Language choice in education: a politics of persuasion

Albaugh, Ericka A.

doi:10.1017/s0022278x06002266

Cited by 26 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…It has recently been deemed an unsuccessful initiative because of a lack of preparation for teachers and lack of local specificity. Also created in the 1970s were national language schools which are currently increasing in popularity in sub-Saharan Africa (see Albaugh, 2007;Trudell and Schroeder, 2007). 21.…”

Section: Seeking Integration In Education Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pounding Millet During School Hours: Obstacles to Girls’ Formal Education in Niger

Hartmann-Mahmud

2011

Eur J Dev Res

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Based on in-depth interviews with Nigerien women, this article demonstrates that while they value formal schooling for their girls, they are discouraged by the incompatibility between boko (formal schooling) and the important values transmitted by tarbiyya (education in the home) and mahamadiya (Islamic education). I argue that these tensions arise from a system of education that is not rooted in context. In the colonial era, education was a means of assimilation to the colonizer's values. More recently, neocolonial education projects serve the development theory of the moment and they tend to emphasize increased enrollment for girls without focusing on quality and content of that education. While the system imparts important skills such as literacy and numeracy, the more intrinsic goals of education such as empowerment and identity formation are not emphasized because, I argue, formal education does not reflect the social, cultural, religious and material context of most Nigeriens' everyday lives. The ideas about educational reform, in Niger and in other Muslim countries, show that boko is not inherently incompatible with tarbiyya and mahamadiya, and that intrinsic goals of education can be met only by reconciling them.S'appuyant sur des entretiens approfondis avec des femmes nige´riennes, cet article montre que ces dernie`res attachent bien de l'importance a`l'e´ducation formelle de leur filles, mais qu'elles sont de´courage´es par l'incompatibilite´entre boko (l'instruction formelle), et les valeurs importantes transmises par tarbiyya (l'e´ducation familiale) et mahamadiya (l'e´ducation islamique). Je soutiens que ces tensions sont dues au fait que le syste`me d'e´ducation est trop peu contextualise´. Pendant la pe´riode coloniale l'e´ducation e´tait un outil d'assimilation des valeurs colonisatrices. De nos jours, les projets e´ducationnels ne´o-coloniaux sont mis au service de la the´orie du de´veloppement du moment et tendent a`mettre l'accent sur la scolarisation des filles sans se pre´occuper de la qualite´et du contenu de l'enseignement dispense´. Si le syste`me permet de transmettre des compe´tences importantes telles que la lecture, l'e´criture et le calcul, il met peu l'accent sur les buts intrinse`ques de l'e´ducation tels que l'autonomisation et la construction identitaire. Ceci est duˆau fait que l'e´ducation formelle ne refle`te pas le contexte social, culturel, religieux et mate´riel de la vie quotidienne de la plupart des Nige´riens. Les re´flexions courantes a`propos de la re´forme e´ducationnelle, tant au Niger que dans d'autres pays musulmans, sugge`rent que boko n'est pas en soi incompatible avec tarbiyya et mahamadiya et que les buts intrinse`ques de l'e´ducation ne peuvent eˆtre atteints qu'en conciliant ces trois formes.

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Section: Seeking Integration In Education Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pounding Millet During School Hours: Obstacles to Girls’ Formal Education in Niger

Hartmann-Mahmud

2011

Eur J Dev Res

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“…The British, on the other hand, managed Northern and Southern Cameroons alongside Nigeria, opting for Indirect Rule. Under the British system, primary school students studied in their native languages during the first few years of schooling and later switched to English-medium education in higher grades (Albaugh 2007). The shadows of these two colonial systems are reflected heavily in the language policies of former British and French colonies in Africa as Anglophone states tend to prefer some form of nativelanguage education while Francophone states opt for French alone.…”

Section: Colonial Effect On Cameroonian Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

"Ewondo in the Classes, French for the Masses"

Henry

2018

IUJUR

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Cameroon is home to over two hundred eighty native languages coming from three language families, making it one of the most linguistically diverse countries on Earth. Despite this, native languages hold very few domains in Cameroonian society. In recent years, several experimental programs have begun to implement native languages in schools, citing that children learn best in their mother tongue. Among these schools is ELAN-Afrique, an initiative put forth by La Francophonie with the main aim of helping students better learn French by way of their mother tongue. This paper seeks to differentiate the benefits prescribed or expected by ELAN leadership from the actual benefits occurring at one Ewondo-medium ELAN school in Yaoundé. The study includes a series of twenty interviews with program leadership, linguists, and NGOs, as well as teachers and parents of students enrolled in the program. Claims made in interviews were then validated or refuted by classroom observation. The program’s main flaw is the assumption that the students’ mother tongue is Ewondo when in reality, due to their urban upbringing, the students’ mother tongue is French. This causes the reality of the program to differ fundamentally from the expectations of La Francophonie as some predicted benefits are negated, some manifest differently than expected, and other benefits appear never having been predicted.

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“…This shift is a combination of a transformation in causal ideas and a shift in expectations of France’s reaction. The first element is motivated by domestic actors—a group I have labeled elsewhere an evidentiary community (Albaugh 2007). These advocates, like the scholarly community in the case of France, worked strategically to persuade African policymakers of the same causal idea: that children will learn French better if they begin in their mother tongue.…”

Section: Power Sovereignty and Policy Changementioning

confidence: 99%

“…And the preferences of African policymakers certainly have a bearing on outcomes, too. Their fundamental preferences, particularly their cause‐effect understandings about local language medium education—have been altered in similar ways by the work of NGOs and local linguists in their countries (Albaugh 2007).…”

Section: Power Sovereignty and Policy Changementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most interesting aspect of this expansion is that it is confined almost exclusively within Francophone Africa. I have shown elsewhere (Albaugh 2007) that this is partially a result of NGOs and local linguists in Francophone Africa working to alter government and public opinion about African languages as useful media of instruction. But the policy changes would not have been attempted in the decades before 1990.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Colonial Image Reversed: Language Preferences and Policy Outcomes in African Education

Albaugh¹

2009

International Studies Quarterly

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Once viewing African languages as competitors to French, policymakers in France now welcome these languages openly in African schools. This is a dramatic policy reversal, and it contradicts expectations of path dependency and policy inertia. The policymakers’ conversion can be traced to the writing and advocacy of a strategic scholarly community, which began exercising influence over the leadership of France and la Francophonie in the 1990s. Their influence changed the perception of French leaders regarding the utility of local languages in education and caused them to include this element consistently in their education strategy for Africa. In contrast, a lack of comparable agreement within the intellectual communities of the Anglophone world has led to ambivalence in support for mother tongue education emanating from dominant English‐speaking states. Unlike traditional accounts of epistemic communities, this study highlights the strategic political activity of scholars. The major focus is on the process of idea change among policy makers in France. I suggest that this idea change altered the field of permissible options for African leaders, revealing a continued ideational dependency between metropole and periphery.

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Language choice in education: a politics of persuasion

Cited by 26 publications

References 10 publications

Pounding Millet During School Hours: Obstacles to Girls’ Formal Education in Niger

Pounding Millet During School Hours: Obstacles to Girls’ Formal Education in Niger

"Ewondo in the Classes, French for the Masses"

The Colonial Image Reversed: Language Preferences and Policy Outcomes in African Education

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