You believe in mother tongue literacy! You know it is important. But have you ever thought about why?
If you learned to read in the language you already KNOW and USE every day, you have personal experience that it works! Even if your mother tongue (the language you learned to speak with those closest to you) is English. Two things to agree on:
What is your mother tongue?
It might be your mom’s language. It might be your dad’s language! It might be the language that you use all the time when you are relaxed – sharing ideas, celebrating and even crying. It’s the easiest language to get mad in! It’s the language you use to comfort a child. It is often a language of love and compassion and community.
Everyone has a FIRST language (L1 in education jargon). Hopefully, everyone also has a right to think and reason in his own language! Even as an immigrant in a new country, I needed my OWN language to process the world around me! I needed to share my ideas and questions with people who understood me. I learned a new language in a new country, but I used my own language and experience as a human being to learn about a new community.
What is literacy?
The short answer is “learning to read.” We just need to agree on what reading is. “Sounding out words” is part of it. You learn that words are made of chunks of sounds that are represented by letters. You “decode” the letters to build a word. When you put it all together, you “hear” the word – when you say it, or in your head. We could say you “read the word”. Go ahead. Here’s a word:
Sesquipedalian
Congratulations! You just read a word!
There is actually a reason that A is for apple in most of America. Everyone knows what an apple is! So you can easily relate the A sound to the word you know from the world you know. A. Apple. It sticks!
Sometimes schools get creative and do things like A is for Aardvark. It is cute and funny. But some of the kids in the classroom don’t know what an aardvark is when they first get to school. Usually the teacher will ask, “Who can tell us what an aardvark is?” and call on some kid whose parents flood his world with books about nature or quirky stories or he’s really into the Nature Channel or Sesame Street had a sketch on aardvarks. The teacher knows that not ALL kids have run into aardvarks, so she will make an effort to bring them up to speed.
When the words you sound out don’t make any sense, you have to work extra hard to read.
In some parts of the world, it is common to demand that kids ONLY speak the school language on the school grounds. Even if kids have NEVER spoken this language before. Even if EVERYONE at the school is actually from a community that speaks another language! Seems reasonable- you want them to “learn faster” and “be fluent”. What you are telling them is that their language, thoughts and feelings are not important. Most of the time, the teacher isn’t required to “bring them up to speed.” It is a “sink or swim” environment, and it is brutal!
When our books are published and sent to communities in their mother tongue, we are sending the message that they are just as important as speakers of the BIG languages of the world. Maybe they will use an international language like Portuguese or English to get further education. But they CAN and SHOULD have the option to think, debate, and LEARN in a language their whole world is built on. After all, God created each of us with unique gifts and beauty! I believe he even created each culture and language to reflect a special beauty about Himself!
“All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord; they will bring glory to your name.”
Psalms 86:9