Mother Tongue Education in Sierra Leone

By Dr. Abou Bai-Sheka, Coquitlam, Canada.

The history of literacy in the mother tongues of the people of Sierra Leone dates as far back as the nineteenth century. Religious organizations first made attempts to use them as media of teaching in the first three classes in their primary schools. The decision to make the children of their Christian converts literate in their mother tongues was to enable them to read the Holy Bible in the tongues most predominantly spoken in their areas of operation.

The introduction of the mother tongues as media of instruction in the mission schools was received with joy by Christian parents in the country. The missionaries knew that literacy in the mother tongues would not only help their children understand their subjects better and much quicker, but it would also add respectability and credibility to their mother-tongues both at national and international levels.

The colonial British colonialists did not treat with levity the use of mother-tongues as media of instruction, but as their mother tongue was English, and because they wanted to communicate freely with their subjects, the use of English was made compulsory in the schools, and in all state functions. And to further make this possible, job opportunities were created for people literate in English.

Literacy in this language (English) and the ability to communicate intelligently and intelligibly in it was regarded as the mark of the civilized and educated man (or woman). Literacy in English also conferred a kind of immunity from arbitrary arrests, payment of local tax and other dues, and fines for infringement of certain customs and cultural offences. People literate in English were called “Opotho” which is derived from the word “Portuguese”, as they (the Portuguese) were the first Europeans known to pre-colonial Sierra Leoneans.

The religious organizations had tried to satisfy the spiritual needs of their Christian converts, but not their physical needs, as the education they gave to the children of their converts failed to prepare them for jobs in the Civil Service. Again, there was a wide socio-economic margin between graduates of government and mission schools. Salaries paid by religious organizations to their employees were incomparable to those paid to civil servants.

Parents who had enthusiastically supported the use of mother-tongues as media of of teaching in the mission schools began to have a change of heart, and started to ask whether there was wisdom in continuing to keep their children in the mission schools which gave only the kind of education suited for mission jobs and not for jobs in the civil service and the commercial sector of the country. They threatened to remove their children from the mission schools if subjects that could lead to mobility on the social ladder were not included in their school curriculum.

Importance of mother tongue literacy
The sensuality and tenderness of the mother-child relationship which is the foundation of a primary family is under stress in the developing countries due to the western life style. Such a relationship of fondness, trust and joy can be cultivated only through a language which the mother can competently handle in sharing emotions and unraveling the mysteries of the physical world with which the child comes in increasing contact.

Language use has a parallel in toilet training. As Germaine Greer, in her book “Sex and destiny : The politics of human fertility “ says, the anatomically inefficient and position-wise uncomfortable procedure of defecation on a throne in North America “is almost as if they reduced infants to humiliating dependency upon adults, for they have to be helped on to the porcelain pedestal and off again “. The use of a standard, a taught mother tongue, or a language which promises social and economic gratification in a later stage of life in place of the mother tongue is to make the child dependent not only on an adult world, but a world manipulated by a limited elite.

The Sierra Leone Government, and the Ministry of Education, for that matter, accepted the principle emphasized by UNESCO over the years, that the language best known and understood by the child on his entry into school life is the most effective medium of instruction in the preliminary stage of his school education. Linguists agree that a man’s native speech is almost like his shadow, inseparable from his personality, hence in all education prominence should be given to training in the exact and free use of the mother-tongue.

In the report of the Phelps Stokes commission, it is stated: “The use of the language of the child was one of the chief means of preserving whatever was good in native customs, ideas and ideals, therefore preserving self-respect."

In the United Kingdom one can label a school subject “English”, and know that it is about communication, since English is the only language they have at their disposal for communication purposes. Similarly, if they label a school subject “Latin”, they know that although Latin is another language, it is no longer used for purposes of communication, and hence will be a content subject, a study of a language, rather than a practical approach to communication through that language. But the situation in Sierra Leone is not so clearcut.

Many languages are used for communication, in different places and on different levels : Temne with the family, Krio on the street, Arabic in the mosque and English in the office; Kissi with the family, Mende with friends and in the market, English at school; Kono with the family, Krio at work and in the market, English in the newspapers and on the radio. The permutations are endless, and it is to the credit of every Sierra Leonean that he can use so many languages, switching from one to another with amazing ease.

Yet in school he is only allowed one official slot for developing his communicative purposes in his everyday life. What is more, for many children, in far-flung villages where even newspapers rarely reach, English is perhaps only a little less unlikely to figure in their lives as a vehicle of communication than Latin is for the British child. This fact is all too sadly reflected in the way English is tested in the Selective Entrance Examination, and, subsequently, the way it is taught in preparation for the Selective Entrance, as a dead language to be studied and admired, rather than as a living one to be put to practical everyday use for communication purposes.

