City kids to be taught mother tongue in proposed bill

A bill proposed by nominated Nairobi MCA Silvia Museiya is motioned to compel Nairobi County's Education department to develop a policy requiring every ECDE (Early Childhood Development Education) centre to have a lesson on vernacular languages. Under the umbrella of Languages and Culture, the children will have to be taught their mother tongue by parents and relatives at home. The children are then to express what they were taught in class, if the bill is passed into law.

Hon Silvia explained  that “the idea is to have the children be able to stand before the rest and express themselves, in form of compositions, in mother tongue. I need a child to identify with any of the indigenous languages. I am a Maasai, but I can speak fluent Kikuyu.”

The nominated MCA stated that the motion has been necessitated by the need to restore indigenous dialects particularly in urban areas. She further stated, “I just need the children to be able to identify with an African language and culture and minimize the Western cultural influence in our society. If we continue losing our culture then we will even lose our social norms and values as a society.”

MCA Silvia further explained that teaching young learners, especially those who are between the ages of three and seven years, to be able to communicate in mother tongue will help in reviving the languages which have been forgotten and been replaced by Western influences. According to the MCA, the policy will promote the speaking of mother tongue at home and help children identify with their cultural backgrounds.

“We need a revival of African indigenous languages as there is a concern about the loss of these languages. Children at this age can easily pick up many languages as they are at the peak of learning. “The children can learn from home and come and express it in school. The teacher can ask them to talk about their families in mother tongue. This will prevent scenarios where children cannot interact with rural folks because of language barrier,” she said.