Promote English, French in nursery and primary schools

Editor, Reference is made to Victor Visathan’s article, “Of bachelor’s degrees, and project management jobs” (The New Times, February 16). The author clearly explained Rwandans’ resilience in refugee camps in 1960s. And the positive results of this resilience can be observed today worldwide. However, in the last paragraphs he missed many points by comparing the current Rwandan situation with the past. Admittedly, students’ failure stem from several factors such as wrong choice of subjects, teaching staff or learning environment—their efforts and intelligence can be the last contributing aspect to failure. Writing a thesis in English and defend it Kinyarwanda could be a conundrum for Rwandan official language in the future, because, like many others, students tend to speak a concoction of French, English and Kinyarwanda—and this is a barrier to master any spoken language. A good number of stakeholders, especially teachers, should be blamed for this occurrence, not students. Butare ************************* My honest opinion on this topic is that bachelor’s degree holders in Rwanda today are half baked. Reasons for this include unqualified teachers in secondary schools, while language inefficiency is also a major factor even as many applicants consider themselves to be multilingual (speaking both English and French), yet they are not fluent in any of the two. Only a few can run a one-minute conversation without stumbling. Take an example of the Miss Rwanda 2015 auditions; only one of the 15 finalists was brilliant during the question-and-answer sessions. Others were struggling either because they did not understand the questions asked or they did but expressing themselves in the language of their choice was hard. Do I blame these contestants or the job applicants who failed? Yes (25 per cent) and no (75 per cent). Yes, because learning is best achieved by the learners themselves (individual learning). No, because policymakers in education sector take the biggest blame. Look at the current education policy which requires all kids in foundation stages and primary school to be taught in Kinyarwanda. Don’t forget that for a house to be strong and withstand strong winds, the foundation needs to be strong, built with stones. Will future degree holders be any better? I doubt it with the current policy. My advice to policymakers is that if you want to see different results in the future, let nursery kids learn Kinyarwanda as a language and learn all other subjects in the same languages in which they will eventually write their dissertations and do job interviews... Paul Runesha

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Promote English, French in nursery and primary schools