KEY WORDS: language of media, media education, rights in education, language of instruction, local language and curriculum, formal education, informal education, Tanzania, Africa.

ABSTRACT: This article examines key assumptions about knowledge that inform mainstream educational research and practice in language of media and media education in Tanzania. It argues for an emphasis on the contextualized dimension of learning as a right in education. The author introduces a model of learning involving alternative assumptions about the value of local knowledge and local language in teaching and learning of media education. This will form a new platform for innovation with a unique mix of local and global knowledge in media education.

This article explores the need to incorporate local learning and a local language in media education in Tanzania. Further, it argues that this sustenance of learning based on local languages in all subjects ought to be defined as a human right in education. The author envisions education as a set of processes involving formal learning based on a local curriculum that draws on informal sources of knowledge and incorporates the country’s language of media and communication. In Tanzania, this means accounting for contextualized knowledge and reversing the current trend of de-contextualization of the upper educational system presently conducted in English, which disconnects formal and informal learning in the teaching of media education. This perspective involves alternative assumptions about the value of the local language in learning and teaching of media education. I argue that this will form a new platform for innovation based on a unique mix of local and global knowledge. It will provide teachers and students with the capacity to understand and deploy new technologies for learning.

There is no single theory that encompasses the complex web of epistemological, social, and language-in-communication issues embedded in studies of media education. Some of the strands of theory which have been important for framing this article are the role of education in society, the role of language of media and media education, as well as the knowledge embedded in local culture. The paper will draw heavily on the concept of human rights in education and on the work of two educational theorists. The first is Julius Nyerere and his theory of self-reliance, developed and applied in Tanzania in the 1960s and 1970s. Though his theory no longer governs educational policy in Tanzania, I will still argue that it has relevance today in Tanzania’s efforts to achieve equal access and fairness in education and in the society at large. The second theory important to our analysis is Paulo Freire ´s theory on formal versus informal educational pedagogy. Freiere’s theory has implications for the language used in schooling and in the society which means it has relevance for media education and media practices.

Human rights in education as a notion is intimately connected to the social, occupational, political, cultural, religious, and artistic life of people (Babaci-Wilhite, et al., 2012). Language as part of culture should be part of what Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) calls, language as a human right in the education sector. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights states that:

Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free...Education shall be directed to . . . the development of human personality and to the strengthening of human rights and fundamental freedom (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948; Preamble).

In short, language plays a critical role in cognitive learning and in the development of critical thinking and new knowledge (Babaci-Wilhite & Geo-JaJa, 2011).

Local language as a key in media education

Media Education is the process of teaching and learning about media. It is about developing young people’s critical and creative abilities in media-related subjects such as print and digital journalism, marketing, broadcasting, and so on. Using a local language in media education will allow developing new perspectives, since the ability to function well in the society is dependent on certain surrounding factors such as the language and local knowledge that are understood by everyone. In Tanzania, the language of media is Kiswahili, and the process of teaching and learning about media should be consistent with the language used in the media.

In Tanzania, Kiswahili, English and more than 120 indigenous languages are spoken; thus, the society is multilingual (Roy-Campbell, 1992). However, as opposed to the majority of African countries, Tanzania has Kiswahili as a unifying African lingua franca. Kiswahili and English are both official languages although only English is recognized as such in the national constitution. Kiswahili is one of the official languages of Tanzania, and English is the second official language. The use of Kiswahili is growing fast, especially due to an increased number of mixed marriages between people belonging to different language-speaking ethnic groups (Puja, 2003). Kiswahili is often used as the new intra-family language after marriage. About 80 million people in 14 countries in East and Central Africa speak Kiswahili. Kiswahili is one of the five official languages of the African Union alongside with English, French, Portuguese, and Arabic. Kiswahili has been occasionally used as a working language at UNESCO meetings as far back as 1986. It has, however, never been an official working language of the UN or UNESCO. Haroub Othman (2008, p. 7) argues that: “Kiswahili is no longer the language of Tanzania or East Africa; it is the language of the entire African continent, having been adopted by the African Union as one of its official languages”.

This language plays a major role in Tanzania´ s robust media. Most newspapers in Tanzania are in Kiswahili. The public broadcasting service television TVT (Televisheni Ya Taifa) now TBC (Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation) send most of their programs in Kiswahili. The radio networks of Radio Tanzania Dar-es-Salaam Radio, RTD are also State-run and use Kiswahili. It is important to note that from 2007 the state has owned both TVT and RTD. They are both very popular and are both under the umbrella of Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation. However, privately owned media are more important, since they control more than 11 daily newspapers, over six television stations and more than six FM radio stations. One of them, RFA (Radio Free Africa) reaches the Great lakes Region Congo DRC, Rwanda and even Burundi. This demonstrates the importance of cross border languages.2

Rethink education in Tanzania

Nyerere was an educational theorist who insisted on a rethinking the relationship between general education and formal education. He wrote that:

We have not until now questioned the basic system of education, which we took over at the time of Independence. We have never done that because we have never thought about education except in terms of obtaining teachers, engineers, administrators, etc. Individually and collectively we have in practice thought of education as training for the skills required earning high salaries in the modern sector of our economy (Nyerere, 1968, p. 267).

