Having read a number of articles in the media at the onset of the last rainy season about the poor performance of school pupils in The Gambia in recent years, I feel constrained as a concerned national to offer a couple of creative ideas as to a way-out.
My primary motivation being the simple fact that unless we put our educational house in order, all the other developmental dreams that we habour for the future development of the country in the broad sense of the term (economic, political, social, cultural, industrial and scientific) shall remain but pipe-dreams.
Different theories as to possible causes have been put forward by the authors of these articles. These include poor working conditions for teacher, low wages, lack of sufficient motivation on the part of both pupils and teachers, pupils’ poor command of the English language and the lack of adequate facilities in our basic and secondary educational institutions.
Admittedly, these are legitimate and relevant issues that have to be reckoned with in our search for a lasting solution to the problem, and it is my hope that the powers that be are taking note. In any case, I am of the view that tackling the issue of teachers’ remuneration and working conditions plus equipping schools with adequate facilities should be taken as the first step towards remedying the situation.
This is exactly what Singapore has done decades ago, and the results have since been staggering. In that country, the political will to elevate the teaching profession to the same level as the others was one of their founding father’s strategies in terms of lifting educational standards in their educational institutions. Accordingly, teacher’s salaries were raised to a level that is comparable to the salary scales of similar professions. Added to this, a law was passed that makes it mandatory for all teachers to be graduates in their respective subjects.
Needless to say, at this moment in time, introducing such a policy in The Gambia is clearly unrealistic given the low level of literacy in the country, which is not the same as saying it should not be included in the toolbox of our policy maker for utilization in due course. The immediate consequences of the policy were two-fold. In the first place, teachers’ motivation rose to hitherto unseen heights and pupils’ general performance has likewise risen significantly ever since – not least in natural science subjects. Singaporean pupils have since been “outperforming” their European, Australian, and North American counterparts in natural science subjects according to a number of recent comparative international research studies in this regard.
In respect of pupils’ poor command of the English Language, I must admit that I am not totally in disagreement with Pastor Forbes suggestion in recent months that our schools should go back to the basics in terms of restricting the use of local languages in school yards around the country. Indeed, this recommendation looks harsh on the surface, but I’d argue that it is a matter of the end justifies the means. We would be fooling ourselves as a nation if we think we are proficient in our official language.
My personal opinion on the matter is that Gambians are amongst the former British subjects on our continent who are still very weak in terms of our command of the English language. In fact, the situation has become worst in recent decades, hence the poor performance of our pupils, who have to learn almost everything in a language that they may not be proficient in throughout their basic and secondary education.
Indeed it has not always been like that, as The point pointed out in one of its editorials about half a year ago. But why have standards fallen in recent years? The answers are numerous but one that stands out is our propensity to over-use local languages even in formal educational settings where English would be more appropriate. Skeptics would say: But why English when it is not the mother tongue of over 99% of school pupils? The answer is simple. English has come to stay on our shores as it has been ever since Kombo St. Mary’s area (the area that lies between Banjul and Abuko alias “Toubabubanko” in Mandinka) became the “first” British colonial possession on our vast continent in the year 1783 – seven years before South Africa became the second of its kind on the continent.
Furthermore, English has in the meantime overtaken both French and Spanish as the “choice” lingua franca of the world. Unlike many other countries who have embraced English as theirs while they in due cause have never been part of the empire, we are fortunate that the language has been with us for such a long time so that it should be much easier for us to re-master the language within a short space of time. Our re-mastering of the English language will undoubtedly bring us a lot of benefits as a nation. One of this being an immediate improvement of standards since pupils in our schools have to learn almost all the other subjects in English, due principally to enhanced comprehension of the subject being taught at any given time.
Thirdly, this improvement in our command of the English language would also affect the demand for skillful Gambians professionals both at home and in the wider world in a positive direction. On the whole, this will make it easier for us to interact with ease with the wider world. It is in this regard perhaps important to note that many multinational corporations in the so-called “first world” have in recent years adopted English as their official language – no matter where they have branches in the world.
Therefore nations of the world whose nationals have been recognized as proficient in the language shall have a competitive advantage over all the others – and it is my hope that the Gambia shall soon join this group. That would however not be the case if we were to totally abandon English as a language of instructions in our schools in favour of one of our native languages without a thorough preparation. Instinctively, we would be worse off should we do that overnight having in mind the fact that our command of our official language has been pretty poor in recent years..
Note, I have at no time argued in favour of the permanent exclusion of a new official language from amongst our native languages in the country. Far from it, sooner or later one of our major native languages should join English as a co-official language – thus killing two birds with the same stone. Actually, that should have been done decades ago! I would love to be able to write Mandinka at the same level as English and Danish in the future. In any case, that has to be preceded by thorough preparations of a technical nature on the part of the authorities. South Africa has been doing that since 1994 so that Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans etc. are today co-official languages with English. For the moment, however, we can ill-afford to do completely without English since it has been part of our DNA as a modern nation-state for centuries. In the same vein, abandoning the language at this moment in time without a viable alternative would be tantamount to throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
Last, but not least, it is my considered opinion that authorities at the ministry of education have overlooked one very attractive route towards enhancing the performance of our school pupils for over five decades. That is using Armitage Senior Secondary School as a viable model for similar government boarding schools in each and every region of the country.
Here and there, some of the schools that exist in a particular region could be converted into residential schools. Some of these should specialize exclusively in science and technology. Indeed, the facts on the ground call for this approach for a couple of reasons. Needless to say, most ethnic groups in The Gambia are divided into clans (“Kaabilo” in Mandinka”) with each Kaabilo having a ancestral home. These ancestral homes are typically estates which serve as joint settlements for male members of the clan including their respective wives and children. Some Kaabilos consist of a couple of dozens while others have over a hundred members.
