Publications
Transformative Learning- learning to live sustainably:
Importance of mother tongue teaching for Science and Technology
Paper presented By Nirmala Nair (Director ZERI-Southern Africa)
Regional seminar on ‘new trends of research and application in African Languages.
African Languages Department
Stellenbosch University
20 April 2005
INTRODUCTION
Noam Chomsky’s Diyarbakir speech
I have been asked repeatedly to express my opinion about the rights of people to use their mother tongue. As a linguist I have no opinion about the matter. As a human being there is nothing to discuss. It is too obvious. The right to use one’s mother tongue freely in every way that one wants -- in literature, in public meetings, in any other form -- that is a primary essential human right. There is nothing further to say about it.
Kurdistan Observer - Mar 31, 2002
I am ever so grateful to my dear friend and colleague Monwabisi for this invitation. I am taking this opportunity to present some of the ideas about ZERI eco-fables and illustrate why it is important, that these stories be translated in African languages. Stories taught in mother tongue can trigger a deep sense of enquiry, creative thinking and a sense of wonderment to explore the world of nature.
Science and art is interlinked, scientists are artists, exploring their creativity, sense of enquiry channeled through a different medium. Unfortunately these days we have words like `hard sciences’ – self explanatory in itself (including the gender bias..) Modern science has become precisely that – hardened, bereft of the essence of life, and bereft of the sense of wonderment that is so imperative to any scientific enquiry. This has something to do with the way we teach science and technology at school, I will come back to this in due course.
Coming to the relevance of teaching in mother tongue, I am not an African language specialist, I am not an educator in the classical sense of the term, nor am I a linguist. I am a sociologist with a particular focus on gender, developmental politics, sustainability etc. But these days I believe in the interconnectedness of the world, disciplines, breaking out of our colonial conditioning of `silo-mentality’. For lack of any other better word, I have to say I am a deeply committed systems thinker.
Being a systems thinker, I cannot help seeing the`bigger-picture’. Hence my foraging into the arena of linguistic specialties and the role of mother tongue learning in the construction of identities, self worth. I believe that a sense of self, a sense of identity is deeply embedded in the culture and tradition which is often shaped and molded through the mother tongue use in early years of ones childhood.
Mother Tongue teaching – construction of the sense of Self, Identity and social construction
This is a complex and politically contentious area. While I cannot claim any expertise on the subject my paper will be a narrative and reflective positioning on the matter, while drawing inspiration for it from Noam Chomsky on the one hand and our own great minds like Professor Kwesi Prah who has already eloquently written on this subject, stating in no uncertain terms the importance of mother tongue education for Africa and particularly if we are to move towards excellence in the area of Science and technology..
While I agree totally with Prof. Prah’s position, I want to add another dimension by bringing in the notion of the self, identity question and the role of transformation as equally critical in this discourse on mother tongue teaching and science and technology.
I am taking the liberty to do this through venturing into my own personal anecdotes and general observations on this subject drawn from the Asian context. I am sure there must be enough semantic and linguistic evidence supporting this hypothesis. If you got to China or Japan, with their great stride in scientific field, we also do become acutely aware of the language issue. Anyone traveling to South East Asia in particular is bound to experience problems in communication; they just do not buy into the power of globally dominating language – English... They are proud of their own language, their culture. For doing business with the Chinese and Japanese they will come with their translators. For this dis obedience they have done pretty well, I must say… so the theory, that if we have to develop, we have to learn English is bullshit..excuse my language…we have been forced to believe in that supremacy of the ruling powers time and again, and we fall prey to that fallacious notion again and again.
I come from India. It is the same story. The only difference is the Northern languages dominate the South. I come from the South. We are the original people of India, but the invaders who settled up north and ruled have managed to impose their language as the national language. But each province operates in their own language. our colonizers also succeeded in convincing us that we must retain English, but we did not give up our own languages. There is a pride in keeping ones language alive. A pride in keeping our culture alive through the language. Language is the thread through which the pearl necklace of culture and tradition gets threaded through. It is the carrying vehicle. Once we lose that we lose the culture and tradition, there is nothing to hold on to, the scattered pearls fall away gradually….
Loss of mother tongue is really like cutting off ones roots A working knowledge in ones own mother tongue is critically important for the sense self, self esteem and self development.
Importance of using mother tongue in science education
Again I have to draw from my own personal background – as someone from the province of Kerala, in India which has some pretty remarkable achievements especially given the over all context of India. We achieved total literacy ten years ago, and have the world’s record for having largest foreign language materials translated into Malayalam – the mother tongue of our province.
In the late sixties we started a movement led by top scientists from the province, called Popular Science Movement. We created the motto, Science for the people. Local schools could not wait to receive their copies of `Sciencescream’. Run entirely through mother tongue, this literature paved the way to creating the future Keralites, thinkers, economists, scientists, computer programmers. Even now we have Science and culture camps, science clubs, local traditional cultures become the vehicle through art camps to propagate deep scientific concepts. The entire network is run through children’s membership and donations. Foreign Funding agencies line up to woo this movement and fund them.. if you want to kill a movement, you fund them.
Fortunately the leaders of this movement deeply reared in the tradition of red, made sure that it did not get hi-jacked by some benevolent foreign funder from the north. The tricks of appropriation and co-optation work in myriads of forms, often couched in progressive terminologies.
