Birgit Brock-Utne

Whose Education For All? : The Recolonization of the African Mind

Preface, Introduction, Part I: Establishing Education Policies for Sub-Saharan Africa: A Critique 1. Whose Education for All? 2. Education Policies for Sub-Saharan Africa as Viewed by the World Bank 3. The Formulation of Educational Policies and the Coordination of Aid - Some Examples Part II: African Culture and the Content of Schooling 4. A Renewed Curriculum Dependency? 5. Education for All - In Whose Language? 6. Language of Instruction in Tanzania and Namibia Part III: A Life After Jomtien for the African Universities? 7. Globalisation for Learning - Whose Globe and What Learning? - The Role of the African Universities 8. Africanisation of the Universities of South Africa 9. Yes, Whose Education Is It?

Education for all - in whose language?

In the first part of this article the question of the language of instruction is seen in relation to questions of poverty, power and partnership. In the second part the fate of the African languages in some selected countries is given a closer look. Two distinct trends are noted, one strengthening the dominant languages which, in the context of Africa, means the former colonial languages and one focusing on a growing concern for a preservation and revival of African languages as languages of instruction in at least the primary schools in Africa. The battle between these two trends is discussed. The article builds partly on discussions the author has had with policy-makers in African countries.

Language-in-Education Policies and Practices in Africa with a Special Focus on Tanzania and South Africa — Insights from Research in Progress

It has always been felt by African educationists that the African child’s major learning problem is linguistic. Instruction is given in a language that is not normally used in his immediate environment, a language which neither the learner nor the teacher understands and uses well enough (Obanya, l980, 88). If the African child’s major learning problem is linguistic, then all the attention of African policy-makers and aid to the education sector from donors should be devoted to a strengthening of the African languages as languages of instruction, especially in basic education. My own experience after having taught in Africa for four years and having visited hundreds of classrooms both in east and west Africa is that Obanya is completely right; the African child’s major learning problem is linguistic. Children are being branded as unintelligent when they lack knowledge of the language used in instruction, a language they often hardly hear and seldom use outside of the classroom. The concept “education for all” becomes a completely empty concept if the linguistic environment of the basic learners is not taken into account (Brock-Utne, 2000; Brock-Utne, 2001; Klaus, 2001). Yet there is hardly another socio-cultural topic one can begin discussing with Africans that leads to so heated debates and stirs up so many emotions as that of the language of instruction in African schools. It is difficult to discuss this topic as a strictly educational question phrased for instance as: “Through which medium of instruction would children learn subject matter best?”; “If the aim is to master a ‘world’ language, would it be better to have that language as a language of instruction at the earliest time possible or to develop the vernacular or a commonly spoken national language further first?”; or “What does it mean for the learning potential, the development of self-respect and identity that the language one normally communicates in does not seem to be deemed fit for a language of instruction in school?”

The Growth of English for Academic Communication in the Nordic Countries.

This article discusses the danger of subtractive English in higher education in Norway. If the use of a mother tongue as the medium of communication at the highest academic levels ceases, is drastically reduced and replaced through the use of a foreign tongue, we may speak of subtractive learning. If the mother tongue is being replaced by a foreign tongue in academic writing, in research and university level teaching, the mother tongue will stagnate. The vocabulary needed has not been allowed to develop at the highest academic level. The author maintains that the Norwegian language is threatened as an academic language and here discusses the following five phenomena, all contributing to this threat:1. The increasing use of English words in Norwegian academic, bureaucratic or technological language.2. The sale of more academic literature in English and stagnation of academic literature in Norwegian.3. The recruitment of teaching staff who do not speak Norwegian.4. The growth in Master degree courses taught in English.5. The financial rewards being given to academic staff publishing in an international language (read: English) instead of in the mother tongue.

THE LANGUAGE QUESTION IN NAMIBIAN SCHOOLS

Namibia, a country in southwest Africa with only 1.5 million inhabitants, officially has thirteen languages as languages of instruction in the first grades of schooling. Three of these are European, and ten African. Of the three European languages, two are connected with the colonial history of Namibia. Namibia was colonized by the Germans from 1884 to 1914 and German is still an important business language in Namibia and the language one hears most frequently among shop-keepers in Windhoek. The South African colonization, which was supposed to be a Trusteeship, lasted until 1990. In this period Afrikaans (a variety of Dutch) became the main official language and the language of instruction from grade 4 upwards. This article deals with the period after Independence and focuses especially on the Namibian languages of African origin. The role of English, a European language without a colonial history in Namibia, and now the official language, is also discussed. How much is the furthering of this language to the detriment of the Namibian languages? The article contains a description of the Namibian languages, the language policy and the status of the languages in Namibian schools. The article builds on a larger consultancy report written by the author.