My experience with such settlements is that they constitute one of greatest stumbling blocks that impede the entrenchment of a “culture of book learning” in our society. In the first place, they are typically over-crowded and full of noise from morning to evening due largely to the fact that there are often a large number of small kids among residents. I am sure readers will agree with me that situations like these are far from conducive to book learning – especially in the absence of good role models in this regard.
Further, what is typical in terms of good role models is that educated members of the Kaabilo are those who are the first to move out of such settlements, leaving the least literate ones behind – often illiterate, semi-literate or functional illiterates. Needless to say, such a trend is a recipe for low pupils’ motivation and poor academic performance since the kids lack good role models – academically – to look up in their immediate surroundings, which universally is one of the pre-requisites for kids’ success academically. Therefore, the risk that they in due course choose wrong role models amongst other kids rise – typically fun-loving undisciplined kids with very low levels of motivation academically.
Boarding schools have an incredible capacity to compensate for this unfortunate state of affairs since teachers and pupils who perform well academically typically become role models for the other pupils in the school yard. To boot, such residential schools have as a rule always had a set of internal rules that cover every aspect of life on campus; thus enabling teachers and older pupils to become better mentors for pupils in need of tailor-made couching with a view to improvements in academic performance.
Indeed, it is about time we as a nation embraced the idea of more government-owned “residential schools” along the lines of Armitage, a wonderful template that has been with us for over ninety years. The school has clearly been providing value-for-money to the state in as many years. Better late than never!
by Saikou M.D. Manneh
The budget as proposed by our honorable minister of finance just confirm to all interested that this administration does not view the education of our children and the future of our nation seriously. When you propose peanuts for education and 900M for the Presidency, Tell me Hon Mr Manneh how can you fix that. Such misplaced priority.
I thank Dr Sarr for the question posed above, which indeed is legitimate. Having said that, democracy is perhaps a blessing in disguise concrete, not least given our new democratic dispensation. Yes, let us use the democratic tools at our disposal as a starting point.
One way of doing that is for ordinary citizens and interest organisations in the education sector to petition their NA members and each and every party participating in the present coalition government to commit a certain percentage of our GDP (say nothing less than 5%) to the education budget annually. Preferably through a binding agreement amongst all the coalition members. The campaign should preferably be sustained over a reasonable period of time. Our newspapers can also help by way of backing such a proposal and keeping the issue on the limelight in the coming months. Indeed, such approaches have worked in other jurisdictions as politicians globally have a tendency to take issues seriously when a large number of the electorates actively campaign for it. Realpolitik, if you will.
Just for a start.
Saikou, you have put pen to paper on a critical matter. At the first glance, my heart started pounding in my chest as if am about to have a heart attack. I’ll tell you why:
1) Your position on Education (Knowledge) and it’s carrier (Language), is the same as that of the first batch of colonial puppet governments we had immediately after “independence”. These were the regimes of Dawda Jawara, Sedat Senghore, just naming two.
2) You mentioned an editorial of the point Newspaper with the title THE FALLING STANDARD OF ENGLISH IN THE GAMBIA that got published sometime in February 2017, and again on the 15th September 2017, to be precise. The SHAME in that supposed editorial is that while the author was lambasting Gambian journalists for their poor fluency in all aspects of the English language, he/she was making the same syntactical and semantic errors that the poor journalists have been taken to the gallows for. I did a corpus analysis of that article and found nothing less than fifteen register errors. Well I did that analysis to test my hypothesis that we don’t need the English language for anything. In fact all it does is to corrode and corrupt our consciousness about ourselves historically, culturally, politically, and take the space and the privilege of power from our languages. Our very own beautiful languages. For God’s shake stop calling our languages local, native, indigenous and all what not. Why won’t anyone mark European languages as such? That’s a question begging for an answer, Saikou.
If you have any empirical evidence suggesting English is on the rise in the world and that adopting English as a language of commerce increases a country’s business attractivity, I’ll be very much interested in that because I have a data set contrary to that assertion.
Conclusion
Maintaining English as an official language in The Gambia is tantamount to cultural genocide. Close to 60% of the population have no agency in the running of the affairs of the state because their languages have been reduced to languages of ignorance and barbarity. The culprits are the colonialists and the weaponized educated class like you and me.
A system of alphabets exist to make right that historical wrong.
The books we buy and sell are in European or Arabian languages. That’s huge economics that all shy from mentioning.
I will never forgive the brainless morons who deprive me from learning science, mathematics, literature etc in Sarahuleh, Manjago, Pappel etc.
No, am not gonna start discontentment over the whiteman’s language. Am too busy learning Fulani, Mandinka, Wollof, Jola and Bainunka!
NB: NAMs of The Gambia, get ready for me. Am coming to you all and English will not be our medium of exchange.
Thank you Jack. Am hoping to exhaustively exchanging ideas on the issue of education and language policy in The Gambia.
One thing I am not open to discussing is espousing the superiority of any Indo-Germanistic and Franco-Romanistic languages and cultures over our own. The reasons are very clear. These savages destroy everything they came into contact with. But that’s another topic for another day.
Jack it saddens me that I got graded with an A1 for my command of English. I’ll gladly take an E any day in Fulani or Sarahulleh in place of the A1 in English. It would have been both cognitively and socially representative of me and my realities as a being. But as the saying goes, better late than never.
Am waiting for a reply from brother Saikou, so as to further dissect his opinion piece which I find very troubling because of its eurocentricity in ideology and approach to a crucial matter in the running of the affairs of the nation.
