Mother Tongue-based Literacy Programmes: Case Studies of Good ...

On the Selection of Language and LocationIn Mondulkiri Province, Cambodia, minority groups make up 80 percent of the population. The largestgroups among them are the ethnic Bunong, who speak the Bunong language and have a semi-nomadiclifestyle. This lifestyle seems to have adversely affected their pursuit of education and, consequently,Mondulkiri has remained the province with the lowest literacy rates in Cambodia. The formal schoolsystem in the province where national language is used as the medium of instruction is graduallyimproving; yet Bunong children who attend formal school know very little spoken Khmer. This hasresulted in high student attrition and repetition rates. That the Bunong children contribute only anestimated 20 percent to the student population in both lower and upper secondary schools illustratesthis alarming situation. Keeping in view these circumstances, the mother tongue literacy project decidedto focus on the task of addressing the educational needs of those who failed to benefit from the formalschool through mother tongue.In Bangladesh, a survey done among the Oraon ethnic group found that Sadri and Kurukh were themain languages of Oraons; in fact, Sadri is the mother tongue for a majority of them. Understandingthis, the action project was launched in Agholpur Oraon village under Godagari sub-district, where theaverage rate of literacy is 27.6 percent (32.3% among males and 22.6% among females). The primaryobjective of the action project revolved around setting up a laboratory school for the Oraon childrenand developing mother language education materials in Sadri.The Rabha language project in India is located in the predominantly agrarian district of Goalpara inthe southwestern part of Assam. The Rabha are the fifth largest ethnic community among the 23 listedcommunities of that state. This community is divided into eleven sub-classes, and among them onlythree sub-classes have retained their language. The other sub-classes have adopted the dominantregional language, Assamese, as their mother tongue. Through the survey conducted for the mothertongue project, it was found that a sizeable number of Rabha people had refused to join the literacyclasses earlier because they were in Assamese. Thus, Rabha became a natural choice for organizing thepilot project in mother tongue literacy for adults through a programme of non-formal education.The Kam literacy project was initiated in China’s Rongjiang County, Guizhou Province. Two factorsprompted the choice of location and language. First, it was strongly felt that larger social and economicforces encompassing the country were eroding much of the Kam language and culture that forms thefoundation of Kam traditional society. Secondly, a large number of Kam students have been unableto complete secondary schools and enter the university portals. Thus, the mother tongue project wasbased on two learning needs identified for Kam children: (1) the need to acquire Kam literacy prior tobeing introduced to Chinese literacy, and (2) the need to learn enough oral Chinese prior to Grade 1 inorder to help them “bridge” into Chinese literacy later. Given this background, the project focused onexperimenting with a bilingual literacy programme in two Kam preschools and two primary schools. Itis envisaged that the programme would be extended to more schools at a later stage.The literacy project in Nepal targeted the Tharu ethnic group, which makes up approximately 38 percentof the total population of Dang district’s 386,066 people. Though the average literacy rate for this district,located in mid-western Nepal, is 57.7 percent, literacy and levels of education among the Tharus remainvery low. Thus, the main objective of the project was to impart literacy to adult illiterate groups in theTharu language. The focus was on functional literacy so that the learners could use the skills as part of[ 13 ]