Language policy and education in South Africa: An alternative view of the position of English and African Languages

Abstract

South African educators are faced with a unique challenge and opportunity to analyse the interface between language policies and social transformation and develop new attitudes to language teaching within the context of the current schooling crisis. Critical issues that need to be considered are discriminatory practices with regards to language learning and teaching, the training of teachers to implement mother-tongue- education in the foundation phase, educational policy as political symbolism versus change in classroom language practices and the impact of the political/economic climate on the dominance of English in postcolonial contexts. The controversies and (in)sensitivities of the imperatives for the foregrounding of English as language of teaching and learning will be interrogated.