You see we have been hoodwinked into believing that we cannot realize our full potentials as a people without English,Arabic, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian etc. At gunpoint, the whites drove some teachers from class rooms for teaching African languages to school children. Some were prosecuted and sent to jail to rot in. How quick the youth forget history.
Recently, the French docked a warship at the ports in Banjul for an exercise and training corporation with the Gambian soldiers. Part of their promises was to help Gambia adopt French as a second language of administration. Isn’t that a second wave of colonialism and imperial genocide on us? Tell me if you’ve got a better name for it.
And Fatoumatta was heaping praises on them for all the wrong reasons. She would’ve gladly given a chunk of our territory if they would ask for it. But remember, these are the lethal weaponized educated black Africans I mentioned earlier. They are more dangerous than the whiteman. Why? At least we can predict the caucasians.
Our future and that of our children’s children and their children’s children is on a knife edge. On the one hand, we have a government that operates as if the ultimate goal of its existence is suppose to be its very own existence. The people of the country should just rally around it to keep it perched up.
On the other hand, we have a citizenry oblivious to its own plight and the tools to end that misery.
The solution is massive political education to free our people from the elements of a tragic history over which they have no control over. The kind of education I envisage is devoid of parasitic languages and eurocentric world views.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
Which Lâmin is this? No answer required, sir. Just pleased to read you. Where have you been “hiding” all this time? Great to have you here and stay put please.
Hello Bax, you can leave out the “sir”, Grins. This Lamin is symbolic of a Gambian, cum African male, a product of the post colonial struggle to liberate Black People all over the world, through a pan Africanist and pro-black agenda.
I have not been hiding. I was waiting for my turn to step up when some revolutionaries (am not naming names) get weary or fall behind along the way for a myriad of reasons.
Furthermore, a combination of factors have created an ideal moment for me to put on “my armor” (metaphoric conjecture), to unshackle the physical and mental chains that held our people back for decades, if not centuries.
Moving on with the topic at hand, I would first and foremost wait to hear more from brother Saikou as to his postulation on “re-positioning” the country through relearning English and thereby finally achieving that elusive “Singaporean-Dubai” status.
@ Saikou: There is nothing personal here with regards to me engaging you. If anything, you got my utmost respect for your well written article. The two of us might differ in how we view the matter of education and language in The Gambia and Africa as a whole, yet I’ll defend your rights to have those views with everything at my disposal.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
God the Gracious sanctified humanity against barbarities in any shape or formation….
Lamin, the spirit of revolution isn’t static but adaptable & passes the baton unto generations unborn…
I congratulate every human for contributing in anyway on the toppling of evil kanilai Murderdom…
It’s history unfolding indelibly for mankind to nite & the decent humans to learn from…
Once a scholar, always a scholar, who must be humble in fallibility & always to learn from others & society in turn…
God bless the Gambia; Ameen…
Rectification please – history unfolding indelibly for mankind to note & the decent humans to learn from…
Thanking you…
Point of rectification: Inventing a new script/alphabet system of writing was not part of the conversation I believe. That will be totally unnecessary for there exist already The Africa Reference System which is capable of encoding all African languages in written form. So let’s be clear that I did not say I have pioneered/invented anything, no do I plan on working on any endeavor of that nature. The only thing I do is write a couple of poems in three different languages of ours.
Jack you have highlighted a number of challenges that needs to be surmounted before, during or after transitioning from English to having our languages occupying their natural positions in our formal and non formal daily existence. These are ideological constraints that come with the terrain. The structures, width and depths of our languages are not in contention here as to whether they are capable of handling complex and abstract ideas in any and all subject fields. I hope at least not. Because should that be what you are insinuating, then we are on the wrong footing in tackling white supremacy tendencies in the midst of our own selves. Anti-blackness behavior and prejudices towards Black People is equally deeply rooted in the black community as it is perpetually present in the collective psyche of white People. The only difference being our ability to “unlearn” it much more quicker.
Politically, back-transitioning is or has never been part of the agenda of the our leaders, that’s assuming they have one. And that’s proving catastrophic by the day. Look, no nation has ever developed by relying on borrowed languages, borrowed ideas, borrowed money or borrowed anything. Self reliance slogans serve only one thing in our political domain: manipulating the population not to expect a dime from the government. Dawda’s tesito calls and Yaya’s “eat what you grow and grow what you eat” catch phrases are cases in point.
The language ecology in nearly all west African countries remain very much untapped and under researched. It’s fertile ground for all kinds of creative undertakings. Failure to utilize this potential is rendering our languages to the natural process of decaying. Words and grammatic processes are dying away everyday as more people, especially children, become anglicized psychologically and by extension, in socially behavior. WE! ARE! LOOSING! OURSELVES!
But let’s not deviate too far from what this conversation is all about, which is; should we abandon English as a medium of instruction in our schools. This was one of the possible hypothetical reasons advanced by Saikou as to the causes of low performance in Gambian schools. I have the intention of writing my opinion on the two or three other causes of children’s low performance rate he mentioned.
Just to give you a taste of what’s in store for both you and I should we be privileged to understand and appreciate the beauty in our languages: I read a mixed-language poem (Fulani, Mandinka and Wollof) of mine at a gathering. Many went home emotionally satisfied and aesthetically please because both the content of the poem and the medium found a ready made home in their hearts and minds. This is not my personal inference. The people told me this at the end of the gathering.
Learning in our languages will make life both easy and much more enjoyable for all our people. It will make operating equipment and electric gadgets more accessible to more people. Even connected with and to the INTERNET OF THINGS. At the present rate, only a little above 40% of our people are conversant with written texts. Would you like to continue depriving them of this most basic of rights?
