UNITED NATIONS, Mar 12 (APP): Children from linguistic minorities should be taught in their own mother tongue, the UN expert on minority issues said, while presenting his latest report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
According to Fernand de Varennes, the expert, this is not only necessary for inclusive, quality education but also to respect the human rights of all children.
“Education in a minority’s mother tongue, combined with quality teaching of the official language, is more cost-effective in the long term; reduces dropout rates; leads to noticeably better academic results, particularly for girls; improves levels of literacy and fluency in both the mother tongue and the official or majority language; and leads to greater family and community involvement.”
Learning in one’s first language can help mitigate the risk of “ending up later in life with the lowest paying jobs and highest unemployment rates”, he said.
The language of education can also have an impact on the self-esteem and development of minority students, according to the report.
The expert, a Canadian legal specialist in the rights of minorities, recommended that quality public education in the mother tongue should “be extended to as late a stage in education as possible, up to and including public university education where practicable, and at the very least be taught as a subject”.
There are some 6,000 recognized languages, including sign languages, to which these recommendations could be applied. According to the report, these are central to the identity of linguistic minorities – both individuals and communities.
When minority language issues go unaddressed, this can lead to “toxic environments of exclusion and claims of discrimination in education,” that fuel conflict, according to the report.
In terms of international law, the failure to use minority languages where reasonable could be construed as “discriminatory”, and contrary to “human rights obligations such as the right to education”, the expert said.
In addition, the expert argued, the use of minority languages would support the social inclusion of persons with disabilities, indigenous people and ethnic minorities, thereby making an important contribution to the world’s development agenda, which calls for ensuring “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (Sustainable Development Goal 4).
The Special Rapporteur emphasised that “sign languages are fully fledged languages, and their users can therefore be considered as members of linguistic minorities where they represent less than half of the entire population of a State”, referencing his own definition.
Users of sign languages can experience the same disadvantages or exclusion as other minorities if their languages are not used as languages for instruction. In this case, “the obstacles to effective, quality education can be said to be even more pronounced,” he said.
