INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES AS MODES OF INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 

A man who cannot speak his native language is a cultural alien; and as such, he cannot be socialized into his people’s culture. Language, we know, belongs to the non-material aspect of culture. So, idioms and proverbs, which are inherent in a language, help to mould the personalities of young people within a cultural setting where the language is spoken.

So, a man who cannot speak his native language is not moored to his people’s culture. He is an outsider in his own cultural milieu. 

However, a young person’s mastery of his native tongue will enhance his cognitive ability and his understanding of his immediate natural environment. Studies carried out by scholars show the advantages of teaching school children in their mother tongues during their formative years.

Those studies show that when school children are taught in their native languages they will understand complex concepts and phenomena, easily. And the experiments carried out in Yoruba land by scholars in the area of education psychology have proved that kids taught in Yoruba language in the southwest of Nigeria performed exceedingly well. The results of those studies have fuelled the agitation for the adoption of the educational policy that stipulates that school children should be taught in their native tongues.

But that proposed educational policy has its disadvantages, too. Although it is being romanticized by advocates of the use of indigenous languages as modes of instruction in our schools, it has numerous downsides, which demand dispassionate evaluation and dissection.

Are all Nigerian languages so developed that they have words for terms used in all specialized areas of learning? And do dialects in a language, such as Igbo, have a common orthography? The answers to these questions are categorical No. 

Therefore, imparting knowledge to school children, who speak different dialects of a language, will be a difficult task for a teacher, as the children will find the teacher’s teaching unintelligible. For example, some Igbo people cannot understand Igbo language dialects but their own dialect. So it can be seen that most of our native languages are inadequate as modes of transmission of knowledge to school children.

Again, a public or private primary school located in a cosmopolitan city will have a population of pupils that is composed of diverse ethnic backgrounds. Such a school can be called a mini-Nigeria because most of our ethnic groups are represented there. Making a choice regarding the language that will be used to teach the school children in the school will pose an insurmountable problem to the school administrators.

More so, the school teachers require training in the indigenous languages to enhance their proficiency in the use of those languages for pedagogy. Giving them the fundamental training in native languages will cost our government a stupendous amount of money. At this juncture in our national life, will it be a judicious decision to use money meant for the execution of infrastructural projects to organize training workshops in languages for teachers?

Chiedu Uche Okoye, 

Uruowulu-Obosi 

Anambra State