It came to mind over breakfast this morning chatting my uncle who teaches at primary over the syllabus.
Among so many problems like under-staffing, lack of encouragement from parents/guardians, the syllabus itself fell under question.
Pupils are taught in local language from standard one to standard five. They are then taught in english. My assumption was so many students would find themselves failing. And it was so. And paradoxically there was a student who managed to pass standard eight and got selected to a secondary school without knowing how to read. Probably passed from recall exams being in multiple choice.
Why is it a problem to start english at standard five?
A person is able to understand something if he is able to be communicated to. To grasp knowledge one must understand the language in which the knowledge is communicated. Vast knowledge is communicated in english. While it is important to understand a local language, the more languages one understands the more the knowledge he is able to grasp. For pupils learning in local language, they find themselves at a disadvantage to understand english.
To learn a language, you learn better if you are able to practice it and apply it. Local languages have a lot of time to be practiced then than english. English gets less than one hour formal practice, local language gets full day at home and at school. If other subjects were taught at least in english at early level, english would have half a day of practice and application everyday.
A local language which is already known from birth may still be important for formalization especially for written form.
I believe local language might have been introduced with the assumption that our kids are too dull to grasp knowledge in english.
But are they? The advantage of english is that one is now able to grasp other forms of knowledge on their own if they fail to go further with education but have books around to read. This makes the likes of William Kamkwamba and his windmill electricity. Such boy becomes a wonder these days for there are too few who are able to grasp knowledge at a young age on their own.
It is expected that at standard five students might be able to learn comparatively in knew language but I think this is easier for adults who have learned language structures to compare than for kids. Thus I do advise still let them learn in english from early age.
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Accept The Challenge God Will Guide - Phwezi Sec. School.