Language and inequality: global challenges to education

This article is an abbreviated version of the BAICE Presidential Address held at the 11th UKFIET International Conference in Oxford on September 16, 2011. It discusses debates on the use of a foreign and ex-colonial language as a language of instruction (LOI) in African schools and argues that the quality of education cannot be seen as an issue separate from the LOI. Nevertheless, the World Bank 2020 strategy, ‘Learning for All’, does not mention the language in which learning is to take place. The article then discusses policy changes in Rwanda where English was made the LOI from the first grade in 2008, and examines the use of ‘Timms-like’ testing. Taking the example of text messaging and chat amongst students in Dakar and Dar es Salaam, it considers how new information and communication technologies seem to offer opportunities for change where linguistic policy has failed.

The Choice of English as Medium of Instruction and Its Effects on the African Languages in Namibia.

In 1995 Birgit Brock-Utne was asked by NIED (National Institute for Education and Development) in Namibia to make a study of the situation of the African languages after Independence in 1990. Five years later the study was followed up by Halla Holmarsdottir as her thesis for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Comparative and International Education. The study was supported by the Nordic Institute of African Studies. This article is built on both these studies, which shows that the enormous work that has gone into making English the official language of Namibia, has born fruits. However, Holmarsdottir in her 2000 study also found that teachers overestimate their knowledge of English and in fact recent teacher graduates are not significantly more proficient in English than those who have been teaching for some time. Both studies reveal that many people around the country have grave concerns that the Namibian languages are losing a battle against English. One notable example of this development is the drop in the number of students studying African languages at the University of Namibia. In 1995 there were 100 students taking Oshindonga, and in the academic year 1999–2000 there was one.

Globalisation of learning—The role of the universities in the south: With a special look at sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract The first part of the paper discusses the uneven distribution of resources to higher education between the North and South. It then takes up the attitude of the World Bank towards university education in the South and does this by going through several World Bank publications and dwells on the 1994 publication called ‘Higher Education: The Lessons of Experience’. It also discusses the likely effects for the university sector in the South, especially in Africa, of the Jomtien conference on ‘education for all’. The linkage phenomenon between universities in the North and the South is discussed. The following question is raised: Is it at all possible to establish a North South cooperation in the university sector of an empowering kind? Negative as well as positive examples are given. The link that is really missing is then discussed. This is the link between the elites in the country and the people, the link between indigenous knowledge and the imported academic knowledge. This paper argues for a transformation of the universities of the South to include local knowledge. The most common problems of the South can only be understood by analyzing local experiences. A plea is being made for discussing indigenous education. Such a discussion compels us to come to terms with the situation in which even the social construction of a peoples reality is and has been constantly defined elsewhere. For Africa to find her way out of the abyss in which she finds herself an alternative national development model is needed. This model is not likely to be found unless the African universities are strengthened and transformed. The transformation would have to do with a strengthening of indigenous research based on local experience.

An exploration of the importance of piloting and access as action research

In this article we illustrate how the piloting process has influenced two widely different studies within the educational sciences. These studies differ in design but have as a common denominator that they used piloting methods in their preparatory process. They are also similar in the intention of the main researchers of conducting research with a critical edge. In the first case study described, our solidarity lies with the disadvantaged school children of South Africa. In the second case study, our solidarity lies with a group of teachers who through an action research project wanted to question a school policy that they do not feel benefits all school children in the Norwegian lower secondary school. The two cases are presented separately and explore the change in conceptual and methodological emphasis in the research procedure. We emphasize how important the piloting and access processes are in order to learn from them and reduce mistakes in the main research design. We argue that both piloting and gaining access can be seen as a form of action research, in that the intention is to learn and to change future action; that is, the purpose is to find out how to conduct a project more effectively. A reflective piloting phase is likely to increase the validity of the research results and can in itself be viewed as action research. Through the piloting phase, learning that may prove invaluable for the later research process is likely to take place. As piloting can be of great value for research results, it should also be given much greater attention in the research literature in general. While the best case scenarios are overrepresented in the research literature, the learning from and of flaws and imperfections that are discovered in the piloting stages of research is equally important for the research community as well as for the actual participants in the researching process. Yet this is under utilized and often left under‐reported.

Worldbankification of Norwegian development assistance to education

Norwegian official development assistance to education has been profoundly shaped by the political and ideological attitudes of successive national governments. Yet successive coalition governments of highly‐contrastive kinds can alike be seen to have been strongly influenced by the policy content, language and underlying assumptions of World Bank thinking about education and development, especially since the introduction of structural adjustment programmes and the more recent Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. To an increasing extent, the traditional and much‐praised independence of thinking evident in Norwegian bilateral aid has been subsumed by uncritical adoption of World Bank policy stances, usually imposed uniformly irrespective of local conditions and preferences. Using the National Education Trust Fund as an example illustrating trends in several African countries, the article assesses the implications of this loss of critical independence in the delivery of Norwegian aid to education. There are early indications that the new red–green coalition government in Norway is putting up a fight against the conditionalities for aid to the education sector set up by the World Bank.