The Federal Government Is Making Plans To Teach STEM Subjects In Local Languages
Last month, Nigeria’s Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, announced that the federal government is making plans to teach STEM-related subjects such as science and mathematics in indigenous languages such as Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo and others, at the inauguration of the Joint Ministerial Committee on the Teaching of Mathematics & Sciences in local languages (no that isn’t a joke, it’s an actual committee).
Two whole ministries in Nigeria – the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology and the Federal Ministry of Education – are partnering up on this initiative. According to the minister, this is being done in hopes that the use of local indigenous languages will help further the teaching of STEM subjects. He said:
“For us to build the country of our dreams, for us to make Nigeria a truly great nation, a nation that is able to feed and house its citizens, a nation with a stable currency, we must embrace science and technology.
Nigeria will remain a dependent nation if the citizens did not embrace science and technology, because no nation can become great without science and technology.
If Nigeria is to be great, then Nigerians must embrace science and technology. The socio-economic challenges we are facing in the country is as a result of inadequate application of science and technology.”
He went further to make examples out of countries like India and China who are advanced technologically and teach mathematics and science subjects in their indigenous languages. Of course he neglected to mention that these countries don’t have hundreds of totally different languages (even the three major languages have no unifying qualities whatsoever) spoken there.
Nigeria is an unbelievably diverse nation with over 250 ethnic groups and about 500 different languages. And in addition to those many languages, we have the violently crippling problem that is tribalism, so you can be sure that whichever language(s) is prioritized, there will be a set of people that oppose it and (rightly) feel marginalized; not to mention the problem of hiring qualified teachers who also speak whatever language the government chooses.
These are needless stupid problems, ones that we don’t even need to have if the people we have elected to lead us will focus on pressing issues like improving educational reach and educational standards in a unifying language that’s also indigenous (because most people understand it or a version of it) and international. Now, where will we find that language? Oh wait…we already speak it!