I don’t have to prove anything to anyone Jack. The prove is already out there for any interested person to see.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
I thank brother Lamin and all the other critics: Your feedbacks are hereby appreciated.
A re-reading of the article would however show the attentive reader that there is no conflict at all between our opinions as to the preferability of a native Gambian language as one of our official languages in the future. As I mentioned in the article, I am actually of the view that that should have been set in motion decades back.
In the absence of such a policy, however, I’d argue that each and every nation on earth has a moral obligation to master her “official language”. Under the laws of The Gambia, the latter is English in the case of our beloved country, and has been as such since the Brits declared the current “urban areas of the country” as its “Colony of Senegambia” back in 1783.
Indeed, I feel a bit let down that most, if not all, the commentators have failed to read between the lines that my raison d’etre for arguing in favour raising our standards in terms of the English language is actually “instrumental”. So long as it remains the official language of instruction in our schools, mastering the language is but one way of turning things around in the direction of better academic performance in our schools. My sentiments in the article above should therefore be seen in that light. If mandinka, wollof, fullah, etc. were in Engish’s stead, I would have argued in their favour along similar lines: mastering the official langauge is instinctively a good way of enhancing pupils’ comprehension of whatever they are taught in school at any given time.
The politics of language in individual African countries is quite another debate which must be taken up in due course.
English language to me is no longer a communication tool but a symbol of domination and power. For now there is significant consequence to those who fail to master it.
Question. Can you conduct serious business in the world stage speaking our language. Can you be a financial master of the universe speaking our tongue. Can you conduct shareholders AGM of Fortune 500 companies speaking Wolof. Answer. No. Reason. We are poor and powerless .
If you want to compete on the world stage, I suggest you accept the painful reality and discard wishful thinking. It will be emotionally satisfying but impractical to embrace any of our many communication tools as our instruction vehicle. But then again once Gambia becomes a superpower we can insist on communication in ….. what language again, let the tribal war begin.
You know, the gadget you are relying on to express your views here, was “wishful thinking” not long ago, as it was only conceived as an idea in someone’s imagination. If no one had put serious efforts towards its realisation, it would still have been “wishful thinking”.
National Languages (Wollof, Mandinka & Pularr) have been used as mediums of instruction in the poorly funded Adult Literacy Programmes in The Gambia with great success. Why then, is the idea “emotionally satisfying but impractical”? Why do you even foresee a “tribal war”?
I don’t think many want superpower status for Gambia. All we want, is an education system, using a medium of instruction, that does not disadvantage our children from the word, “GO”, as foreign languages do.
I must truly admit that am very much inspired by the level of interest Saikou’s article has generated. Now the different ideological positions I mentioned are emerging.
I will only hope the exchanges will remain civil and the positions will not be turned into unnecessary and unproductive fights.
The stumbling blocks that could eventually stop us from being linguistically independent have been put forward here and there. They however remain only suspicions out of fear. The fear emanates from a deep seated need that whatever we do (in country and in continent) should conform to established white norms and standards. It was the same kind of fear and pessimism that halted the process to African unity in 1965 (not sure if the year is exact) in Ethiopia. The same mistakes have been made over and over again with huge ramifications for our people, whilst our mental and physical subjugations continue.
I hope the discussions here will be a catalyst to supporting a petition am working on to presented to the National Assembly of the republic of The Gambia for a change of the discriminatory language policy in that country of ours we all call home.
Dr. Isatou, you have earned my respect as the singular female voice on this platform. I respect you as a formidable character who always says what’s on her mind. Having said that, you using the word “tribe” to categorize (any) people of an ethnolinguistic group is very unfortunate. You see words matter a lot. The term tribe is derogatory at best.
We don’t have what you would call a “tribal problem” in The Gambia. What we have is sectional politics been driven and fed upon by some political opportunist. More on that another time.
Because of time constraints, I shall reply to the challenges you raised with regards to language positioning in our country and respond to Brother Saikou.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
@Bax: What’s your position on an overhaul of the language policy or lack thereof, of a policy of The Gambia? Sitting on the fence?
Oh, no Lamin, I’m not sitting on the fence on the language issue. I think at our own national level, we need to develop a National Language that can meet the linguistic challenges of administration, communication, business, education, scientific/technological research & development in the modern world.
How do we do it? I’m not a linguist, so I wouldn’t know, but I am in no doubt that we can do it, if the political will exists.
The same should be done at the continental level, if we truly, seriously and genuinely want to create a United Africa, whatever form it may take.
One thing is crystal clear and absolutely certain: Continued use of foreign languages will hinder our development potentials, if not completely negate them, and certainly lead to a gradual cultural extinction and a complete identity loss. It’s happening right now. You can see how we are losing ourselves by looking at the young people. The problem of falling standards is not only related to the school/education environment. There are much more serious factors to this development.
Produce your petition, as that single first step towards, perhaps, towards the longest and hardest journey we may undertake. I will definitely be among the signatories.
My idea of a national language would be one that uses the main language(s) (Mandinka/Wollof/Pularr) as the skeleton/foundation, into which words/phrases/etc. from every other language is fitted, so that no one feels left out. We can then borrow and incorporate from other languages or invent our own words for every phenomena; whether scientific or not. We already have lots of borrowed words, whether we know it or not.
I remember using the name of the school bulletin at SAHS, as an example of a single word, though simple, which was coined from Wollof & Mandinka: SUNUKIBAARO.
When you look at a state like the USA, it has many ethnic groping with their own native languages, such as the Apache Indians, Latinos, Chinese, etc. but everyone that goes through the education system learns English and most can communicate in English.
