ‘intagreti’, which were our own ‘Swahilized’ versions
of the respective English words. For us what mattered was communicating, i.e.,
understanding. 

There is also this curious connection that Mufuruki
makes: “I can say with confidence that if Rwanda had instead changed the medium
of instruction from French to Rwandese, it would not be the much admired
fastest growing African economy it is today”. It is as if switching to English
is what has been propelling its celebrated growth. He also argues it is “a good
decision because in everything that matters (books, systems, teachers), English
is very well resourced even in Rwanda and”, allegedly, “the change did not
cause any major disruptions at all”. Hence for him this “change from French to
English was a step up, not a step down as will be the case with Tanzania’s
policy choices”.

Such a canny comparison made me wonder about Rwanda. I
thus recalled a paper Nephat Maritim wrote in his research project at Harvard
University in 2013. It is titled Language
of Instruction in the Rwandan Education System: Politics of Exclusion or
Inclusion?

It makes this interesting observation: “There are
three different but related events that contributed to the adoption of English
in Rwanda as an official language. The first one was a weakening French-Rwanda
relationship, the second, constitutional amendments that allowed for the
recognition of English as an official language, and the third was an increased
influx of American and British influence in Rwanda after the genocide.”

After elaborating on these three factors in relation
to economic rationales, Maritim raises these pertinent questions: “Although
these economic reasons make a lot of sense, it is difficult to ignore other
realities in Rwanda that complicate the language issue. Of all the people in
Rwanda, only 8% speak English, 14% speak French, and 99% speak Kinyarwanda. In
addition, there are more people that speak Kinyarwanda and French than Speak
Kinyarwanda and English. Therefore, if the transition is to enable Rwanda to
open up to the English-speaking world, it is clear from these numbers that only
a very small portion of the national population is being exposed to the
Anglophone world. This means that the benefits that accrue from being able to
speak English only go to a small section of the whole population. Is this an
establishment of the returnees’ hegemony over the Hutus as an act of revenge,
or is it an instance of pure coincidence? Does it not seem like the preference
for English is serving an exclusionary purpose just like the other language
changes that we have seen over the course of the country’s history?”

Such a ‘minority’ is present even in
some African countries that we, in Tanzania, regard as being far
ahead in English proficiency. The only difference is that they have more of
those ‘elites’ than us. For example, the other day I stumbled on a
journal article that presented these disturbing statistics: “It has already
been observed that English, which is barely understood by 25% of the more than
34 million Kenyans, remains the official language, and is used in most of the
official realm.” Yesterday I was even more shocked to read this
assertion from a scholar: “The Nigerian intellectuals hate English
colonialism but they speak a lot of English which Nigeria has adopted as the
official language even though over 95% of Nigerians cannot speak, write, and
understand English language”.

What I find more revealing is that Dr. Baruani
Mshale’s reaction to Mufuruki’s article raises more or less the same issues
even though he has not yet read Maritim’s paper. He
writes: “I will just talk about the misplaced praise for Rwanda’s embrace
of English away from French. Yes, it has worked and yes there are teaching
materials in that language. But there have been serious problems with adopting
English in Rwanda. In the short run, this move has excluded a significant
number of Rwandans/Rwandese who were living in Rwanda and has benefited a
minority Rwandans/Rwandese who were living abroad. I had been to Rwanda several
times before the move from 2003-2005 and many people were more conversant in
French than English”. 

Dr. Mshale goes on to make this observation: “The
adoption of English was not just for technical reasons as [Mufuruki] puts it.
It was intended as a political statement to distance itself from attachments to
the [Belgians] and [French] whom Rwandans believe didn’t do enough prior to,
during and after the genocide in building a unity nation. It’s a nationalistic
movement to detach from colonial relations similar to policies adopted in
Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Zaire etc post independence”. He then
concludes: “There are so many examples of people who have been marginalized by
the adoption of English in Rwanda. A 50+ practicing lawyer trained in French
and practicing in French, suddenly has no job because he cannot use French in
the courtroom. So many of these examples. I have been following up on Rwanda
very closely. [Mufuruki] may have a point, but it is based on wrong
premises and lacks concrete evidence”.

