Language Planning and the Medium-of-Instruction Conundrum in Africa

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the issue of the medium of instruction, especially mother tongue education, understood as education through the medium of an African language, for it has been at the heart of the language question in the African continent. The chapter contrasts Western and African perspectives to and notes the double standards in the debate around the issue of mother tongue education. From a Western perspective, the very concept of mother tongue education must be abandoned because it is essentialist. On the other hand, however, mother tongue education is the norm in many Western countries. Following Walter (The Handbook of Educational Linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), as well as citing the existence of strong empirical evidence supporting mother tongue education, the chapter argues that the debate around mother tongue education “should not be subordinated to issues of political sensitivity, technical difficulties, economic limitations, societal tensions, and the established practice and inertia of national educational systems.” Rather, applied linguists, in Africa in particular, have a responsibility to refocus the debate, with the intent of exploring how African mother tongues and former colonial languages can coexist productively in the continent’s educational systems, as the proposed Prestige Planning (see Chap. 7) framework suggests.