Abstract
This chapter examines the language of education policy situation in Africa focusing on the tensions created by the imposition of English and the other ex-colonial languages as the favored languages of education. It presents examples drawn from different African countries that show the negative consequences of imposing a monolingual ‘English only’ language policy of education in multilingual and multicultural Africa. It argues for a ‘multilingual option,’ an alternative approach for language and education in Africa, that explores the optimal conditions for promoting meaningful educational development in both the indigenous languages as well as in English, in their roles as the nations’ first and second languages respectively.
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Obondo, M.A. (2007). Tensions Between English and Mother Tongue Teaching in Post-Colonial Africa. In: Cummins, J., Davison, C. (eds) International Handbook of English Language Teaching. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 15. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-46301-8_4
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