Language for harmonious human interests is critical & crucial in clear communications for understanding each other in particular, if not for anything else, for the development of the human being individually & collectively together, towards general societal advancement endeavours, anywhere one may be, home &/ abroad…
Medium of digestion & proper understanding of some/anything, can only facilitate solution to the ‘crux’ & breakthrough to dream attainments among the aspirations…
Saikou’s message about low fall in standards & general unacceptable drop down spiral of the current medium officially cum ‘language’ in our schools & education institutions for the Gambia which is English which can’t afford to be ignored & taken for granted but must be acknowledged in order to move on historically; standards must have to improve actually, for the Gambia to progress & graduate to the aspirations; including the attainment of ‘localisation’ of the official language/s in reverse from current; this can only be achieved through the upping of the general endeavours in all aspects of life, individually & nationally (collectively), (not just exclusively in education) on making the genuine moving strides towards realisations of aspirations meaningfully…
Bax’s statistical information of the (60%) ‘disadvantaged’ (‘unschooled’) residents, due to the official language barrier shows the magnitude of task at hand currently to counter; for all to keep abreast & get involved & participate fully in the national societal advancement endeavour for realising the better & evolve like others done in our current stage before…
The spirit of revolution is always embedded in progressive endeavours & adaptable advancedment aspirations at all & any given & material time/s, with bars of high standards, if not higher for achieving anything realistically meaningful…
The local use of Gambian languages officially aren’t attainable without masterly distinction in the current education language (English) officially in the country; it’s only on this basis that we can build upon & develop educative instruments & institutions into progressive society awareness tools for effective development advancement of the country…
God bless Gambia….
@Saikou: What I failed to mention is the fact that there was never a time that Gambians were so fluent and creative with the English language to warrant the publication of that fallacious editorial by the point Newspaper. That editorial in itself was full of grammatical and colloquial errors. The irony though, is that, the same editorial was talking about “falling standards in English” when same has no standards. Why are we blind to our own realities and keep on chasing our own shadows for more than half a century without success and funnily, without stopping to take stock?
English has only bring us one thing and that is to further divide our society and little communities into “semi-literates” in the formal economic sector, the peasants depending only on peanuts for survival and petty traders all hustling to get by financially by the day. So let’s stop these fanatacies of the englishness of “our standard English”. We were never there and we will never get there! Haven’t we lost enough time already squabbling and fighting the causes of all except ours?
@Jack: I am assuming you are very interested in the scientific technical details of how such alphabetization might look like. How the lexical challenges, syntactical and semantic complexities will be worked out in ALL OUR (national) LANGUAGES. That’s the easiest part Jack. Are you salivating for how we will catch up with all the technological, business and even astrophysics terms that we might need to “invent”? Child’s play!
The hardest part is two fold:
1) starting the process.
2) Making the mental and ideological shifts needed to propagate the practice of relying on what we have-and we have EVERYTHING we need.
@Bourne: No single language of ours should be disadvantaged with or favored in a civilized society and that’s what we were before the whiteman came galloping into our affairs. All our languages had occupied their rightful and natural space before slavery. That’s until slaves were forbidden from speaking to each other for fear of having them organize uprisings. That’s how imperial languages got imposed on us. That’s a free lesson in History for all of us. So fear not, my brother!
@Dr. Isatou: Switzerland has three different official languages. That does not stop it from hosting international financial conferences that are sometimes conducted in as many languages as necessary. I don’t need to informed you about these facts. My painful reality is not accepting English as a lingua franca. My painful reality is the educated class not giving a damn about their compatriots who make up 60% of the population of a historical accident product called The Gambia. This 60% of our people, who are totally disconnected from the Fortune 500 companies you’re conjuring, would also appreciate to have their Fortune 5 companies and holding their AGMs in Jola, Manjago, Mandinka, Pappel, Wollof, Fulani, Bainunka, Serer etc. You see, diversity of language is suppose to be a blessing and not what many western puppets and mental captives will like to make us believe. Our people have been kept at ransom for centuries because of colonial African-Black representatives. Are you one of them or do you intend to become one? There are no middle grounds here.
@Bajaw: make up you mind. We either use the full springboard we have at our disposal to lunch our development drives or we use someone else’s and come back crashing on the ground like a failed rocket over and over again.
Our institutions can easily make that transition from English to our beautiful and rich languages as administrative tools. What do need to wait for?
@Bax: The petition will soon make the rounds in all newspapers (online and print) in the Gambian.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
The making up of the mind isn’t individual but communally collective; hence the debates in necessity for the better together….
The national springboard for the localisation of our issues has to be built into vehicle for realisation from someone else’s which is English in our case historically; to pave the way for our very own & develop into standardisation & innovative improvements upon as time will demand & require in future progressively…
The future is bright but some way to GO yet, to get out of the woods; surely achievable with resilient endeavour & determination….
God bless Gambia….
The Latin alphabet is very well suitable for writing all the languages we have, with only a few additions from the phonetic symbols to cater for sounds that are not represented in the former. There is absolutely no need to go alphabet hunting or getting into a lab to create one.
For those insinuating that the Latin alphabet is foreign, remember this: the sum total of human knowledge(s) is not foreign in any corner of the globe. The Standard Latin alphabet is a product of many script systems from all around the world that morphed into one. We don’t need to go too deep into that for it might eat up space that’s better utilized to convincing (yet) naysayers about the possibilities and eventual benefits of bringing English to the position of a second language of administration in The Gambia.
@Borne: you don’t need any link to come to the logical conclusion that no nation can develop without developing a channel (language(s)) of its own capable of containing the various discourses necessary for that development. Please name me one country that has achieved that magical feat. Don’t start with Singapore. It’s a unique case.
