Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

198 Language Planning and Education
10. One source of evidence is the success of experimental programmes using local languages
as media of instruction (e.g. in Mozambique). Yet even here, caution in interpretation is
necessary, for it is notoriously difficult to replicate the success of an experimental program
across the whole of an education system, the reason being that experimental programs tend to
be so nurtured with attention and resources that they are, in Crossley’s (1984: 84) words,
‘doomed to success’.
11. The overwhelming dominance of English in published academic writing and the
problems of elaborating indigenous national languages have tended to render efforts to
dislodge the former colonial language from its role at this level very difficult. In the great
majority of African post-colonial states, therefore, the former colonial language remains the
medium of education at university.
12. Most private universities already operated through English medium.
13. Regrettably, space constraints disallow any more detailed consideration of this important
phenomenon. For a review of official attitudes to classroom CS, and of its merits as a
pedagogical resource, see Ferguson (2003). For an overview of research on classroom CS, see
Martin-Jones (1995).