Why am I talking about this in the context of ZERI eco-fables? Where ever we have gone with ZERI stories we make sure, it is first translated into the local languages. When I started ZERISA here a couple of years ago, many people wanted to get it published in English, I said no, this is South Africa, English is a working language, but not the mother tongue language of the majority. We need to translate these first into local languages.
ZERI educational Initiative – Key principles
This is most eloquently captured by the creator of these stories and the director ZERI international Prof. Gunter Pauli. I am just going to reproduce from a section from our pamphlet. For us ZERI stories are not just creating future Einstein’s it is about unleashing the optimum creativity in every child. It is about being able to create local livelihood as effortlessly without having to become a mindless material consumer touted all around us as indicators of development and progress.
“The ZERI Educational Initiative wishes
to improve the capacity of all to respond to the basic needs
with what they have, while evolving to be their best.”
It is against this background that the first and foremost objective of the ZERI Educational Initiative is placed:
How can we empower people to respond effectively and positively
to their needs and dreams in a creative manner
in co-evolution with nature.
The ZERI Educational Initiative wishes to be inspiring and pragmatic at the same time. It is therefore necessary that the educational programs go hand in hand with the implementation of projects since the realization of concrete initiatives are the best inspiration.
The ZERI Educational Initiative has thus clearly defined its objective as improving the capacity of each to respond to the basic needs of all with what they have while evolving to become their best. In order to achieve this ZERI system relies on four core building blocks.
1. The Five Kingdoms of Nature2. Nature’s Five Design Principles3. Nature’s interrelationships4. The Five IntelligencesThe ZERI Educational Initiative proposes some 500 scientific themes to be covered during the first few years. But in line with the advise offered by Dr. Abdul Majali, the former rector of the University of Jordan, “Expose – Do Not Impose”. The students will have heard about, will have touched upon, will have contemplated, and sometimes will have embarked on the study of all these subjects part of the soft and hard sciences. Today there are no students graduating from high school with a working knowledge of even 20 scientific subjects. The goal of the ZERI Educational Initiative is to provide the platform for learning and exploring a vast area of most diverse scientific and technological themes to the point that they are indeed well equipped to judge what would be useful where, and which subject should be deepened and how.
Prof. Gunter Pauli
Director ZERI Foundation
Why is ZERI stories important to the South African context
Again, I stand subject to correction. But my limited search revealed that science education often linked to the environmental movement is deeply biased in South Africa, very politically contentious as well. There is a whole big debate about the greens and the browns for instance; the conservationist tree huggers and hackers versus those who believe fighting for jobs, meeting basic needs as the priority.
The environmental lobby is primarily driven by the previously advantaged groups who are now facing the brunt of affirmative action. So we witness the mushrooming of so-called-service providers from these communities, setting up eco-schools, environmental NGOs etc, attracting big funders from abroad, who are more than happy to plow resources into these ventures, because they share a common ground, they understand the dominant discourse, they are not interested in the emerging subaltern discourse. Nor do they have time for mother tongue teaching, they are happy with the colonizers language, it is their language.
The `Africanness’, in this context is limited to Afro-chic fashion and perhaps, music. For me, being African is not just purporting African fashion, or engaging in racial battles alone. It is the spirit, it is the deeply embedded African pride, African spirit manifesting in language, tradition and culture simultaneously while creating a broad expansive horizon for cross pollination of ideas and engagement.
When I was discussing the scope of ZERI stories, some one said, but, it is foreign, it started somewhere else, Gunter Pauli is a white man… ideas and concepts are trans-boundaries, cross-pollination is a way of life.
I grew up reading Pushkin and Pablo Neruda in Malayalam. My mother read Victor Hugo and Dostoevsky in Malayalam.
Taking pride in one’s own culture and tradition and language does not mean closing doors and living with limiting belief systems. Being rooted in ones own tradition and culture, means rising above, expansive and vast merging with the endless horizon. Being authentic makes one more generous, compassionate and all embracing, making the necessary trade-offs with a great sense of discernment while expanding the seamless opportunities making the most of the unimaginable possible..
There is a sense of urgency to gear the young minds, creating a proudly South African band of scientists, ethically binding and deeply conscious of their African heritage, African wisdom and traditional knowledge while being able to blend this with cutting edge scientific paradigm needed to take not just SA but the whole of the continent out of the current state of limbo.
In conclusion I would like to share Manuel Castelles view on some of these issues. He believes in the importance of the
‘Creation of a self-programming, secure and flexible personalities. rooted in basic values, of compassion, the good old ones, that keep us humane, tolerant…and flexible so that we are not rigid, cracking at every tweak, splintering away into smithereens No… flexible like a bamboo, being able to sway and sway not crack at a wingy tweak like the stock market… … Manuel Castelles Prof. of Sociology, University of Berkely)
If we are serious about real transformation in this country.. I believe we need to work towards creating self programming capabilities of our younger generation, beginning with mother tongue teaching in early childhood learning…creating a sense of wonderment, a sense of enquiry into nature, into the web of life, into the creation of self identity, creating a sense of self being able to transcend self limiting boundaries, ever blossoming into a seamless potentialities offering local solutions for local problems while creating global excellence.
© 2005
I thank you
Nirmala Nair - 20 May, 2005
Cape Town (Private circulation)
