Mother Tongue-based Literacy Programmes: Case Studies of Good ...

“If we stop using our language, it will be the end of our culture and tradition and we will loose all ouridentity as the Tharus of Nepal.” These are the words of anguish and anxiety expressed by a native languagefacilitator in Nepal. In Nepal, the languages of minority ethnic people have remained unconsidered andunderdeveloped for many years. Monolingualism practiced in school instruction continues to pose aserious threat to children from ethnically diverse contexts and conditions. ‘Tharus’ constitute a subsectionof the larger indigenous group called Kirant, who belong to the marginalized category of Nepal’spopulation. According to Nepal’s 2001 Census, there are 1,533,879 ethnic Tharu (6.75% of Nepal’s totalpopulation) of which 1,331,546 speak one of the seven Tharu dialects as a mother tongue. In recentyears, there has been increased concern for the difficulties faced by minority language groups, and someattempts have been made to develop curriculum material in several of these languages. It is within thiscontext that the Tharu Mother Tongue Literacy project has been initiated.Thailand has 13.8 percent of its population who speak ethnic languages not related to the nationallanguage, namely, Central Thai. It is estimated that there are still around 74 living languages spokenby different ethnic groups in the country. With the Thai language as the sole medium of instruction inschools, very little opportunities are available for children to learn their mother tongue if they belong toany of the minority ethnic groups. In fact, the Thailand’s EFA report for 2005 indicated that a very largenumber of children who are “out of school” are from ethnic minority groups. It is in this context that thecurrent bilingual education programme for two Omkoi villages of Pwo Karen people in the mountainousnorthern province of Chiang Mai is taking place. This project has enjoyed a high level of enthusiasm bothat the grassroots level and nationally, and has served as a model of success for duplication elsewhere inThailand.Although Indonesians speak more than 700 languages across the country, the country has one languageof unification, Bahasa Indonesia. This said, mother tongue languages do continue to play an importantrole in Indonesian life as a valuable part of Indonesia’s cultural heritage. Even though the overallliteracy level and school participation rates in Indonesia are reasonably good, Kampung Cibago hasa very low functional literacy rate and relatively poor access to formal education. The native languagespoken in this area is Sundanese, which has a long historical base. These contextual factors providedthe ideal background for intiating the Functional Literacy through the Mother Tongue programme inSundanese.The brief description of the contexts and conditions in which the action studies were implementedhighlights that even though all the projects had a common agenda, namely, designing and experimentingwith a programme of imparting mother tongue literacy, they had to contend with wide diversity forselecting the language and location within the country. In more than one way, the action projects couldbe characterized as efforts bound integrally to the local contexts. This makes it virtually impossibleto attempt any synthesis of the experiences generated through them. In fact, true lessons from thestudies lie in their uniqueness of contexts and contents. Even the design and choice of the target group(children or adults) as well as the mode of organization (formal or non-formal) were dictated by localconsiderations. Bearing this in mind, as already mentioned, this synthesis does not attempt to makeany generalized observations; instead it attempts to capture the variety of mother tongue programmedesign and implementation by presenting snapshots of the action projects’ different dimensions.[ 12 ]