Paper short abstract:

Mother tongue education is said to be best to the child. But what do parents think about this practice? The paper investigates language attitudes towards mother-tongue education in Uganda and provides a new perspective to educational language policies in Africa.

Paper long abstract:

As a marker of identity, mother tongue education is considered to be of great importance: First, it is seen as everyone's right and secondly it is said that children perform better at school if they are taught in their mother tongue (cf. Campbell-Makini 2000; Phillipson, Rannut & Skutnabb-Kangas 1995, McGregor 2002).

From a heuristic approach of language attitudes the paper investigates people's attitudes towards mother tongue education in Uganda and argues that some approaches might be considered neocolonialist. The poor outcome of the evaluation of the performance of Ugandan pupils initiated a pilot programme in Uganda to enforce mother tongue education in primary schools: The project introduced the mother tongue as the language of instruction for the first three years of schooling (ct. NCDC 2006).

But many parents did not appreciate this concept: It is rather regarded as a means to hinder their children's progress and career.

English is seen as a language of power and success. The mother tongue is considered to be a marker of ethnic identity. In schools, however, it is regarded as a way to prevent their children's progress: "You try to make sure that our children remain backward" (interview Uganda, 2008). The paper investigates the academic claim for mother tongue education from a people's perspective and provides an alternative approach to educational language policies in Africa.