Effective Strategy for Teaching and Learning Mother Tongue at the Junior Secondary School: Implications for Education 2030 Agenda.

Introduction: The use of mother –tongue as the medium of instruction at the           Junior Secondary School (JSS) seems to be the solution for the achievement               2030    Education Agenda.For now the main problem or obstacle to achieving the set goal of Education For All (EFA) by the year 2030 is lack of adequate funding, mismanagement as well as lack of  implementation  of  set out policies. There is also threat on the survival of Junior Secondary Education under Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) due to inadequate funds to pay local instructors who use English Language as a medium of instruction. This has affected the formal and non –formal mass literacy and nomadic education advocated for the eradication of illiteracy in Nigeria. These funds are needed for the maintenance of the physical structures in schools and for the payment of “imported” teachers who do not understand the language of the immediate community.

      We are concerned here with the effective strategy of using the mother tongue in teaching and learning both at the grass root (in the rural areas) level and urban areas in order to improve our socio-economic life; the problems these strategies will pose, its successful implementations and its acceptability by the populace globally.

       Local instructors/ teachers who would use the mother tongue as a medium of instruction are easily available; the instructional technique is no doubt the communicative and group discussion methods. There is a high level of participation on the part of students/ learners as they feel most at home with their own language. Thus, the common warning teachers give would  instead  of  “Don’t speak in vernacular” would be “ Don’t speak in English”.

     The effective strategy to be used to promote the use of our indigenous language in teaching and learning which would in the long improve our agriculture, health and social sectors is Mother Tongue Education. This instills self - respect, self - reliance, self - empowerment of all citizenry at the grass root level and in urban areas. There is no doubt that this is the bane of philosophy of education as stipulated in the National Policy on Education.

        The emphasis shifts from using mother tongue to teach and learn at the primary school level as advocated by Fafunwa (1989) to using it also at Junior Secondary Schools (JSS).  It is worth noting that Fafunwa’s study was carried out when there was not much  mass  rural-urban drift. Children had their premier stage of education in the village being taught by glorified local teachers in local languages. Their main reason of using mother tongue then to teach was that they themselves are not too well versed in the imported English language. English language then was mainly the language of administration used by the whites to govern the localities through their indigenous interpreters. So these local teachers feel at home using the indigenous language to teach. Could this be obtained in the Nigeria of today? The answer is yes.

  Mother Tongue Education: The teaching and  learning of  Mother Tongue at the Junior Secondary School calls for ways and means of implementing it in order to achieve the stated objectives. This is in order to drive home the opinion of (Adewuyi, 2002) that the objectives of any educational process determine the methods and materials needed for achieving such objectives.

The need to improve our economy for the maximum benefits of the masses for self-empowerment /employment calls for the effective use of Mother Tongue in our educational system. Fafunwa (2000) advocated for the use of the language of the immediate environment at the primary level. This was used to achieve the aim of the Universal Primary Education which is mass enrolment. The mass enrolment for education was achieved but this in turn created mass unemployment. Many products of this UPE neither gained admission into the tertiary institution nor got employed. The menace to the society in terms of crimes was enormous.

UBE which is pre-vocational, academic tuition free, universal and compulsory enables pupils to acquire knowledge and skills at Primary and Junior Secondary School. The JSS curriculum is designed to effect national development and to fulfill the role of National Policy on Education. The country’s educational goals are set in its relevance to the needs of the individual, the society and for the benefit of all citizens. The teaching and learning of Mother Tongue in JSS will go a long way to achieve these objectives.

For the intended learning to take place, the teacher must communicate effectively with the learner. This therefore requires that the teacher must understand the language of the learner very well. In short he must speak the same language. It is believed that teaching effort and learning may not effectively lead to the attainment of the desired objectives unless communication between the teacher and the learner is effective. This can be enhanced through the use of Mother Tongue.

The Genesis of Mother Tongue in Nigeria

The use of Mother Tongue in the Nigerian educational system originates from the recommendations of the 1969 national Curriculum conference. It was recommended among others that the Nigerian education should be geared towards self-realization, better human, better human relationship, self and national economic efficiency, effective citizenship, national consciousness, national unity  and so on. It was also recommended that primary education/JSS should serve to help the child towards self-realization and mutual understanding with others.

These recommendations are indirectly referring to the use of Mother Tongue earlier by Dr. Greenfield researched further by Prof. Fafunwa. It was opined that the failure  of  UPE was as a result of the misuse of the opportunity to apply Mother Tongue in the teaching and learning.

Bearing this in mind, it is believed that teaching and learning at JSS will be successful if mother tongue is used. Thus Nigerian culture, arts and language will be developed and projected. Students would then be able to solve some common national problems. Hence, JSS students would be inspired to desire for self-achievement, self-education and self-improvement. Education would be brought to grass root level as local coordinators would be involved in teaching and learning.

The use of Mother Tongue dates back to the colonial era. According to Fafunwa (1974),  prior to 1925, the British government had no clearly defined policy on education in its colonies. It was in 1925 that the memorandum on education in British colonial territories established the first government policy on education. According to the memorandum “education should be adapted to local conditions …” The study of the use of vernacular is of primary importance. Thus, for the first time, the use of Mother Tongue in education in Nigeria was introduced both as a subject and as a medium of instruction for the first two or three classes at the primary level. With the use of Mother Tongue, learning is made easy for pupils. The issue of learning from known to unknown is possible.