To attempt to teach English without teaching the other languages used for communication in Sierra Leone is like trying to teach carpentry by giving lessons on planing and smoothing but pretending that sawing is not really important, or comes naturally anyway, and therefore not worth including on the syllabus. It is like teaching an artist about colour and texture, but omitting to mention form and line. It is like teaching a British child how to read in English, but paying no heed to developing his speaking, listening or writing abilities. It is concentration on a part at the expense of the whole.

The issue of a Sierra Leonean Language Policy is a very complex one, and although it is broadly defined national policy that the indigenous/Sierra Leonean languages be used in all facets of education, only when further research is done and more thorough attempts made to implement that policy, will it be possible to define it in more precise terms and outline a detailed and comprehensive national strategy for its implementation.

Problems involved and Background Information
The advent of the 6-3-3-4 implementation date has seen the introduction of four of our indigenous languages in our schools’ curriculum but not without considerable scepticism from some educationists, parents and senior citizens. The fact remains however that for once status, integrity and recognition are being given to our local languages and the yoke of inferiority and denigration is being lifted from our people for whom this new dimension in our Educational system has considerable benefits.

Krio, particularly, has been the object of serious study in the recent past but there seems to be some unexpressed apprehensions among curriculum planners and many other Sierra Leoneans as to whether its incorporation in the curriculum would be of any value at all. Misleading notions have long been entertained and spread around, even by those from whom much is expected, that if our pupils are encouraged to use Krio, their chances of achieving a worthwhile competence in English would be severely hindered.

This notion even seemed to have been institutionalized so much that pupils were penalized and at times corporally, if they were caught using this “forbidden” language. The avoidance of Krio in some schools (or institutions) had become pathological.

There has occurred within the Sierra Leone context over the years a linguistic demotion of indigenous languages, Krio in particular. What we are observing now is a wholesome process of rehabilitation. The move is bold and adventurous one that calls for a whole lot of attitudinal change.

At this time, as history is being made in our educational system, we must remember that a new mandate is being given to our teachers to train our pupils primarily in their L1 (mother tongue) and ultimately in one other of the four local languages -Krio, Mende, Temne and Limba- chosen for education.

This is essentially a move towards making them even more functional in their L1 and in the final analysis, their local languages. However, the ultimate drawback or handicap is the complete lack of literacy materials for the implementation of the four local languages in our educational system.

What we need
What we need in order to get to grips with the "languages for education" problem is a center for all Sierra Leonean languages (including endangered languages) which will both carry out research into the indigenous languages, their role, structure and usage, and apply the findings of that research to the educational system in Sierra Leone. Such a center would ideally have two main functions :

 an academic function, involving research into and teaching of Sierra Leonean languages, and the production of scholarly works based on that research. Terms of reference might be expanded to cover all languages used for communication purposes in Sierra Leone, and not just the indigenous ones.

 a resource function, providing literacy materials such as readers, books on grammar, dictionaries, flash cards, work-books, etc. and consultancy services for those educational institutions and agencies involved in the teaching of indigenous languages, e. g. adult literacy projects; the Institute of Education’s Curriculum Development Unit, etc.

 a training function, producing teachers trained and qualified to teach a variety of Sierra Leonean languages. In the first instance, the best of these would go to the teachers’ training colleges and work in the language arts departments to help produce primary teachers, who themselves would thus be suitably trained and qualified in turn to teach indigenous languages and through the medium of indigenous languages in the primary schools.

English and mother tongues
Even those concerned with English teaching at the primary level, it is impossible, especially at that level of the education system, to divorce concern with English from concern with the indigenous Sierra Leonean languages. The two are so inextricably interrelated that involvement with the former must inevitably lead to involvement with the latter. For most Western Area inhabitants, it(English) is a second language after Krio. For many in the provinces, it is a third language after their mother-tongue and the common language of the area they are living in. For some who also learn Arabic at school and use it for religious purposes, English becomes a fourth language in term of its usefulness to their daily lives.

Yet no recognition is given to these varying linguistic demands upon the average polyglot Sierra Leonean in the official school syllabus until very recently. Officially, no attention is paid to the indigenous languages in the education system, and any unofficial use made of them in the classroom is more often than not as a last resort, when English cannot be used, as in Class 1, or when English breaks down as a medium of communication in later classes.

And that, you may feel, is just how it should be. After all, we want our children to learn English, good English. That is what will improve their chances in the world. That is what they go to school for. And why should the schools spend valuable time on teaching languages the children already know and use at home and in the street, when they could be spending that time on teaching more English?

The answer is, quite simply, that the judicious use of Sierra Leonean languages in the primary school can only serve to improve the teaching of English at that level.Let’s ask ourselves two very basic questions about language teaching in primary schools, namely :
WHAT are we teaching when we teach “language”?
HOW can we teach it best ?