Answering your question Borne as to whether the diversity in languages has prevented our forefathers from effectively communicating with each other to halt the onslaught of the savages into our territories and stealing human beings and resources, the answer is NO. There was no way anyone could teach our people the essence of “unity” that would have prevented slavery because the motivations for that perpetual genocide were not in our hands. They were external, I would argue. We have done NOTHING to warrant that! Aren’t we drifting again into history? Yes! So that’s the dilemma we are faced with. Language is not devoid of ideologies, politics and of course, economics. That’s why we have to be brave to take our own affairs into our hands. We have never done that since the barbarians displaced everything in our continent. Now is the time to ascertain ourselves or else, future generations will continue to pay the price as we are doing right now.
The question: how can you develop in a language that you (Gambians) don’t even understand, should be asked by all those who want us to remain saddled with English. And think about this: you are holding us back!
Can we now move on to the other areas that are responsible for the problem of pupils underperform in our schools? We still haven’t come to teachers wages, building boarding schools, budget allocations for education, materials production and dissemination etc.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
Bourne I apologize for misspelling your name. Blame it on autocorrection because I did made the effort to go check how it is spelled at the first instance. My bad!
OUR ANCESTORS TEACHING EACH OTHER THE ESSENCE OF UNITY.
We are talking about a period of time when our forefathers have other preoccupations that fully consume their energies and thoughts than peaceful neighborly coexistence. The world order and worldview that they have to content with did not foresee the annihilation of entire cultures, religions, languages, norms, values and so on and so forth. There was no way they could anticipate a disaster of such proportions.
I will be at pains to agree that Africans were militarily weak and technologically inferior causing the Atlantic slave trade to flourish for close to 500 years. One leading factor that sustain slavery was the invention of a pseudo science of race, giving birth to the biological categories of black and white.
All the questions you posed are very legitimate. You not having the answers though, is not an accident. It’s by design. Imagine if all Africans like you and me and all black people around the world knowing their true history and how that tragic history gave rise to ALL the wealth and knowledge in the west. Now you see the connection why our langauges are not allowed to be mediums of instruction in our schools. Am glad we are getting somewhere.
And still in our schools all over Africa, racial categorization is taught as part of the syllabus. Negro, Caucasian and Mongoloid are the classifications used to label humans based on supposed biological traits. Caucasia and Mongolia are geographic regions. How about Negro? Ponder on that and it has the potential to keep you busy for the rest of your natural life.
I will take your question as to whether all nations that use their own language/languages in officialdom are developed, as frivolous. We don’t have to engage in tit-for-tat interrogations to reach at the truth. Time is a very valuable and perishable good in our works to free our people from the clutches of colonialism and mental captivity.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
Robert Phillipson, in his book, “Linguistic Imperialism”, relied on Galtung’s theory of imperialism to derive the theory of Linguistic Imperialism.
Galtung identified six different but interrelated types of imperialism: economic, political, military, communicative, communication and transport. According to his theory (of imperialism), the world is divided into dominant centres (Powerful Western countries) and dominated Peripheries. Both the Centres and Peripheries have powerful Elites who are linked by shared interests, in this case language.
Galtung posited that imperialism unfolds in three distinct phases:
1. Colonial Phase: during this phase, the elites were the colonisers;
2. Neo-colonial phase: here powerful indigenous people, many of whom were educated in the centre countries through the centre languages, collaborate with inter-state actors and act as primary agents of linguistic imperialism;
3. Neo-neo colonial phase: characterised by the increased use of communication technologies, dissemination of centre languages in the periphery and the promotion of cultural imperialism through language.
Gilbert Ansre, Ghanaian Sociolinguist (1979; qtd by Phillipson) defines linguistic imperialism as:
“The phenomenon in which the minds and lives of the speakers of a language are dominated by another language to the point where they believe that they can and should use only that language when it comes to the transactions dealing with the more advanced aspects of life such as education, philosophy, literature, governments, the administration of justice etc. …..Linguistic imperialism has a subtle way of warping the minds, attitudes, and aspirations of even the most noble in a society, and preventing him from appreciating and realising the full potential of indigenous languages.”
Phillipson identified the phenomenon he coined, “Linguicism” or “Linguistic Racism” and added that it is central to understanding English Linguistic Imperialism. According to him, “Linguicism refers exclusively to the ideologies and structures where language is the means for effecting and maintaining an unequal allocation of power and resources.” Linguicism, he said, may be conscious or unconscious, overt or covert, abstract or concrete.
The battle to escape imperialism will only be won if the “enemies within” are tackled and neutralised and they exist in all forms and shapes, thus the enormity of the challenge.
I won’t like to go further than the tremendous efforts made by Bax to shed sober light on the sociolinguistic and psychological aspects relating to the topic at hand.
Only one thing remains to be said, i.e how baffling it is that we still haven’t implemented a language policy to develop and survive on!!
In the former maroon colonies, the problem of traitors has led to the death of thousands of free slaves who gave limb and life to earn a semblance of freedom from their former masters. So, the biggest stumbling block to mobilization and revolutionary work has always been our own people amongst our midst who has permanently sold their souls to the whiteman.
What they however never learned is, their loyalty to the white system is always rewarded with harsher consequences and often many forms of death.
For example, the English language as we know it today is a product of the slave and colonial enterprise. Therefore, it’s worth billions of Dollars in all industries all over the world. But only for the imperialists and their puppet educated elite class. The same applies to French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Italian and recently Chinese. May I ask number crunchers:
What is the combined value of all our languages? Pittance! And many are on the cusp of dying out.
