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

In Thailand, participation in schooling is almost universal and therefore almost all people acquire basiceducation. It was found that learning Pwo Karen gave those individuals who were already learning Thaia better understanding and appreciation of both the Thai language and their own local ethnic culture.Project organizers have addressed the issue of imparting mother tongue literacy and formalizing theuse of mother tongue as the medium of instruction in the early years of schooling as the next step sothat the pilot project does not become just a one-time effort with no follow up. This is definitely possibleif the enthusiasm and involvement of the community members is any indication. However, it wouldrequire changes in school education policy and readiness on the part of the official authorities to yieldspace for such innovative efforts.In the formal school setting, teaching through mother tongue was reported to have influenced learning,in general, and to have established a better foundation for lifelong education, in particular. Additionally,the programmes have also highlighted several benefits that were not easily measurable: they haveundoubtedly contributed to the well-being of the participants by instilling self-esteem and by improvingboth social and economic quality of life.Deriving Lessons from the Action ProjectsThe seven mother tongue literacy programme case studies represent efforts made in widely varyingcontexts in Asia. The variation is not only in terms of the linguistic context, but also with respect tovarying political and social parameters. That most of the seven action projects have been carried outwith specific ethnic and linguistic minority groups adds further value to the efforts. Projects have beenimplemented in varying policy environments – some supportive and some indifferent, even thoughall the projects were implemented with full involvement of concerned officials. Do these experimentalefforts hold lessons for implementing similar programmes in other countries or in other regions, perhapswith different linguistic minority groups within a country? Are these efforts sustainable and could theybe scaled up? In this section, we shall try to address these and other similar issues. However, at theoutset, it should be noted that these are relatively small-scale efforts carried out for a limited time period.Therefore, they may not fully answer all the issues on imparting education through mother tongue orteaching mother tongue literacy. However, they certainly help gain insight into the dynamics involved inimplementing such programmes. The observations made here should be viewed from this perspective.The projects have clearly demonstrated that, with some support from the Government and withcooperation from the community, such programmes can be implemented in relatively remote locationsand under difficult circumstances. They have also demonstrated how much the ethnic communitiesvalue their linguistic and cultural heritage. This is very clear from the overwhelming support andcooperation received in all the project sites from local community members. The question it raises is:Are the Governments ready to take forward the experiments which have fully demonstrated their valuefor the individual participants as well as for the society as a whole?The projects have illustrated implementation of bilingual mother tongue literacy programmes in twodistinct contexts – formal schools addressing children in the early years of education and non-formaleducation programmes that mostly address adult literacy needs. The non-formal programmes allowfor greater flexibility in incorporating local contexts and contents because they do not have to bestrictly comparable to a nationally-prescribed curriculum. The value of these efforts lies in their capacityto impact the life of the adults directly. They help revive and record the rich cultural heritage of the[ 23 ]