In another national seminar on education held in 1973 and chairman by Chief S.O Adebo, the necessity to indigenise the education system and give government primary responsibility in its control and development was recognized. At this seminar, it was deemed appropriate to define and restate Nigeria’s National purpose and to reexamine in that context the kind of society we are aiming to build and the role of education in helping to build and nurture such a society. This can only be achieved through the use of Mother Tongue education.

The importance of the place of Mother Tongue education in the UBE program is highly vital. The objective of Universal Primary Education which was to afford every child of primary school age the opportunity to go to school failed. This resulted in high drop outs, illiteracy, decaying education system, mass unemployment and poverty. The high dropout and mass illiteracy has a high correlation with the high crime rate in the society. This calls for the task on the part of the government of opting to equip millions of Nigerian youths with a minimum level of formal education and more emphasis on vocational education. This gave birth to the launching of Universal Basic Education (UBE) by General Olusegun Obasanjo in September 1999 in Sokoto. This program also attracted the interest of the World Bank who volunteered to sponsor it. It was even decided to extend the program beyond primary school to Junior Secondary School. As conceptualized by the government, the UBE will also be executed along with the mass literacy program. According to Guardian Newspaper of July 5, 2000, the program is expected to graduate 40 million adults in eight years at the rate of 5 million per year. In 2003, the United Nations launched another war against illiteracy at all levels. Despite mismanagement of funds invested in it by the UN, the program continued to attract attention. The aim is to gather together adults for non-formal education and education for all by the year 2015 to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals 4 (SDG4),  aimed at self-empowerment and self-reliance.

Curriculum to meet the needs of children through UBE was advocated for. But this calls for the issue of mobilizing people in some parts of the country to accept and participate in the UBE, mass literacy and nomadic program. Campaigns were carried out in Rivers State for migrant fishermen in 1986; and in Borno State in (1980) for nomadic Fulani to phase out illiteracy. The fruits of this were not encouraging in that out of 15 million children that registered, only 3 million children succeeded, over 4,000 enrolled but only 2,910 graduated. Research revealed lack of funding and language barrier as the cause. This calls for the need of Mother Tongue to reaching the mass at grassroots level. Other efforts made are introduction of 270 centers  for mass literacy in Kaduna State in 1987 by Suleiman Kuru Commission; lessening nomadic education in farming period for the total eradication of illiteracy.  Still many did not go to school.             

Dr. Dayo Olagunji, the National Chairman for Mass Literacy, formal and non-formal education commission in a recent TV interview lamented the National Survey 52% literacy rate in Nigeria. This is used to measure our rate of development among other nations in the world. The E-9 has about 60% illiteracy in the world. How much have been voted? The problem of funding is there. The Centre facilitator is paid as little as N600 per month. No progress has been recorded so far as less than 1million enroll in a year. There is more of language failure in Nigeria’s education system than academic failure.

Effective Strategy of Teaching and Learning of Mother Tongue

The key  word  is strategy or method.  In a layman’s dictionary, strategy is the way or means by which an event or thing is handled in order to achieve an objective and get maximum result or outcome. Coming down the lane as this topic is concerned, what is the best method that can be used to teach and learn indigenous languages all over the world for sustainable development and achievement of Education 2030 Agenda? 

As we have all agreed that language failure and barrier is the bane of UBE program, some measures have to be used to improve the teaching of Mother Tongue. This could be done through the method or methods used in teaching and learning indigenous languages.

There are many methods of teaching languages. Some have fallen into relative obscurity while  others are widely used in various language classrooms; still others are sparingly used, but offer useful insight. The methods and approaches suitable for teaching mother tongue could be classified under functional and interactive views. While the functional view sees language as a vehicle to express or accomplish a certain function, such as requesting something, the interactive view sees language as a vehicle for the creation and maintenance of social relations, focusing on patterns of moves, acts, negotiation and interaction found in conversational exchanges. This interactive view has been fairly dominant since the 1980s.  

The functional methods include the Oral Approach and Situational language teaching and Directed practice. Whereas the Interactive methods consist of Direct method, Linguistic approaches to MT teaching and learning, Learning MT in Context, Communicative language teaching, the Series method, Language immersion, Silent way, Community language teaching, Autosuggestion, Natural approach, Total physical response, Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling, Dogme language teaching, Growing Participator Approach. The effective use of instructional media in teaching MT, use of  Information Communication Technology through Online / E-learning in Mother Tongue (MT) teaching and learning and  the integration of the four language skills in MT teaching and learning are also effective strategies for teaching and learning Mother Tongue.

 Conclusion:  Efforts are being made to evolve other modern methodologies to be used to impact the various indigenous languages for a sustainable development. The sustainable development goals and e-portfolio are geared towards the ultimate purpose of education which is to improve the quality of life of our children, community and the world at large. It is in this spirit of service that the use of indigenous languages gained would be used to address local need and share it globally.

                                            

                                                 References

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Fafunwa, B.A. (1974). History of  education in Nigeria. London: George Allen.

Fafunwa, A. B. ( 1989). Using national languages in education : A challenge to African education. In African thoughts on on the prospects of education for all (pp. 97-110). Dakar, Senegal: UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Africa.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/language_pedagogy#Methodology