This is the sad situation of the African. All aspiring to attain the elusive “whiteness” until we realize it will never be. The self hate in our midst is beyond my comprehension.
We are comfortable on the other hand, been labeled Wollof, Fula, Manjago, Mandinka and all what not. But still we can’t come to terms that these are only languages and cultural practices that are very fluid in character and have no fixed boundaries as to who is what and when. That’s why the word tribe does not exist for me. This is the type of Gambian yet to be born. A Gambian who will identify first and foremost as a human being and an African whose destiny and well-being is inextricably linked to the destiny and well-being of all other black Africans. This kind of African will be proud to discover and consequently own all the beautiful languages and rich cultures in every nook and cranny of OUR DIVERSE CONTINENT. He/she will not be an imitator but an innovator and a creator in every sphere of life, in every sense of the word.
Just think about it.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
Elusive whiteness connotes not a biological skin pigmentation, rather a cultural and political symbolization of privileges and power relations between a dominant and a disadvantaged ethnicity.
I believe we seem to be going in circles because you (Bourne) have some gaps in your grasp of what actually happened during the AST. I don’t know anyone who could help you close those gaps except you yourself. Learning takes effort, time and patience. But it’s always worth the trouble.
I did not acquiesce to Bax in anyway. I was just avoiding a duplication of efforts and second, the information he provided was enough to digest and reflect upon for a day or two. And to go double check his sources. This is what a curious mind should do.
I understand your position on the issue of how the language ecology in The Gambia should look like and function. That’s nothing new to me. There are other positions in all classes of the society, all informed by different ideological inclinations. But they have all failed because of obvious reasons. English has until a few years ago been taught with and through psychological and physical brutality. Which of our own languages have been taught in this way? None!
The failure emanates from the fact that we choose a foreign language that is and can never be centrally position in our collective perceptions and consciousness. What more do you wanna hear? That English is a sum total of human knowledge and therefore should be easily adaptable for our development needs? I will be the wrong person to tell such to. Why? Because I know better than that.
Please allow me to pull the curtain on this matter because there is a lot of work to be done to start giving space to our languages. The challenges are daunting. Join us to make it a little bit easier for the next generation. Don’t be the problem.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
I will be glad to send you some reading materials on the AST that might not be readily available on the internet, or at least hard to find. But I don’t know how to go about that.
One good source for you might be African Holocaust. Here is a link for you and all who might be interested: http://africanholocaust.net/africanholocaust/
We don’t have to go on eternally debating the pros and cons of freeing our people from linguistic imperialism. We know it’s bad for us and that’s enough to overhaul this system that continues to keep us in perpetual bondage. It’s as simple as that. I do not have to impose anything on anybody. I can’t! Yet, I can promise anyone who underestimates the resolve of a progressive movement that they are in for a sweet surprise.
The National Assembly of The Gambia in its present form and it’s Modus operandi is a direct representative of the colonial savages. Justification: the number of people who can neither read no understand English make up a whooping 60% of the population. Who is keeping those people of ours from having any agency in their own affairs? 60% of our people who voted and pay taxes but got no representation because they can’t speak English. What is the language of business in the National Assembly? On whose behalf are they speaking their English? Our people who can’t understand English? That is the joke of the century.
Brother Bourne, I did not say you are a problem. I would like you to be part of the solutions to our numerous problems. Let’s begin this process with language independence.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
I love your resilience Bourne. Let me steal a page from you in answering your question with a question. Can you give me one good reason why ALL OUR LANGUAGES shouldn’t be spoken and written in parliament, by extension, in all our institutions? Why should we choose one language over all the rest to be our “official language”? We have had our diversity of languages and we had no problems managing our affairs until the whiteman showed up.
If that does not satisfy you, how about selecting a language based on grammatical characteristics (word order, synthesis ability, analytic properties) that is accessible to all? How about choosing a language based on its lexical productivity (ability to produce/create new words for new concepts). The possibilities are many and varied. Only the political will is weak or non existent. And that is because we are ruled by people who has their faith firmly planted in white supremacy. For them and their likes, all and every system of practice must have a seal of approval from the imperialists.
I won’t be a party to that. I’d rather be counted among the fallen heroes than be docile to a people and system that feeds on the suffering and exploitation of my people.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
A “new” African should have been “created” at independence because the African that entered the independence era, was a seriously traumatised person, both physically and culturally. This was a person who was severely abused, mis/under-educated, mentally enslaved, divided, weak, deeply suspicious of others and lacking in self belief.
The leaders at independence, except a handful (most of whom were quickly eliminated or demonised to near irrelevance by the imperialist agents) almost all owed intellectual allegiance to the departing colonialist/imperialist states and were materially dependent on them for lack of ideas and not knowing what to do, thus the emergence of the neo-colonial states.
In terms of language, the “new” African, in my view, must cherish the diversity of languages in the continent and preserve as many as possible (if not all), but the future or long term survival of the African Peoples will depend on the creation of a continental language that ALL, irrespective of region, can speak and understand.
It is, undoubtedly, a monumental task but it is achievable within a few generations, if the political will exists. The new African, linguistically, must be one in whom the “old” and “new” co-exist without a problem.
@Bourne: you stayed put. You did not ball out even though you found it hard to wrap your mind around some of the historical and contemporary revolutionary ideas and issues being raised in this thread. That’s resilience. Why: because historic amnesia is a psychological strategy to avoid the painful realities of slavery and colonialism. It at least seems to me that you are willing and able to make that leap to consciousness and becoming an active liberator yourself instead of an agent of Whiteness, which sadly can befall even the strongest among consciousness and liberation movements.
I am neither a mentally shackled conformist nor a traumatized non-conformist. I am a liberator from both states of mind. More on that in subsequent exchanges.