In line with the ideas of Freire, Nyerere believed that education should be an integral part of daily life not separated from it. Education should address both the needs of the local people and the country. According to Joseph Ki-Zerbo, an historian from Burkina Faso, these points about cultural learning and local needs have not been adequately addressed in Africa. He claims, “For African societies, education lost its functional role” (Ki-Zerbo, 1990). The problem today is that African countries are adopting the standards of the World without inclusion local culture in education (Geo-JaJa, 2011). Furthermore, Nyerere wrote that:

Colonial education in this country was therefore not transmitting the values and the knowledge of Tanzania society from one generation to the next; it was a deliberate attempt to change those values and to replace traditional knowledge by the knowledge from a different society (Nyerere, 1968, p. 47).

To motivate the active mind, one has to take into consideration the variations in different societies, differences in knowledge and different ways of teaching to achieve quality education. If education is conceived of as imparting knowledge about the world, then schooling should be regarded as only one aspect of education, since it does not cover all forms of knowledge. This point is highly relevant for media and media education, because popular media uses Kiswahili as its medium whereas media education uses English.

According to Freire, much of the knowledge that forms the basis for schooling has its origins from another place and another time: “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention” (Freire, 1993, p. 53). The students who catch on to this form of learning will be successful in school, but might actually have less knowledge in the broad sense of the word than one who does not attend school. However education is most often equated with schooling.

The language issue in Tanzania is deeply related to the conceptualization of education and the debate around whether or not education should encompass the local cultural context. Freire (1993) and others scholars such as Martha Qorro (2004) and Kwesi-Kwaa Prah (2005) argue that using a local language as medium of education fosters the broader view of learning which softens the barriers between real-life and classroom experience. Freire proposed a similar theory about the importance of local knowledge and its relationship to empowerment.

The role of the language of instruction for media education

Even though education encompasses much more than schooling, schooling is, nonetheless, central to knowledge acquisition, and primary schooling was formally accepted as a human right more that 50 years ago (Colclough, 1993). Shor Ira and Paulo Freire argue that in most cases:

Knowledge is produced in a place far from the students…students are used to be the transfer-of-knowledge. Dominant curriculum treats motivation as outside the action of study, test, discipline, punishment, rewards, the promise of future jobs, are considered motivating devises, alienated from the act of learning now. In the same way, one definition of “literacy” is “basic skills” separate from serious materials of study, separate from issues of critical value to students, “First learn the skills, and then you can get a real education! First get a real education and then you can get a good job! The best thing is always the thing you are not doing” (Shor and Freire, 1987, p. 5).

These curricula tend to have similar content and structure. However, Ki-Zerbo (1990, p. 15) reminds us of the fact that well before the other continents, Africa (e.g. Egypt, the “Universities of Northern Sahel” etc.) was a producer of education and of teaching systems:

It is forgotten, all too often, that Africa was the first continent to know literacy and to institute a school system. Thousands of years before the Greek letters alpha and beta, roots of the world alphabet, were invented, and before the use of the Latin word schola, from which the world school derives, the scribes of ancient Egypt wrote, read, administrated, and philosophized using papyrus (Ki-Zerbo, 1990, p. 15).

The world is made of different cultures, with different languages and different needs. The cultural context should therefore be taken into consideration in the structures and in the curricula of basic education. It seems that every continent adapts to their context, except Africa, which is still using European languages and European curricula in most of the continent. Language is an instrument of communication, in fact the only complete and the most important communication medium, therefore language usage is of paramount importance for social and economical development. The language dilemma is still a subject of intense debate. Othman formulates the central question this way:

Why is a country like Tanzania, which was in the forefront of Africa´ s liberation struggle, which proclaimed the Arusha Declaration that ushered in its own development path and which in its policy documents and proclamations wanted the people to be the masters of their own destiny, unable to resolve this language problem (Othman, 2008, p. 6)?

This is consistent with Brock-Utne’s assessment that “the language in education policy in Tanzania from the 1990s can best be described by words like confusing, contradictory and ambiguous” (2005, p. 62). The extensive use of English, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese in Africa are part of this colonial legacy. The economic, technological, political, and ecological aspects of globalization bring changes to local social and cultural contexts and have important political and technological consequences. English is used as an official or semi-official language in over 60 countries, and has a prominent place in another 20 countries. It is either dominant or well established in all six continents. It is the main language of books, newspapers, airports, and air traffic control, international business and academic conferences, science, technology, medicine, diplomacy, sports, international competitions, pop music and advertising (Mazrui, 1997, p. 36/37). It is revealing to note, for example, that 80 per cent of the world’s population has no access to basic infrastructure facilities that are regarded as commonplace in the industrialized world – and that there are reported to be more computers in New York alone than in the whole of Africa (DFID, 2000 quoted by Crossley & Watson, 2003). If every city resembled New York, everyone could access the “other society’s” education systems to discover what can be learned that will contribute to improved policy and practice at home” (Arnove, 2003, p. 6).

Conclusion

Language is crucial to the learning process inside and outside of schools. Language is the tool of learning and therefore what tool could be more easy to use than the local language as a language in all forms for education, and especially media education in which the development of communicative skills is so important. In this paper, I have reviewed the theory relevant to understanding the importance of language and culture in learning as well as the need to encompass both formal and informal learning in Tanzania where the choices are between globally powerful and local languages. The theory of self-reliance stresses the importance of the curriculum being grounded in the local context and mediated through a local language. Such an approach emphasizes the importance of indigenous concepts, articulated in their natural environment. Education is more than schooling, therefore rethinking in re-teaching is crucial. Oral and local languages need to be valued and preserved, and students need to be prepared for the world in a language of instruction, which promotes understanding. Development needs a new face in which local media and local languages are given priority in media education, and this should be regarded as a human right.

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