LALIT ADDRESSED A LETTER TO THE NEW MINISTER OF EDUCATION ON THE NECESSITY OF BOLD AND URGENT REFORMS OF THE SYSTEM
04.01.2025
Yesterday two LALIT members, Alain Ah Vee and Cindy Clelie handed a letter to Hon. Mahend Gungapersad, through his secretary at MITD House, Phoenix. LALIT called on the MInister for urgent and bold reforms taking into consideration of the need for the introduction of Kreol language as medium of instruction.
Here is the content of the letter.
To Minister of Education and Human Resource
Honourable Mahend GUNGAPERSAD
Level 3, MITD House,
Phoenix.
2nd January 2025
Dear Sir,
We welcome your initiative as new Minister of Education and Human Resource to organise an “Assise de l’Education” in April 2025 and to already have started meeting stakeholders in the sector. The Mauritian education system needs urgent and bold reforms, and the open-mindedness and determination you have shown is necessary for such changes.
As you probably know LALIT has been involved for many years in promoting an education system that aims at the full development of all our children. We know that this is your aim, too.
However, we feel that the colonial system that took its present form around Independence in 1968, even with free secondary education then being introduced following the May ’75 student revolt, is not only failing to allow children to develop, but is still actually doing harm to all our children. We refer to the harm done by the suppression in schools of the mother tongue.
So, it is this issue – the suppression of the mother tongue in school – that we propose become “central” to the “Assise de l’Education”.
It should be central in any rational, enlightened, modern language policy. As you subtly but strongly pointed out at your press conference (defimedia.info, 23 December 2024) on the question of medium of instruction that “Nu bizin get enn ku kimanyer zordi nu bizin ena enn lot fason rezone pu ki nu bann zanfan nu anseyn zot dan enn langaz ki koresponn a zot bezwin.” In addition, there is now consensus that using the language of the child to teach Mauritian children literacy corresponds to their right to freedom of expression and to their right to learn.
In LALIT, for the first half of our nearly 50 years of work on language policy, we put emphasis on the mother tongue for literacy and numeracy, for better examination results and for children from working class and poorer backgrounds. However, about 25 years ago, we realized with some horror, that there is a much deeper reason for using the mother tongue as medium than mere measurable “educational outcomes”: we came to the realization, during a LALIT brainstorming session on “human language”, that children, like us adults, do their “thinking” in the mother tongue. Language is our uniquely human way of actually doing our “thinking”. Our mother tongue is our means of representing in our heads, quite naturally, all the information from the outside. It is also important for representing inside our heads all the feelings we have in our hearts, and all the thoughts we have with other parts of our brains. It is what makes us human. There is a wonderful short talk on what exactly human language is, in evolutionary terms, by Prof. Derek Bickerton, the world’s leading thinker on this (link included below).
Children develop these “thinking” skills and develop their cognition in the mother tongue. It is a natural process. When the mother tongue, the natural language of the children – used in the playground, in the minibus, at the dispensary, on the playing field, and, in short, everywhere in the Republic – is suppressed in school, we realized it means that children – not just children with learning difficulties, or socially disadvantaged children, but all children – are harmed in their natural cognitive development. Their thinking ability, their ability to reason, to analyse scientifically, to “sakenn fer so lespri travay”, to play with the abstract concepts of mathematics and philosophy and to understand causality – that happens quite naturally in the mother tongue is being interfered with by the education system.
The association Ledikasyon pu Travayer (LPT) put this to the test in an “International Hearing into the Harm Done to Children by the Suppression of the Mother Tongue in Schools” held in 2009. The Report put out by the international “jury” put it this way in its “findings”: the suppression of the mother tongue does not just do emotional and cultural harm to all children, but also intellectual and cognitive harm. – In the Report it explains that cognitive harm means that children (including those who do “well” in examinations or even future laureates) rely on rote learning instead of on understanding. This prevents proper cognitive development for all children. Some will end up being unable to read-and-write after eleven years of school, five hours a day. Others will become experts in committing texts to memory, and then regurgitating them. And emotional harm means children’s emotions are unduly repressed. The symptoms are what concern people; they deplore an increase in children’s “violence”. We are all witnesses to verbal abuse amongst peer groups in buses, at stations, at home, in the road, and in schools. The reasons why are clear. Their parents are forced by law to send them to school until they are 16 years old, and in school their mother tongue is suppressed.
In most people’s estimation, after six years of formal education some 35% to 40% children cannot read nor write in any language using the UNESCO simple definition, while those shine at school, shine, to an alarming extent, by having relied upon rote-learning, which later compromises their efficient reasoning faculties, especially while dealing with abstract concepts.
In 2015, the IMF and World Bank have drawn attention to Mauritius’ poor rating for reading with comprehension on the comparative studies Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) done by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) on 15 year olds in 75 countries (half of them OECD, half “partner countries”). Mauritius comes out only ... 56th out of the 75 countries compared.
So, even though the education sector is allocated among one the highest budgets of all Ministries, and the system has relatively good school infrastructures in all regions of the Republic, as well as educators who are well-trained, in most regards, at all levels of the system, the outcome is not good.
Since your coming into office there have been numerous comments in the media highlighting problems in the education system and proposing remedies. However, while the question of the number of credits for admission to Lower Six, the issue of the replacement of the failed Extended Programme by a better formula, the concern over the use of social media and even cell phones by young children in school, are important issues, there has been no serious debate on perhaps the main cause of the short-comings of the system and, importantly, of the harm being done to children by the education system, itself.
The harm done in schools clearly must be addressed, and addressed immediately, in particular because schooling is compulsory until the age of 16. This means children are forced to submit to an education system that in 2009 was found to be “harmful”. All this to say, again, that we appreciate your having brought up the issue that many others ignore consciously.