Bax has put it nicely by saying the future all of all Africans is inextricably linked by a common denominator; a common African language for ease of communication and intra-continental commerce. The challenge is monumental but the rewards will surely make the endeavors a worthwhile venture. Just think about it.
With regards to the abundance of languages that should all have space in The Gambia, I surmise you are focusing too much on the presumed “difficulties” rather than the possibilities and the benefits. Try that too.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
I am on X-mas holidays folks hence the silence on my part in the course of the past few days. However, I’ll return back to you fellows at the onset of the new year.
One thing is certain, however, I do enjoy and appreciate the debate on the “politics of African languages” in individual African countries, not least in The Gambia. Such debates are indeed necessary in that without them we as a nation risk adopting domestic language policies that are not well-thoughtout, and hence harmful to our own national interest. Until then, I’d contend English shall remain “the devil we know” in the foreseable future – our nation will literally come to a standstill should we totally abandon it over-night. In the meantime, re-mastering the language does absolutely no harm to us either individually or as a notion. Far from it.
Seasonal greetings are hereby despatched to all and sundry.
There are two fundamental deductions am able to make from my exchange with you brother Bourne:
1) We are communicating over and past each other, therefore, due attention is needed to avoid unnecessarily wasting time.
2) We could only go so far on this platform teaching and learning from each other because of the obvious limitations in a computer mediated communication setting. That makes it imperative on both of us, you in particular, to continue learning and understanding the history of Africa and Black People in the various theoretical frameworks and how that translates into practical norms of exploitation, oppression and permanent subjugation. Take that as a piece of advice.
You said our people should be equipped with knowledge of “Maafa” and the AST. How on earth are you going to teach the marginalized 60% of Gambian men and women who can’t speak, write or understand the English language? Or are you advocating the translation of materials on those two historical epochs into our languages for the purpose of “adult literacy”? The half heartedly financed adult literacy projects are just a means to move people to learning and consuming (more) English.
This 60% is a wasted opportunity in our history and we should be ashamed of the fact, that as a nation, we have failed more than half of our population who will go to the grave not knowing the beauty of reading, enjoying and reliving one’s own life realities. Talk less of having control over their lives.
Fasten your seat belt Bourne. This is going to be a long ride.
Am no halfwit to buy into the “fools glad syndrom” of me having a beautiful command of English. But let me tell you this: this “ability” of mine you nicely complemented is no accident. It has taken years of dedicated practice and learning on my side to be able to seamlessly function in nearly all realms of the English language. Why wasn’t I given the same chance to produce flawless literature in Serer, Mandinka, Wollof, Bainunka etc? It would have been much more productive to me as a human being and even for my economic prospects in a white dominated world.
Now you and Saikou talked about something in the line of “if we do away with English overnight, it will bring the country to a standstill”. Here is what I have to say to that: who said Gambia should switch from English to a spectrum of languages totally unplanned? Is that you and Saikou’s thinking because I said nothing along that line.
You see, Saikou’s article is not clear cut on what we should or shouldn’t do as to the language quagmire.
On the one hand he seems to be saying we should incooperate our languages into the attainment of education in our school system. On the other side, he agrees with Pastor Forbes that the use of “local languages” should be restricted in school yards around the country, because, according to Saikou, the ends justify the means. Restrict? That’s a very familiar language in slave policing and colonial literature. Isn’t that what the whiteman, the slave hustler did to us? Isn’t that language genocide?
Where is the respect and honor due to the people who died fighting against slavery and colonialism for us to have the right to speak and exist in our languages, in our own conceptual realities? These are the questions I would have asked Saikou, if he would have been following the comments on his article here. I would have asked him how he honors the slave woman who was sentenced to death for a crime she did not commit. Because she was pregnant she was made to wait until she gave birth because the baby even before he/she was born, was considered the property of the master. The woman end up killing herself to compound the master’s losses. How do you honor her Bourne?
I was chained and whipped to near unconsciousness because I “wrongly” pronounced a word in class. Each and everyone of us have gone through such beatings to make us master the English language. And we NEVER DID! Learn from your mistakes, people!
Corporal punishment is now alledged to be outlawed. Yet, our pupils are going through psychological torture everyday been force-fed English. Let no one tell me they are blind to this injustice.
Bourne, you said we can use English to decipher the ways and tricks of the whiteman. Has the master’s tool ever been used to destroy the master’s house? That will be a folly.
And what has stopped us achieving that for fifty two years and still counting?
Saikou said he will prefer to stick it out with the “devil” he knows than that which he does not know. I wonder if he knows the devil he claims to know well enough to fight to guarantee even its immediate dominance in our midst. I say that because Saikou references the point Newspaper “substandard” article in his write up, which I found totally abhorrent and self deprecating.
Below is a link to that article:
http://thepoint.gm/africa/gambia/article/the-falling-standard-of-written-english-1
Finally, I can’t figure out how to position your advices on honesty, caring, truthfulness, hardworking etc. Is it an attempt at victim blaming? If Africans are crying around for past injustices, it’s because these crimes perpetrated on them have never been paid for by the perpetrators. We should cry even louder, harder and demonstrate our rage at a system that is built from our flesh, blood and bones, yet it in turn continues to deny us the most basic of rights.
In the service of The Gambia and Africa, I remain.
My Brother Bourne, take time off if you need it. I wish you a very relaxing time-off. It was both a pleasure and an educative journey to come this far with the topic of language with so many people having so many diverse views and positions.
I on the other hand will be here as long as time permits to continue the conversations in cyberspace for a better Gambia and a United Africa.
Yours in the service of The Gambia and Africa.
Lamin