Eswatini: 3rd Term report 2019

Eswatini: 3rd Term report 2019

students in class [file pic]

An Admission of Failure

The recent announcement by the Prime Minister of Eswatini that English Language will no longer be a required passing subject in schools is a huge admission of failure, a throwing-up of hands, reflecting a huge decline in standards both in the national school system and in our wider society. It appears to solve a problem but in reality it's a way of saying 'Problem? There's no problem!' which is our government's favourite way of dealing with issues.

I can imagine that a lot of students awaiting the results of the recent round of examinations are smiling, saying, "Hey, it's easier to pass school now." Quite so. But will it help to get a job? No. Because there are no jobs. And lowering requirements won't help to create jobs. What is currently needed in our brave new world are school graduates with multiple language skills: I've long argued that students should be studying at least 3 languages in school if they are to be competitive in the workplace [my suggestion for eSwatini is siSwati, English and Portuguese].

The buzz words these days are entrepreneur, start-up, portfolio and e-commerce: there's a general consensus that if you really want a job you will most likely need to create one.

And how do you become an entrepreneur? What is a start-up? How do you build a portfolio?

Studies have demonstrated that a prerequisite for entrepreneurial thinking is a population that reads.  And our population mostly doesn't. (Do you remember those block-like things that have pictures on the cover, a blurb on the back, and no navigation buttons or batteries? We used to call them books.) So how will lowering language requirements and standards help us? Obviously, it won't; rather, it will exacerbate the problem--we're digging a big hole here. Of course, the rot was previously encouraged by the decision to dumb down the teaching of English by making English a 'second-language' in schools: ie, it's taught as a foreign language, which is a much easier syllabus. 

In short, the teaching of English has become a political issue when it's actually a practical one. There's a suggestion that we start learning Mandarin; it's a valid idea; but did you know that there's more English spoken in China and India than in America? And considering how important China and India are becoming in our world, that is something to seriously ponder.

It's not about English, or siSwati, or Mandarin, or French or any of our babel-tongues: it's about communicating. If you plug a printer directly into a computer, will it just work? It will work only if the printer and computer understand each other. Technically, you might say the computer needs the right driver. If the printer software and the computer software understand each other, then it will work. 

Here's another way to look at it. Recently an African e-commerce platform was launched. So you sit down, come up with a business plan, and register a website domain. You want to sell your product to as many people and in as many markets as possible, so what language will you use for your website? A sensible approach would be to choose a widely-spoken language. Currently that list doesn't include siSwati; I wish it did but it doesn't. So announcing that English is no longer a required passing subject is a political statement, not a practical one. Politicians have a habit of clouding or dodging issues. Language has always been seen as a political issue but it really isn't; it's an emotional issue, and I expect this recent announcement to be popular. But if we are to turn around our moribund economy we need to start working on it now. We don't need to make everything easier, we need to roll up our sleeves and start learning skills. We should be upping our standards, not dumbing them down.