Preventing Cultural Genocide with the Mother Tongue Policy in Eritrea
The small east African nation of Eritrea has implemented the Mother
Tongue policy nationwide to prevent cultural genocide within its nine
different ethnic groups.
This is done by educating all children in tribal environments in their
mother tongue until literacy at grade 5. By making sure that the
ethnic minorities learn to read and write in their mother tongue the
Eritrean Government is making sure that their culture survives as well
for without ones language one cannot practice your culture.
Historically destroying peoples mother tongue is the means used to
carry out a policy of cultural genocide with many thousands of
dialects having disappeared during the western colonial and neo
colonial era. Today many of the languages that remain are threatened
by the children of these ethnic groups not being literate in their
mother tongue which will almost inevitably lead to the loss of their
identity, their language and their culture.
It hasnt been easy for Eritrea, hammered by global warming droughts
and economically disadvantaged due to western inflicted sanctions and
embargoes and with 9 tribes with 9 languages, some of which have never
had a written language, the challenge of implementing the Mother
Tongue policy for all our tribes has been hard work.
It has been well over a decade now that the policy has become the
practice nationwide and the next generation of Eritrean youth from all
our 9 tribes are literate in their mother tongue, a policy the whole
world needs to adopt.
Thomas C. Mountain is an independent journalist in Eritrea, living and
reporting from here since 2006. His speeches, interviews and articles
can be seen on Facebook at thomascmountain and he can best be reached
at thomascmountain at g mail dot com
Received on Tue Oct 25 2016 - 00:16:40 EDT