(Ambaebulu Bilingual Primary School, where Anglophones learn through English and Francophones learn through French, on opposite sides of the field, before meeting in the middle at playtimes to speak Bislama) The new Minister of Education in Vanuatu, Jean-Pierre Nirua, has just announced the trialling of ‘bilingual education’ in Vanuatu, by which he means the classroom use of two languages that children do not speak at home. According to his vision,
“all children will be taught in both English and French, which means that teachers will be handling bilingual classes. Then there is no need to have English and French schools”, thereby moving beyond the dual system that the national government inherited at Independence from the British and the French. Since this morning, when a report of the announcement was posted to the Yumi Toktok Stret facebook group, the post has been ‘liked’ 428 times, ‘loved’ 9 times and ‘wowed’ twice. 42 comments appear to express a sense of relief that this is finally being done, with only 4 comments indicating any reservations. In contrast, when an opposition MP posted a question on the same facebook group on 11 March, questioning the vernacular education policy that is already mid implementation, debate raged for the next two weeks, demonstrating widespread confusion about what the policy was all about and airing a range of objections to the idea (although some strong support was also shown by teachers who are actually following the policy in their own classrooms). In a series of 12 posts last week, I discussed some of the issues that had been raised throughout the 590 contributions to that particular discussion. Aside from the confusion likely to ensue from the latest Minister of Education (at least the seventh holder of the portfolio in as many years) announcing yet another change of tack – just when it had seemed that policymakers, advisors, curriculum developers and donors were finally all heading in the same direction – the latest story is notable for demonstrating the deeply held belief that there is nothing wrong with learning through a language that you have limited exposure to outside school – let alone two such languages at once! The recent UNESCO report If you don’t understand, how can you learn? reiterates the point that the organisation’s been making since 1953 that children who do not speak the classroom language at home will struggle at school. The argument that experts are trying to push in most developing countries is not that education must start in a familiar language (because it is easy to demonstrate that Grade 1 children acclimatise to formal schooling better if you do so) but that this practice must be extended throughout primary school rather than “switching from a mother tongue to English in a random fashion” after only a year or two. The most comprehensive review of the field that we have to date is the review and analysis of theory and practice in mother-tongue and bilingual education in sub-Saharan Africa, based on work in 25 different countries, which demonstrates that 6 to 8 years of education in familiar languages (using relevant curricula) is essential for the provision of quality education. In Vanuatu, however, not only is the argument still having to be made that children find it difficult being plonked without preparation in a foreign-language environment and expected to get on with the acquisition of literacy, numeracy and critical thinking, there are still calls for this ‘submersion’ approach to be duplicated. While we know that teachers often lack proficiency themselves in the classroom language through which they are already expected to teach, the argument is made that they can now be made to teach through an additional language too. While the newspapers have been filled for years with criticisms of low literacy levels and poor educational achievement, the belief is still held that introducing another unknown classroom language will somehow solve these problems. The language debate in Vanuatu is not based on what is best pedagogically, but on a heartfelt desire to move beyond the Anglophone-Francophone divisions that were left behind by two departing colonial powers (or, more cynically, to bolster the use of French in the country, as the current Minister has advocated for years). I’ve been constantly surprised in my research about the desire to maintain and celebrate this version of ‘bilingualism’, even in rural areas where neither language is heard at all outside school, and it is clear that there is nothing to be gained by arguing for the merits of one or the other of the former colonial languages. They are both here to stay, and they will both continue to be taught as subjects – with every chance of producing school leavers who can speak both well, if they are taught properly rather than being used shakily to try and teach everything else. However, if we also want these school leavers to have actually learnt anything, then we really do have to talk about pedagogy.
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March 2019
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