I just have to say that I'm quite proud of myself today. I figured out how to fix a towel bar in one of the guesthouse rooms today! It feels good to be able to be self-sufficient and do things on your own sometimes.
Of course, my nieghbor came over after work this evening and had a little chat. She was feeling happy because she helped immunize 300 children today against polio and other crazy child-killing diseases that they have here. So she saved the lives of 300 children. I put up a towel bar.
Oh well, like I've said before, we all have our own part to play in rebuilding this country!
I also worked on my presentation that I'll be doing about mother tongue education to a group of Christian educators next week. I hope that it will be a good conversation starter so that people start thinking about the HUGE issue of language in education. It seems that people, even teachers from "outside", still just assume that "education" = "english".
I'm trying to convince them that learning in their mother tongue FIRST is actually a much more educationally sound policy! People keep talking about "access to education", but they fail to realize that no matter how many schools you build, if the children can't actually understand what their teacher is telling them, or what's written in their textbooks, that they don't have any access to education.
But I won't get started here. It's definitely my soap-box of the year! If any of you want to know more about this topic... I have a few articles that I can email you :)
2 comments:
So this is the question I'm chewing on: Why is learning the local language better? Having one culture/language makes economic sense - only having to publish in 1 language is cheaper. End cultural diversity and we end cultural conflict...
Or maybe that's just Pres. Isaias talking...
Well, actually, good ol' Isaias (at least, his official party line!) promotes unity through diversity... and the development of the local languages :) It's one thing that gov't is actually doing RIGHT! Forcing Amharic as the one official language was one of the catalysts to the whole "Struggle".
Teaching FIRST in one's mother tongue does not rule out learning a second (or third or fourth!) language to be a common language. It actually makes the transition to that other language a whole lot easier and allows learners to better develop their cognitive abilities before dumping them into a second language situation.
Really, if you want to see some of the research, I can email you a few articles...!
Or were you being facetious in your question :D
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