Language and impediments to learning

Language is tool of communication, fundamental means of identity and empowerment for both group and individual.

An important conference was organised in Peshawar, recently, on the issue of minority languages spoken in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Languages discussed at the seminar included Hindko, Khawar, Shina, Seraiki, Indus Kohistani, Torwali, Gawro, Urmuri, Gawri, Gawarbati, Palula, Dameili, Oshojo, Kamveri, Chiliso, Pashai, Kalasha, Shaikhani and Bateri.

The event provided a platform for the province’s lesser-known languages. It was also significant in the wake of the 18th Amendment, since the provinces now have more say in policymaking with regard to education.

Language is not only a tool of communication but also a fundamental means of identity and empowerment for both the group and the individual who speaks it. Education in the mother tongue of the learner not only ensures inclusion and access but is also a means of acquiring quality learning. Similarly, excluding use of the learner’s mother tongue tends to increase the dropout rate.

A paper by the World Bank in 2005 said: “Fifty per cent of the world’s out-of-school children live in communities where the language of schooling is rarely, if ever, used at home. This underscores the biggest challenge to achieving Education for All (EFA): a legacy of non-productive practices that lead to low levels of learning and high levels of dropout and repetition”.

In the Torwali community of Bahrain in central-northern Swat, there are not more than a dozen graduates, and this includes two or three doctors. No one from the area has been a member of the civil service. This is again because the local schools use a medium of instruction which is not spoken by students in their homes. An indication of this is that the literacy rate in the community is less than 15 per cent for men and for women it is not even two per cent. Compare this to Madyan, a predominantly Pashtu-speaking town a mere 10 kilometres away from Bahrain, where there are hundreds of students who have had a graduate education and dozens have gone on to pursue careers in medicine and the civil service.

So what is the reason for this stark disparity? How can there be such a difference in academic achievement when the two towns are so close to each other? Is it because the one in Madyan is a private school? No. The reason, by and large, is that in Madyan students are taught in their mother tongue.

I remember in my school days, teachers would discourage us by stopping us from talking to each other in our mother tongue — and this led to severely limited interaction in the classroom.

What the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government needs to do is to have a policy whereby children in various schools of the province are taught in their own mother tongue. This has already been done in the case of Pashtu, Hindko, Seraiki, Indus Kohistani and Khawar and should be extended to all minority languages as well.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 3^rd, 2011.