“English only education”

My most faithful and dedicated readers will notice that a few blog posts ago I used the phrase “English only education” in the same quotation marks that they appear here. You might have wondered why I used these quotation marks, or you might have made a connection with one of my first posts about Ngara, and realized that it meant that “English only education” in Tanzania means education that is not anything at all like English only.

This has been something I have been thinking about for a while, but this weekend I (and many of the teachers at Ngara District’s 27 Secondary Schools) went to a seminar hosted by the District Education Officer (DEO), who is the head of Secondary Education in Ngara. This seminar ended up being somewhere between 8-9 hours, which is rather long, especially given that 90% of it was in Swahili (meaning, effectively, that I understood next to nothing of the stuff in Swahili). This is something that I am getting used to, having sat through a number of 3 hour staff meetings that were also all in Swahili (though at these, at least, I had the occasional summary of the content). I am somewhat used to and generally prepared to sit through these shorter meetings, though to be honest they can be pretty boring. I think if I was able to follow along better they would be fascinating, but that’s just how things are.

In any case, this meeting was only supposed to be six hours, and I had heard in advance from a teacher friend that a lot of it was going to be in English, because “English only education” was on the agenda. I was disappointed. The meeting open with a series of speeches in Swahili, until eventually one of the Headmasters had the floor for 10 minutes. He gave a talk about the importance of teachers only using English at school (in all settings), and another Headmaster followed the speech up with an impassioned comment about how this was an important issue that more time needed to be dedicated to. More time was not dedicated to it, and much of the rest of the seminar was held in Swahili.

Before I proceed, I should say that I have mixed feelings about the issue. On the one hand, as someone who is not anywhere close to fluent in Swahili, I have a horse in the race – it is in my interest that English is used exclusively, because I will understand everything that is going on much better. Additionally, I think it would really help develop the English proficiency of the teachers. Many of the teachers (at my school at least – at other more rural schools I think this is less true) speak decent English, but they would be far better English speakers if they only used English while at school. Also, I think it would help the students a lot, especially once they have learned their English basics. It is problematic that teachers continue to use a lot of Swahili in their lessons into Form III and Form IV, because many students never actually learn English over the course of their Secondary School educations. On the other hand, I don’t think it is a bad idea for teachers to use Swahili from time to time as they explain difficult concepts. As one teacher put it to me today, “sometimes you have to use Swahili to make sure they understand a concept.” Indeed, the expecation is that teachers should use all English in their form I classes, which includes courses like Civics and Geography, which can hardly be taught to Tanzanians who hardly understand English in English. The use of Swahili is only problematic when it takes over lessons, and as it persists throughout the education of Tanzanian students, who, as I said, make it to Form IV without speaking hardly any English. Part of the problem here is also simply that some teachers lack the English proficiency to effectively teach in the language.

Returning to the seminar, I thought it was really ironic that this was an issue that was brought up, that the DEO said was important (“teachers should use English only”), and then that most of the rest of the seminar continued in Swahili. As I have said previously, it is easy to understand why – Tanzanians are simply more comfortable in Swahili, and even in a room full of teachers, speaking in only English would undoubtably leave many of those teachers confused on some points. It seems to me that if “English only education” is to be taken seriously, the people advocating it need to set the example for teachers and take on “English only” themselves. Signs at all the schools say “English only,” but nobody takes them seriously, and as I have said, “English only education” is actually an impractical, and probably misguided, idea.

That said, the status quo of promoting “English only education,” while turning a blind eye to the fact that that it is anything but, is obviously not working either. In fact, promoting “English only education,” while teachers and students know that this is not, and will not, be the case, probably does more harm than good. For major improvements to be made in the Tanzanian education system, this idea needs to be rethought and revised. Indeed, if “English only” is a joke to Tanzanian teachers, it’s an even a bigger joke to Tanzanian students.