Elite Xhosa children losing use of their mother tongue

[Makhosimvelo]

http://www.dispatch.co.za/1999/09/03/features/LP.HTM

More and more parents are placing their children in English-medium schools to give them a better chance in life. This has its own problems.
GRAHAM HAYMAN reports.

LANGUAGE choice was a battlefield in the old South Africa, but it seems both white and black are abandoning the language rights for which they fought.
Now the Constitution protects right of language and culture, but Xhosa parents in the Eastern Cape who are ambitious for their children are sending them to former model C schools so that they can become fluent English speakers. The same is probably happening elsewhere.
Xhosa language and culture are taking second place and in some cases children are losing it completely. Many Afrikaans parents are putting their children through the same transition to English, but Afrikaans is not being lost as a home language to nearly the same extent as Xhosa.
Professor Viv de Klerk at Rhodes University's department of linguistics has done in-depth person-to-person research in the shift of language choice among school children, towards English. She says it's happening among the elite.
"Most but not all of the parents are already quite good at English themselves. The shift means paying higher fees which are substantial."
De Klerk says these parents are accepting that their children will see themselves as English, and that their grandchildren will be English children.
"The shift of language will reinforce a cycle of inequality, because their English benefits them and they will move away from and not support their mother tongue."
Afrikaans speakers in Grahamstown, both coloured and white, are also shifting to English schools, coloured children more quickly. But there is a key difference from Xhosa speakers.
"Afrikaans parents usually nurture the culture and language," she said. "I didn't come across one home where Afrikaans was being lost."
De Klerk named other possible historical causes for the shift, besides better career opportunities. Mother-tongue education in both had at times been forced. For Xhosa speakers particularly, the denial of instruction in English would probably make it "very attractive". People might associate apartheid deprivation with learning through Xhosa, as well as political deprivation.
This shift of language can have serious consequences, including alienation of Xhosa children from their neighbourhood and peer group. Depending on how early the switch was done, learning ability could be seriously harmed.
Greater numbers are switching earlier, in fact from Grade 1. As a consequence, these children may learn English faster, but might lose their first language -- Xhosa children in particular.
It would depend, said De Klerk, on how their formal classroom instruction is supported by informal experience of English, in conversation or via the media. If children move at, say, Std 8 (Grade 10), they have already acquired their mother tongue and literacy skills.
The home environment can also aid or handicap learning English. De Klerk said: "It seems that parents thought they could keep two languages alive.
"Now they've discovered that being two things at once causes too much tension in a child's life, and the children lead the way into an English world view, and speak English at home. There are some parents who forbid the use of Xhosa at home."
This happened particularly where the parents were sufficiently fluent in English to support the child in acquiring two languages.
"Then the children find they can't make friends in their neighbourhood in the former townships, because the Xhosa speakers resent them and see them as 'fancy' or 'too big for their boots', so they are betwixt and between, socially.
"They have to find a loyalty somewhere, and so they turn to English. Some have said: 'Yes, I am going to marry a white person', that kind of thing, so it's very closely tied up with their whole identity."
The headmistress of a well-known Grahamstown primary school said: "We suggest to children that they try to speak some English in the playground. But we often see Xhosa and English children playing in separate groups. Those who take a step into an English social group are streets ahead after just one term."
The shift is affecting the enrolment profile of entire schools. There's been a sharp drop in the number of mother-tongue English (mainly white) speakers.
In Grades 1 and 2, in some schools, there are very few mother-tongue speakers left.
"So language acquisition is going to be slower, because there is less exposure. Language learning isn't successful if it's only formal; it needs to have its informal side," said De Klerk.
Why are the numbers of white English speakers in those schools dropping?
De Klerk thinks that English parents suddenly get the perception that "oh, my child is going to lose his/her culture and language", and move to private schools.
The deputy head of a Grahamstown government boys' school says that it may also be due to a decrease in the number of white English speakers -- whether because of immigration, or urbanisation of the local farm community, or pupils being educated at home, he can't tell. Despite this, it is full due to the number of second-language speakers coming in.
The cost of switching is high. For black parents, the move from former township schools to former model C schools is astronomical. For parents who move from former model C primary government schools to private schools, the difference is almost as great.
There is also a double fee increase every year. School fees as a whole are being increased year by year, even at the former township schools. Also, school fees rise from lower grades to higher grades, and particularly at the jump to senior school.
So poorer parents will find it harder to keep their children at model C schools.
The disappearance of mother-tongue English pupils makes the black parents annoyed, because they send their children to these schools to pick it up, says De Klerk. But they find there is no longer a context for informal learning. This imbalance affects teaching.
"You have to have sympathy for the teachers, because they're English speaking, and they have not, cannot use, those children's mother tongue."
Black parents who want their children to learn English are faced with several tough decisions. But there's a further twist.
There is a small group of black pupils going through some schools right now who have acquired English early. Their English and other skills will be better than those just older, who did not have the opportunity or may have switched too late.
They may also be more advantaged than those just younger, who will not be able to learn from a high proportion of English mother-tongue class-mates. Parents of these children will have to make an effort to speak English informally at home.
There is a third way, although it is still being debated, according to De Klerk. This is to try to create true bilingualism, by doing the switch to instruction in English more gradually, say in one or two subjects a year.
"Most black parents out of ignorance would say they wanted their children to learn English as fast as possible," she said.
What is the best policy?
"Ideally a child needs to go further in mother tongue before the switch to English, because the evidence is that children get their academic cognitive skills by resting very firmly on that mother tongue, by constantly using it and drawing on it.
"The skills we need for literacy and academic success come through mother-tongue education."
Bilingualism, says De Klerk, is even better than a slow switch to English.
"A lot of research shows that true bilingualism gives you advantages cognitively. It advances abstract thinking, gives you cultural insights that other people don't have, are not even aware of."
She cites an example: "A bilingual child of five is talking to a mono-lingual English child. The bilingual child says to the monolingual English child: 'How many languages can you speak?' and the monolingual English child says: 'What's a language?'"
The message to black parents is clear. If you want your child to switch to English, shop around for schools with the right language proportions, and be prepared to put in effort at home. The school can't do it all.