In attempting to answer these questions, we will go a long way towards seeing that not only is it impossible to talk of English divorced from the context of other Sierra Leonean languages, but also that it is impossible to effectively teach English out of the context of other Sierra Leonean languages.

What are we teaching ?
“Language Arts”, “English Activity”, “E.S.P. & S.”, “Group Reading” - all these labels of the primary school timetable tend to obscure the central issue about language teaching in the primary school.They are parts of the whole which sometimes blind us to the whole itself. They are means which must not be mistaken for ends. For what we are basically trying to teach our children at this level is communication, a set of communication skills for use in daily life, and language is merely the tool which aids communication.

In order to correct the imbalance, what the learners need is not an English syllabus, nor an additional indigenous language, but a communication skills syllabus. This would integrate all the languages the Sierra Leonean in different parts of the country has at his disposal, and aim at training children in using English for all the real-life communicative activities they need English for; Krio for all the real-life communicative activities they need Krio for; Temne for all the real-life communicative activities they need Temne for etc, etc.

Such a syllabus would have to be based on a communicative needs profile of Sierra Leoneans in different parts of the country, a profile which would establish where, when and with whom English and each of the indigenous languages is used in real-life communication situations. By posing a few well-chosen questions to the right people, it is possible to establish what needs a child is likely to have in adult or in post-school life for each of the different Sierra Leonean languages, e.g. English for official business, like reading and letter-writing and personal correspondence; Krio for trade and discussions with Freetown officials; Mende for informal use with family and friends etc.

Indeed, the English Panel working with the National Curriculum Committee in Sierra Leone has already got off to a modest start in the compilation of such a set of communicative needs profiles, by attempting to establish the precise needs for English through questionnaires distributed to inspectors and headteachers in various parts of the country. The results of even this partial survey were illuminating, and three basic areas of Sierra Leoneans’scommunicative needs profile for English defined themselves broadly as :

a. English for further education at secondary or tertiary level in an English -medium educational context.

b-English for functioning as a citizen of a country in which English is the recognized official language.

c-English as a medium of international communication with people from other countries.

Yet the Sierra Leonean has, in the first two contexts at least, communicative needs for other languages besides English. He cannot function as a citizen of Sierra Leone without learning about the heritage of his own indigenous languages. A communicative needs profile of the average Sierra Leonean would reveal a rich and intricate pattern of language use. To establish such a profile would involve lengthy surveys and painstaking analysis, but would provide a rewarding, accurate and worthwhile basis on which to build communication development work in the primary school.

To deprive a child of the opportunity of developing his communicative abilities in his own mother tongue is to deprive him of a very basic need indeed. True, in his pre-school years he learns the rudimentaries of communication in his mother tongue and or the common tongue of the area he lives in. He has it in order to survive.

But his oracy must be fostered and developed in his first year or two at school before literacy is even approached. Through development of the use of his mother tongue, a child learns not only how to communicate efficiently, but also how to think. It is now an undisputed fact that IQ is almost the same thing as language ability in its mother tongue variety. If we cease to develop that language ability at a crucial age, what do we do to a child’s intellectual potential?

Thought and communication are achieved through language. Once the child has become a reasonably efficient thinker and communicator in one language, it is normally a fairly simple job to offer him an alternative language or two to do his thinking and communicating in, especially if he sees a point in using these alternative languages. There is a great desire in educational circles in Sierra Leone at present that English should be seen as a living language, a purposeful communication tool which will be of use to children in their everyday lives and that it should be treated in the proper context as one of the several communication tool the Sierra Leonean should have at his disposal.

Motivation comes from seeing a point in reaching your objective. If children, along with their teachers and parents see the point, see the validity of English in an overall Sierra Leonean context relevant to their own experience of languages, then standards can only improve.

How should we teach it?
Even if we accept that English is only a part, albeit an important part, of what we are teaching at primary level under the name of “language”, we are still with the problem of how best to teach it. And again, the answer lies in sensible, judicious use of the indigenous Sierra Leonean languages.

The key to successful communication is confidence. If we think of the people we know who are really clear, efficient communicators, then they are usually people with confidence in themselves and confidence in what they have to say. It follows that the best way to develop communicative abilities in English or any other language, is through a gradual process of confidence-building.

Even a cursory look at the present language situation in the primary school reveals a situation which is more confusion-inducing than confidence-building. At the same time as the child is undergoing the home to school shift, he is expected to endure a further trauma of mother tongue to English.

Not only is he expected to learn to read and write as fast as any British child, who has been exposed to English and to the formal educational environment all his life, but he is also expected to learn these skills in a totally alien language. His own language, in which he has so far formed his personality and any confidence he might have, is suddenly relegated to an inferior position. It is a tool to be used in capturing English. It is a means of achieving a superior end, the mastery of English. It has little worth in its own right. Faced with such a situation, what child can retain or develop the confidence necessary for effective communication?

