Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 3

                                                          The Mother Tongue

Most of the immigrants who come from different countries and try to settle down here are facing the problem of saving their mother tongue. Some people try very seriously and teach the children from the beginning why it's important to learn their mother tongue and stress that if someone want to learn about the culture of their country it is very important to learn mother tongue. Of course books, information are available in English but there is a difference in understanding the culture, traditions, history of the nation learning through their mother tongue. It will be easy to understand when they become fluent with the mother tongue they can read the wonderful literature, history, about the customs, the changes that are taking place etc.

The three new ideas and insights I gained about issues related to international early childhood education that relate to my professional goals has to do with how children learn better in their mother tongue. In Iraq a new amendment law will allow Turkmen, Syriac and Asuri people to open schools in their localities for education in their mother tongue. The Iraqi National Assembly voted in favor of the amendment to add Turkmen, Syriac and Asuri languages to official languages of Iraq, bringing the number of official languages in the country to five after Arabic and Kurdish. "Turkmen, Syriac and Asuri minorities in Iraq will be able to open courses and educational institutions at all levels that serve to enhance the human potential.

In Burma the Mother-Tongue Instruction is being pushed for Burma’s Schools.  A seminar on multilingual education has called for the use of ethnic minorities’ mother tongue as their language of instruction, in combination with allowing local education authorities to draft ethnic language curricula for primary school students who do not belong to Burma’s ethnic Burman majority. “The attendees agree that children’s mother tongue should be used as the medium of instruction in order for ethnic children to be effective in their studies and balance the teaching of national and international language skills. . “It’s found to be more effective using students’ mother tongue as the language of instruction when teaching the Burmese language in its spoken and written forms. Currently, Burmese is the language of instruction at schools across the country. Since political reforms that began nearly three years ago, and amid ongoing national reconciliation efforts, a growing call to reinstate ethnic minority languages into classrooms has been met with modest success.

Children whose primary language is not the language of instruction in school are more likely to drop out of school or fail in early grades. Research has shown that children’s first language is the optimal language for literacy and learning throughout primary school (UNESCO, 2008a). In spite of growing evidence and parent demand, many educational systems around the world insist on exclusive use of one or sometimes several privileged languages. This means excluding other languages and with them the children who speak them (Arnold, Bartlett, Gowani, & Merali, 2006). 

Many linguistic groups are becoming vocal about the need to ensure that the youngest members of their communities keep their linguistic heritage. Some governments, such as in the Philippines, have recently established language-in-education policies that embrace children’s first languages. A compendium of examples produced by UNESCO (2008b) attests to growing interest in promoting mother tongue-based education, and to the wide variety of models, tools, and resources now being developed and piloted to promote learning programs in the mother tongue.

Questions need to be explored about what are the most important outcomes and how best to measure them in various teaching and learning contexts. How should assessment of pedagogical effectiveness take into account the different pace of children's growing competence in core skills including reading, writing, numeracy and problem solving when they learn through multiple languages? Family members play an important role as children's first teachers and research should explore the roles of informal and non-formal education and family interaction in promoting literacy, numeracy, and higher order cognitive skills using the mother tongue.

We need to involve community members with diverse language skills in formal school and train teachers with varying language capacities and levels of education to be effective in MTB-MLE classrooms.  As knowledge develops, we must get better at communicating research findings so that practitioners, policy makers and donors are informed and motivated by evidence about how the potential of MTB-MLE can be harnessed to achieve Education for All.

I believe that their own language enables young learners to immediately construct and explain their world without fear of making mistakes, articulate their thoughts and add new concepts to what they already know. In turn, their teachers can more accurately assess what has been learned and identify the areas where they need help.

Resources:

UNESCO’s “Early Childhood Care and Education” webpage (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/),

http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=126617

http://www.irrawaddy.org/burma/mother-tongue-instruction-pushed-burmas-schools.html

http://www.globalpartnership.org/blog/children-learn-better-their-mother-tongue

Arnold, C., Bartlett, K., Gowani, S., & Merali, R. (2006). Is everybody ready? Readiness, transition and continuity: Reflections and moving forward. Background paper for EFA Global Monitoring Report 2007.