Collegiate Times

MB: Most black African kids in South Africa, and in Sub-Saharan Africa in general, grow up in homes where mother tongue languages are spoken. In the part of South Africa where I was, the primary language is Xhosa. ... I think that the mother tongue languages are very, very important and valuable because in many ways language carries culture and having your mother tongue language and being able to speak it and read it and write it, I think, is a part of having an identity and owning your own culture - being who you are. And in most countries, children are expected to be taught in mother tongue languages in the early grades. But then they have to switch over to English, and in South Africa, kids in first grade were only supposed to be given instruction in Xhosa. There was supposed to be no English at all. But beginning in second grade, there was to be a little English and a little bit more in third grade. But then all of a sudden in fourth grade, instruction is supposed to change over to being in English. ... One of the most basic rules that I believe (above) of all is that reading is a skill, and you have to practice to get good. Well, for all of these kids who speak all these other languages, there aren't materials in their mother tongue languages for them to practice reading. I found a handful of children's books written in Xhosa while I was in South Africa, but just a handful. Some of these books that I found cost like $8. People in the townships, they can eat on $8 for a week. They're not ever going to spend $8 going to one of these fancy bookstores and buying a children's book in Xhosa. The same situation is in Malawi. There aren't hardly any books written in Chichewa or any of the mother tongue languages, and this business of, if you're going to become a stronger reader, you need to practice. Well there's nothing for them to practice, and there's never going to be anything for them to practice on. And if we really want to promote literacy in these countries, we need to come up with a way of having texts for children to be able to practice reading. And I think, "Well, there's only one way to get them: We have to produce them ourselves, and we've got to get the kids involved in writing, and they've got to write their own stories, and we need to get them to publish their stories, and we need to have books that can be shared across the whole school - maybe that can go into libraries."

CT: Looking back, how do you feel about your experiences there?

MB: One part of me says, "My gosh, I pulled this off." These teachers did not believe that the kids could write. They didn't believe we could get them to write. They weren't sure that it would be of value. I had trouble getting into a school and getting the project started because everybody thought, "Well, this is going to take a lot of time." I think they thought, "Well, this is a crazy woman from America, and she wants to come in and do her project, and it doesn't fit with the kinds of things that we do, and I'm not sure we want to do it." I really had one teacher, she was my champion. She said, "We need you at the school. We need this project at the school. We need to do this kind of work. Stick with us. Come to this school." She was my champion. I mean, I ended up having real good relationships with the other teachers and getting things done in all the classrooms, but she was the one who really had me there. I pulled it off, and I think I've shown that it can be done, and I have plenty to write about. I mean, it's research papers (I'm going to write) about how I did it. Maybe I better say "how they did it." How we did it.

Continue Reading:  « Previous12