The only way to establish confidence is to build on what the child has; to develop his communication skills in the language he knows, and then show him how he can transfer that to a language he does not know. Mother tongue oracy must be fully developed before foreign language oracy is attempted. Literacy is more easily achieved in a language the child is orally comfortable with, than in one in which he struggles to pronounce at the same time as he struggles to read. If a child can feel confident in himself as a communicator in his mother tongue, then he can more easily be taught to transfer his abilities to a foreign one. “From known to new” is an old methodological adage, and a very sound one with an obvious point.

The initial classes of primary school might therefore be seen as a process of confidence-building in communicative abilities in the mother tongue; the middle years as a process of transferring these abilities from mother tongue to foreign language; the final years a consolidation and development of the foreign language learning .

To counter any objections that this type of pattern leaves the serious introduction of English too late in the curriculum, recent research tends to show that in countries where English in introduced later in the curriculum and more selectively, the standards of competence in English are generally higher. After all, this gives a child more time to develop his language abilities in his mother tongue and establish a firm basis of communication skills

But even in the upper classes of the primary cycle, the mother and/or common tongue still has a vital role to play in its relationship with English. It can, quite simply, serve to make the teaching of English more meaningful at every level.The so-called “direct method”, which swept through language teaching circles a few years ago, is fine with multi-lingual classes where no language apart from the one being taught can be regarded as common to all students in the class.

But it is totally out of place in a Sierra Leonean classroom, where a common tongue can always be found, although that common tongue might differ from Bo to Freetown, from Port Loko to Kabala. It would, in fact, be very foolish not to make full use of translation methods when teaching English in a situation where a common tongue exists. Recent trends in English language teaching circles would certainly support this common-sense view, since the grammar and translation approach seems to be coming back into vogue again.

When presenting new language items to a class, teachers can mime, draw pictures, make up sentences, till they are blue in the face. It is all very interesting. It is also very tiring, very time-consuming, and not always wholly effective. The best test a teacher can administer on whether his presentation has been understood or not is to ask the class to translate into their mother or common tongue the item(s) he has just presented. The quickest, most economical and effective method of presentation he always has at his disposal is to translate the new item(s) into their mother or common tongue for the class.

At the practice stage of any lesson, whether it is practice in writing or speaking, the teacher can draw on the mother or common tongue for support in problems of language interference. When children made errors in their use of English, in the grammar, the pronunciation, vocabulary usage, these can often be traced to the structural, phonological or semantic patterns of their own mother tongues.

By drawing the children’s attention to this fact, to the source of their errors, rather than just marking them wrong or commenting on their general "stupidity", the teacher is actively helping them to learn, both about their own language and about English (or any other foreign language like French).

“We learn from our mistakes” is another old adage that proves amazingly true in the language classroom, provided our mistakes are explained to us. A good teacher, or set of materials, will even anticipate the type of mistakes that are likely to be made, given the language background of the particular students. And in the reading lesson, where there is often so much “barking at print” instead of real understanding of the written word, would the odd passage of translation back into the mother or common tongue not be more meaningful than the eternal reading aloud or putting of new words into sentences?

If a child can translate a passage of English into his own tongue, then it is a sign that he understands the meaning of that passage. The ability to read that same passage aloud, or even to answer questions on it, is nowhere near as good an indicator of comprehension. You could, for example, given a little help, be trained to read the following sentence aloud :

The gooks gobbledeyed in a thrut when they shoogled the gurnitur.
You could even, I am sure, if asked the question :
What did the gooks do?, furnish the answers :
They gobbledeyed in a thrut.
or, to the even more probing :
Why did they gobbledey in a thrut?
respond with :
Because they shoogled the gurnitur.
But would any of that prove understanding of the original sentence ?
If, however, I asked you to translate that sentence into Krio, or Temne, or Mende, or Limba, you would quite simply have to understand the sentence before you could perform the exercise.

The indigenous Sierra Leonean languages are vital to the effective teaching of English at primary level and French at secondary level. They provide English with a living context to be taught in; they provide the child with a background of communication skills which can be drawn on when learning English; they provide the teacher with a methodological tool which can be used to make English more meaningful to the child. The official recognition of their use and usefulness in the primary curriculum would go a long way towards improving standards in English competence. Not that present standards are, to my mind, anything to be deplored. On the contrary, the linguistic abilities of the Sierra Leonean child never cease to amaze us-tiny tots who can handle two or three indigenous languages, and then produce English sentences they have learned.

*Dr. Abou Bai-Sheka (photo) taught Linguistics and French at the University of Sierra Leone for many years. He now lives and works in Canada.