UNESCO's Push to Teach in a Child's Mother Tongue

I went to the UNESCO site and looked for information about policies related to bilingual education. UNESCO is encouraging the production of books in mother tongues no matter how remote the language. Using the slogan “Books for Mother tongue education”, IMLD [International Mother Language Day] 2013 aims to remind key stakeholders in education that in order to to support mother tongue education, it is essential to support the production of books in local languages”. Here is the link for that: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/celebrations/international-days/international-mother-language-day/

 

 I watched a film about how languages are disappearing and about how on cyber space a small percentage of the languages spoken around the world are used. This is a danger because perspective is often related to language, so with lost languages, we are losing perspectives. Here is the link to that UNESCO film: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/celebrations/international-days/international-mother-language-day/  

I also looked at an interview of Colette Grinevald. She promotes education in a child’s mother tongue and also a model that includes both the mother tongue and the tongue of the land the child lives in. She said, “Mother Language Day should literally celebrate the languages of all the mothers of the world and send them the message that they have the right to speak their own language to their children, because they have important things to say in that language to their children.  It should be the day of all the languages in the world including the ‘little languages.’ Out of about 6000 languages no more than 200 have the status of national languages and a few hundred more have established literacy.” Here is the link to that interview http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/languages-in-education/single-view/news/colette_grinevald_speaking_your_mother_tongue_is_not_a_disability/

 

As the English speaker in a class full of Hispanic children who also have a Spanish speaking teacher, I was excited to see all the information about bilingual education on the UNESCO site. The model in which equal numbers of non-national and national language-speaking children learn in both languages was also mentioned. I have recently become aware of this model. This model would be useful in unifying the future population of the United States into a bilingual population with no problem communicating in Spanish or English.