Most commentators scrupulously avoid mentioning the question of the harmful language policy that has been, and is still being, applied in all public schools. The policy suppresses the mother tongue of more than 90% of the people, Mauritian Kreol, which is also, importantly the vernacular. This archaic, retrograde and proven-to-be-harmful language policy is a legacy of our colonisation. Our consistent engagement in LALIT in efforts to change the education system, specially the use of a foreign language like English as medium of instruction, forms part of our general on-going struggle for decolonisation, to free our territory from all forms of occupation like the US-UK military illegal occupation and colonisation of Diego-Chagos, so as to effectively complete our decolonisation process.
In LALIT we are in favour of a mother tongue based multilingual education.
We favour the introduction of dual medium Kreol-and-English – for all texts, homework and examinations – starting with two content subjects, science and mathematics, and working up from Grade I to the end of Secondary schooling, and beyond.
We believe that the refusal to use the richness of the mother tongue as medium of instruction is at the heart of the failure of our present education system.
Furthermore the use of the mother tongue as medium is the necessary scaffolding to attain high level multi-lingualism. Much research and educational practice has shown this. We refer to the longitudinal studies of the late Prof. Jim Cummins, educationalist. And, in our modern world knowing several languages well through high level knowledge of one’s first language, is an advantage and the late Prof. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, the eminent linguist noted how bi-lingual and multilingual children have more innovative minds. In a lecture made at the Port Louis Municipal in 2002, organised by LPT, she explained that research shows that high level bilinguals do better than monolinguals in many different tests. They are cognitively more flexible, they are better at divergent thinking, that is they can see many solutions to one problem and they learn other languages faster and better.
As you know, the use of the mother tongue to teach basic literacy and acquire knowledge and attain high level multilingualism is promoted by UNESCO and by many recognised international institutions.
Since 1953 UNESCO proclaims that “pupils should begin their schooling through the medium of the mother tongue and that the use of the mother tongue be extended to as late a stage in education as possible.”
The Ombudsperson for children in its 2017-2018 report stated that “Within the Mauritian context, I believe that the programme model of mother tongue based bi/multilingual education could be of relevance.” The report also considered that “the use of Kreol as medium of instruction in primary education in the Republic of Mauritius can facilitate the acquisition of the French and English languages and enhance our children’s overall linguistic and academic performance.”
We, and many other Mauritian organisations, have worked on and produced important materials on the use of mother tongue in education based on experience on the ground. So, this is why we are proposing that the question of mother tongue multilingual education be one of the main focal points in all the preparations for the “Assise de l’Education”. A former Minister of Education Dr. Vasant Bunwaree in 2011 at the National Forum on education, in his opening speech, took a firm stand to launch the formal use of Kreol language in schools. This later led to the setting up of the Akademi Kreol Morisien (AKM) and the effective introduction of Kreol as subject in primary schools in 2012. After twelve years of Kreol teaching in primary and secondary education we have now a wide range of experience and important tools necessary for the use of Kreol as medium. Today we have a grammar manual for teachers’ produced by the Akademi Kreol Morisien. The MIE has its own Kreol Department. There are hundreds of teachers qualified to teach Kreol as a subject, and who have mastered writing the language. Thousands of children are already studying Kreol in schools. Furthermore, the Institute for Judicial and Legal Studies has run Courses on Kreol for Court Transcribers whose transcriptions are obviously mainly in Kreol. The University of Mauritius and the Open University both offer various Courses on Kreol.
So we are re-affirming our principled and long standing position to introduce Kreol, starting with Kreol and English, as medium of instruction for the teaching of content subjects beginning with the most abstract first, say Mathematics and Science in all schools. By medium we mean that all the formal explanations in the classrooms, all the textbooks, any assessment and homework, as well as written and oral examinations are in Kreol (or Kreol and English). This new language policy would immediately begin to bring an end the harm being done to all students and pave the way for an inclusive education system that cares for the fulfilment of all our children.
LALIT members have had dozens of meetings over the years with PTA’s in Primary Schools all over the country. We have found that one or two meetings puts their fears at rest. Teachers’ unions are an essential partner in convincing teachers of the advantages for them – in terms of job satisfaction – of the use of the mother tongue. Obviously, some additional training will be necessary for teachers.
We are also including a short list of key documents that support the use of the Kreol mother tongue in schools.
Yours sincerely,
Alain Ah Vee and Cindy Clelie
For LALIT
Main Road, GRNW.
Tel: 5932 9002
List of documents:
- On human Language and Mauritian Kreol by Prof Derek Bickerton - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ujByVEuu8
- executive Summary Hearing LPT 2009: http://www.lalitmauritius.org/modules/documents/files/LalitMauritius-705f2172834666788607efbfca35afb3.pdf
- Program LALIT lor langaz: 2003 [https://www.lalitmauritius.org/modules/documents/files/LalitMauritius-28f0b864598a1291557bed248a998d4e.pdf]
- Programme LALIT on Education 2007: [https://www.lalitmauritius.org/modules/documents/files/LalitMauritius-96da2f590cd7246bbde0051047b0d6f7.pdf]
- Programme LALIT on Education 2019.
- Deklarasyon Komin anfaver medyom Kreol-Angle, 2019.
- Papers from LALIT Colloquium on Written Kreol and Decolonization 2018.
https://www.lalitmauritius.org/en/newsarticle/2161/lalit-open-symposium-alain-ah-vee-on-the-importance-of-written-kreol-in-decolonization-in-kreol/
- Papers from LPT Colloquium on Language 1977, 2001 and 2023.
