A teacher in Papua New Guinea identified the same problem. He described the confusion, and even fear that young students feel when they do not understand their teacher’ s words:
During my teaching times I saw that a lot of children were kind of confused. They were just coming out of the village where their mother and father spoke to them in their home language. And then, here I was, standing like a giant over these small young children and talking to them in a strange language. I was frightening them, rather than encouraging them to learn( Rambai Keruwa, quoted in D. Malone, 2004, p. 17).
Of course, some children from minority language communities do eventually learn the official school language very well. Those students complete their education and integrate successfully with society outside their home area. However, when the official school language is the only language they can use in the classroom and when lessons focus only on the dominant society, what happens to their relationship with their home community? The sad result is that many children from minority language communities are forced to abandon their cultural heritage in order to get an education. In 1985, when researchers asked one parent from Papua New Guinea to describe the situation for his child, this is what he said:
When children go to school, they go to an alien place. They leave their parents, they leave their gardens, they leave everything that is their way of life. They sit in a classroom and they learn things that have nothing to do with their own place. Later, because they have learned only other things, they reject their own( Delpit and Kemmelfield, 1985, pp. 29-30).
Unfortunately, even after many years, many children in minority language communities face the same situation as those children in Papua New Guinea.
Q2
What is Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education( MTB MLE) and how does it help children from minority language communities do well in school?
MTB MLE is based on the foundational principle of all good education: We learn when we can use what we already know to help us understand what is new. MTB MLE teachers realize that young students’ MT and the knowledge and experience they bring from home provide the best foundation for helping them learn new things in school.
Here is an example of the way that an MTB MLE teacher applies this principle to help her students understand a new Math lesson.
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