Our Language

My language: Vernacular

This topic came to me as a result of a drama on the radio. The topic was on how there was mass failure in the results of students who sat for their school leaving exams. The drama involved about for actors and was an interesting experience! The actors were representatives of the major languages in Nigeria: Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba while the fourth act was the moderator. The debate that ensured suggested that local dialects be used to teach kids in school based on a survey conducted in one of the universities in south-west Nigeria! A lecture was given in two different rooms! Some students were taught in English and the others were taught in their dialect. After the lecture, a test was conducted and it was discovered that students taught in their dialect scored higher than students who were taught in English.

The Hausa man’s contention was that his son came home looking confused and when asked what happened, the poor boy said he was told to look for ‘x’ and that he didn’t know where it went to or how to find it.

The Yoruba man said his kid was punished and made to pay a token for speaking his dialect in class. Saying how can you call our dialect vernacular, English should be the vernacular.

The Igbo man said all he was concerned was for his son to be able to buy and trade stuffs very well so he didn’t understand why they didn’t leave his kid with simple arithmetic and leave the x, y, z, formula out of the whole teaching.

My view is that it would be fantastic for such an event to happen but it would cause segregation of the young children from different ethnic group! So pidgin would be a preferable teaching language.

Oh! by the way happy 51^st independence Nigeria!!!