Language-in-education policies – Managing the Multilingualism of learners in the 21st century (original) (raw)

For many South Africans English has become symbolic of education, affluence, internationalism and freedom (see e.g. Nomlomo 2004; Sigcau 2004 and Heugh 2007). It is regarded as serving not only the nation in promoting public and cross-cultural communication, but even more so the individual, as the golden key to upward socio-economic mobility. Those who at this point in time have acceptable levels of proficiency in English, certainly do benefit from it. For this reason, the conviction prevails that all South African learners should be allowed equal and sufficient opportunities to attain an enabling level of English proficiency. The reality, however, is that comparatively few South African learners have been afforded such access. A consequence of the above scenario is that whole generations of learners are attempting to make their way through the schooling system without a useful level of proficiency in the medium of instruction (MoI). Ultimately, the low level of English L2 proficiency learners in this situation acquire fails to unlock the door to the desired upward socioeconomic mobility (Alexander 2012; Krugel and Fourie 2014). In addition, there is an ongoing debate about the new forms of English developing in postcolonial contexts as a result of contact with various indigenous languages. The legitimacy of these variant forms and the desirability (or not) of trying to uphold Anglo norms in education through the medium of English (cf. Pennycook 1995), are often contested. This chapter will not engage in the disputes on which Englishes should be endorsed as illustrative of high proficiency and which not. It provides an overview of the development of the Language in Education Policy with special attention to a new dispensation, the implementation of which started after 1994. It also reflects on conditions that have inhibited the de facto implementation of improved forms of maintenance bilingual education. It presents a sociolinguistic profile of the current distribution of South African languages and then gives a developmental history of past and recent South African language-in-education policies (LiEPs). Referring also to the power of English, the chapter discusses attitudes towards English as a MoI in South African schools and weighs arguments for and against mother tongue education (MTE) versus bilingual education as two of the proposed solutions to the problem of selecting MoIs in South Africa. In conclusion, the chapter presents suggestions developed in Perold (2011) for going beyond the idealisations contained in the 1997 Language in Education Policy, to actually achieving its aims of providing enabling education for all.