This is an interesting article on why Rwanda has decided to switch from French to English language instruction in all schools. The decision is partially based on global economic realities, where English is the “lingua franca”, but also based on political motivations.
The central African state says its switch to teaching in English is aimed at increasing access to the global economy and is not linked to fraught relations with its former colonial master
Chris McGreal
Friday 16 January 2009
Guardian Weekly
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/16/rwanda-english-genocide
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France has long claimed Rwanda as part of its francophone fold even though there is only one language common to all citizens of the tiny central African nation — the indigenous Kinyarwanda — and only a minority of the population speak passable French.
But now Paris will not even be able to make that claim after the Rwandan government announced an ambitious plan to switch the entire education system to English and effectively purge the country of French as it is forced out of the workings of government.
Thousands of teachers have already been taught rudimentary English as schools begin a rapid switchover to using the language for tuition in a few core subjects. The intention is to change the entire system within a few years and raise a generation of Rwandans fluent in English.
Officially the move is intended to strengthen Rwanda’s ties to its English-speaking east African neighbours, including Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, with which it does much of its trade. Kigali has also drawn closer to the US and Britain in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide. The UK is now the single largest donor to Rwanda, providing nearly half of its foreign aid, while Kigali has applied to join the Commonwealth though the country was never a British colony.
“Really it is not choosing English for its own sake,” said Claver Yisa, the director of policy planning at the education ministry. “This is a way to make Rwanda to be equal, to use English. English is now a world language, especially in trade and commerce. Rwanda is trying to attract foreign investors — most of these people are speaking English.
“It’s choosing English as a medium of instruction so we Rwandans of today, and more importantly of tomorrow, will be able to benefit. If Spanish or any other language could get us to that, no problem. If Kinyarwanda could get us to that, that would be marvellous. It is not English for its own sake.”
But there is little doubt that the decision to change the way a nation speaks has its roots in the still bitter legacy of Paris’s role in the genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsi population, which has seen the expulsion of the French ambassador and the closure of the French cultural centre, international school and radio station in Kigali.
At the heart of the dispute are attempts by each side to pin moral responsibility on the other for the murder of 800,000 Tutsis by extremist Hutus.
France’s leading anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguière, has accused Rwanda’s Tutsi president, Paul Kagame, and other leaders of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) that overthrew the genocidal regime, of prompting the slaughter by assassinating the Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana. A more widely accepted view is that Habyarimana was killed by Hutu extremists who then seized power.
Rwanda for its part has accused more than 30 French politicians, officials and military officers of supporting the genocidal regime, including the late president, François Mitterrand.
English was made an official language in Rwanda, alongside French and Kinyarwanda, after the RPF took power in 1994, because many of the RPF’s leaders are Tutsis who grew up in exile in English-speaking Uganda and Tanzania. Among them is Rwanda’s education minister, Daphrosa Gahakwa, who took O levels in Uganda and studied at the University of East Anglia in England.
But the switch to English dominance is a huge undertaking in a country where more than 95% of schools teach in French to pupils from about the age of nine.
“The problem we are expecting is not with the children,” said Yisa. “The children can always learn. The problem is the teachers, but we have already started training some teachers with English.”
Rwanda has 31,000 primary school teachers of whom about 4,700 have been trained in English. Of the 12,000 secondary school teachers — only about half of all Rwandan children move beyond primary education — just 600 have been taught the language they will soon be expected to teach in.
“That’s not a big number but we are now working on an accelerated programme to train teachers in a mass. Where do we find the people to train them? We are looking around in neighbouring countries, even beyond. We have the British Council ready to come in. Having all the world speaking English, I think it is not difficult to get people to come and teach us,” said Yisa.
Schools will become bilingual and will teach some subjects in English and others in French as capacity is built up. “We are starting with those subjects which are really not that difficult in terms of language — mathematics, sciences. We will wait for history or arts subjects that need a lot of language for explanation and description,” said Yisa.
“The intention is to do it as fast as possible. In the first year it will be a bit of a problem but as people get trained, as teachers graduate from the college of education having started in English, and they go to school conversant in English, things will be moving faster.”
Instruction at Kigali’s elite Institute of Science and Technology is already in English and it is increasingly the language of the national university.
Yisa, who grew up in Tanzania, denies there is any political element to the subordination of French. He also denies that the move will leave franco-phone Hutus at a disadvantage to anglophone Tutsis.
“We have a common language: Kinyarwanda. This is really a rare benefit. Cabinet meetings are in Kinyarwanda because some ministers speak English and some speak French. Anyone going to a government office can speak Kinyarwanda. Now if you want to do business with foreigners that’s a different matter,” he said.
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