Yes, indeed, and for me one such point is Mufuruki’s
call to “make decisions that will allow Tanzanians to
grow”. The same arguments that he has been making against the complete
switch to Kiswahili now could be leveled against the complete switch to
English. Various research over the years have shown, over and over again, that
we are not well (human) resourced as far as using English as medium of
instruction is concerned.

All is not well even in schools that are hyped for not using Kiswahili as a language of instruction. For example, an abstract
from a recent Investigation
of Pupils’ English Language Abilities in Tanzania: The Case of English Medium
Primary Schools reads: “This article is based on the study which sought
to assess pupils’ abilities in written English language skills among English
medium primary school pupils in Tanzania. The objectives of the study were to
examine pupils’ abilities in constructing complete and meaningful sentences; to
investigate pupils’ abilities in using tenses; to assess pupils’ abilities in
using punctuation marks; and to examine pupils’ abilities in spelling words. The
respondents were 240 pupils from four English medium primary schools, based in
Mbeya and Dar es Salaam Cities. The data collection process was done using an
achievement test and the collected data were subjected to item analysis in
which frequencies and percentages of students exhibiting the specified
abilities were computed. The findings indicated that the majority of the
pupils had serious problems in the tested English language abilities. It
was recommended, among others, that English medium primary schools should
recruit teachers who are proficient in English languages that they could serve
as role models to the pupils.”

Now imagine a country that pretends to be teaching
Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Commerce, Accounting, Economics, Geography
and so forth in/through English even though the majority of our teachers who
are conversant in those subjects can hardly communicate effectively in English.
Isn’t that being ‘backward’, and if it is, switching to Kiswahili is moving
backwards to what? For Mufuruki this switch now “spell
disaster for the development of the Tanzanian human resource on whose
strength the very future of this country depends”. But aren’t we in
a disastrous situation already as many a job interviews of Tanzanian
graduates from our universities/colleges also attest?

I, for one, support the usage of Kiswahili as the
language of instruction simply because it facilitates communication relativelymore easily and connects what is taught and what surrounds us in our
environment. At the same time I support the effective teaching of English as a
second language to make us really capable of using it. That is the best
methodology of/for teaching a new/second/foreign language and it should never be confused with simply using
a language as a medium of instruction, especially in a country with a very low
fluency in English, hoping that students would automatically learn that
language that way.

What we are now having due to our imposed
communication barriers in the classroom and the examination room is what
language experts call ‘subtractive bilingualism’ in contrast to ‘additive
bilingualism’. Put simply, the former makes one lose on both ends – ending up
knowing little of Kiswahili and very little of English. But the latter makes
one gain both ways – Knowing more of Kiswahili as well as English. More
significantly, the former subtracts knowledge through lack of effective
communication and the latter adds knowledge through effective communication. So,
why should we get ‘lost in translation’?

At the risk of being repetitive let me end by
recycling an anecdote
of my own experience with our exercise in madness, i.e., our repeated attempts
at teaching English by making it a language for teaching other subjects,
expecting a different result, i.e., learning English:

One day my teacher wrote this definition on the
blackboard: “Species are groups of organisms that can interbreed to produce
fertile of spring.” I knew the meanings of fertile and spring. But I couldn’t
figure out how they fit in. Anyway, I memorized and reproduced it in the
examination. As you can guess, I got it right. It was only later, much later,
when I came to know what species are. Actually, they produce fertile offspring.
I don’t know whether it was my teacher’s fault or mine. What I know is that, as
a young boy, I frustratingly tried to breed fish. But, alas, they produced
infertile offspring! I didn’t know why. What a missed opportunity to relate
what I was taught with what I practiced!

May we teach English and teach in Kiswahili. Both can
be done. Let us do so now.