Advertisement

Mother tongue education and inequality

Caught in a reactive mode against the state’s gradualist assimilationist policies, the advocates for Chinese- and Tamil-medium schools have largely been defending mother tongue education as a minority’s right, rather than engaging its critics on how multilingualism may address inequality and serve as a national strategy in promoting integration.

Ethnic tongue or cradle tongue?

Before we go further, it must be clarified that the term 'mother tongue' may mean 'ethnic tongue', the language one’s ancestors spoke or 'cradle tongue'/'home language', the language one learns from birth at home, which may often become the person’s 'first language'.

The multiple meanings of the term 'mother tongue' have great bearing on the policy debates. The right to speak and advance one’s ethnic tongue is about the right to cultural identity. The right to learn in one’s cradle tongue/home language is about the right and access to have quality education.

One is about cultural right, while the other is about socio-economic right.

As both 'ethnic tongue' or 'cradle tongue' may be the same for the vast majority of Malaysians, the debates often ignore the exceptional groups, for example, the Malaysians who learn and speak English from cradle years, but have not a single drop of English blood; or non-Malay natives who live far away from their inland community and speak Malay in their urban home.

In this article, unless otherwise specified, 'mother tongue' is used to mean 'cradle tongue/home language'.

English and Malay are mother tongues too

As a matter of fact, many – both the advocates and critics of the mother tongue education – have forgotten that English is a mother tongue for many Malaysians, especially those from middle-upper background.

And if mother tongue assists learning, then English-speaking kids have every right to be educatedin English-medium schools, and the call for restoring 'mother tongue education in English' must be supported by the Chinese and Tamil educationists, if they are congruent.

The same happens with the Malay language, whose role as the mother tongue for Malay-speaking Malaysians was almost forgotten by its advocates in their zeal to make it the sole common language for all Malaysians.

The idiom of 'mother tongue education' for Malay-medium schools was only revived with theopposition to the Teaching and Learning Mathematics and Science in English (PPSMI). http://

www.drkhir.com/2008/12/kembalikan-matematik-dan-sains-kepada.html

The Malay opponents tothe policy even joined forces with the Chinese and Tamil education lobbies to form a united front in defending mother tongue education.

Recognising Malay and English as mother tongues help us to recognise the real stakeholders in the debate on multi-stream education.

Notwithstanding the high degree of overlapping, the stakeholders here are Malay speakers, Chinese speakers, Tamil speakers, English speakers, speakers of various native and non-native tongues, not Malay, Chinese, Indians, Sabahans, Sarawakians and others.

Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim, the chairperson of Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) whichsupports strongly PPSMI, is an ethnic Malay. But she cannot represent the interest of Malays in Gerakan Mansuhkan PPSMI (GMP) http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2011/11/03/page-malays-lose- most-from-scrapping-of-ppsmi/, and neither can they represent her interest. The same goes for her colleagues in PAGE and their co-ethnics in Dong Jiao Zong and Tamil Foundation.

Chauvinism?

The divergence of ethnic tongue and one’s language preference in education policy is a positive development. The emergence of cross-cutting cleavages http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/opinion/wong-chin-huat/article/malaysias-trouble-overly-or-inadequately-diverse here helps us to see things clearer.

The call for mother tongue education – called dismissively as 'vernacular education' in the old lingo – is therefore not an expression of chauvinism in itself.

When a language is not dominant enough to be imposed on others, its role as mother tongue for its native speakers is commonly highlighted. But when it becomes dominant enough, then its speakers and advocates may call for its expansion at the expense of other mother tongues.

In that sense, Chinese and Tamils resisting the imposition of Malay as the single medium of instruction in education is not chauvinistic.

But, anyone running down the Malay language as globally inferior to English or Chinese and therefore not worthy of learning, like anyone insisting loyal Malaysians should habitually speak only Malay and not Cantonese, Malayalam, Bidayuh, Dusun or Minangkabau, would be chauvinistic.

Does mother tongue education reduce inequality?

Instead of playing a labelling game, the debate on mother tongue education and multi-stream education should focus on two legitimate concerns: equality and integration, which are critical to hold together a diverse nation.

Specifically, there are at least three questions related to equality and medium of instruction in education.

First, should everyone be entitled to learn in and advance one’s preferred language (which could be the ethnic tongue and not cradle tongue)?

Second, will learning in one’s mother tongue reduce inequality through improvement in access to and quality in education?

Third, since different languages have different market values, will linguistic options in schooling produce school-leavers with varied employability, hence, exacerbating inequalities across different linguistic communities?

The first question is the old debate on cultural rights, whereby some believe immigrants cannot expect to be treated as equal to natives or settlers.

The third question poses the fundamentalchallenge to multiculturalism: diversity will inevitably bring about some inequality which in turn undermines social cohesion. How should the balance be struck?

Here, I would only attempt to explore the second question. Does the mother tongue education empower students who do not speak the dominant language? Phrased differently, does one get disadvantaged to learn in an unfamiliar language?

Two counter points are commonly raised.

First, many who went to the English-medium schools never had English-speaking parents and their families could not afford bilingual home tuition. They nevertheless survived and excelled. And they thanked their parents for putting them through the challenge. (Some readers would be nodding their heads by now.)

Second, many foreign workers picked up local languages within months of their working in Malaysia. If there is a will, there is a way.

The first argument is flawed because of “self-selection bias”. We do read about the testimonies of the successful ones. But what about those who maladapted to it? To begin with, their English would probably be too poor to write publishable “letters to editors” to tell their plight.

The second argument does not hit the nail on the head either: foreign workers are adults and they may have benefited from mother-tongue education.

It also misses another important difference: most foreign workers learn enough in local languages for daily and practical use, but can they express sophisticated ideas, articulate their rights and advance their interests?

After all, modern education is about human flourishing so that individuals can actualise their potential, not just fulfilling the need of job market.

Policy debates require rigorous research and reasoning as the basis, not anecdotal evidences or even so-called “conventional wisdom”, from the view point of a self-selected pool of winners.

Backed by research from different parts of the world, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) http://www.unesco.org/education/education_today/ed_today6.pdf takes an unequivocal position in:

1. Promoting education in the mother tongue to improve the quality of education.

2. Encouraging bilingual and/or multilingual education at all levels of schooling as a means of furthering social and gender equality and a as a key part of linguistically diverse societies.

3. Pushing languages as a central part of inter-cultural education.

Stop stigmatising, start debating

Does this sum up the debates on mother tongue education and equality in Malaysia? Of course not.

For one, many native languages are not developed enough to be taught as a subject in school, let alone function as a medium of instruction for some basic subjects. Hence, many native Malaysians have been denied the benefit of better education access and quality through mother tongue education, at least in early years.

The degree of multilingualism – does it require different schools? – is another big question. In fact, the current discourse of Chinese education groups is gravely inadequate to reconcile with the schools’s unintended success in attracting, up to 13% of student enrolment, non-native speakers.

We need more debate. The first thing to start is to stop stigmatising mother tongue education and recognising its merit in reducing inequality – which undermines national integration inherently – while examining its shortcomings. – August 24, 2014.