Skip to footer

Meanwhile... in Senegal, elementary schools are experimenting with teaching students in the native language of Wolof

And in Isla Montecristo, El Salvador, residents help to collect the eggs of the endangered olive ridley, a black-green sea turtle, and then take them to Gio Díaz, while in Heidelberg, South Africa, a retiree noticed that vegetables were being stolen from his home garden, so he planted a new garden bordering right on the street to make it easier for those in need to pick the food.

|
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File
Kwamang, Ghana
  • By Staff

In Senegal, 98 public elementary schools are experimenting with teaching students in the native language of Wolof rather than French, the language of the nation’s former colonists.

The students will benefit from instruction in the language they speak at home, linguistics professor Mbacke Diagne, of Dakar’s Cheikh Anta Diop University, told Voice of America. Most children entering elementary school in Senegal, he noted, have been functioning in Wolof for several years. “They have structured their world in this language,” he said, “but as soon as they get to school, all this knowledge is set aside in order to impose French.” 

Similar movements are under way in a number of other African nations as well.   

Not all educators agree, however. Some point out that many African nations recognize multiple languages. In Senegal, for instance, although an estimated 80 percent of the population speaks Wolof, the government also recognizes 20 other native languages. In Ghana, the official language is English, but the government recognizes an additional 11 languages, with at least 70 different dialects spoken. 

In Isla Montecristo, El salvador, residents help to collect the eggs of the endangered olive ridley, a black-green sea turtle, and then take them to Gio Díaz. Mr. Díaz, a local employee of the nonprofit Mangrove Association, pays for each egg collected, reports Pacific Standard magazine, and then places them in a hatchery. He and another man guard the hatchery (as the turtles are considered a local delicacy) 24 hours a day, sleeping in an adjacent hut. When the turtles are fully grown they are released into the sea in the hopes that this will strengthen their population, which has shrunk by 30 percent in recent years. 

In Heidelberg, South Africa, when retiree Johan Scott noticed that vegetables were being stolen from his home garden, he didn’t go to the police. 

Instead, he planted a new garden bordering right on the street, to make it easier for those in need to pick the beans, tomatoes, eggplants, and beetroot he was growing. “People are hungry,” Mr. Scott told News24. “They desperately need something like this, and that’s why I did it. It makes my heart happy when I see people eating the vegetables.” 

A Facebook post about Scott’s act has since inspired others to plant similar gardens. Some have offered to provide Scott with seeds and gardening tools. A landowner in another part of South Africa posted a message on Facebook offering an acre of land to anyone who wanted to cultivate it, saying he was moved by what he had read about Scott. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Meanwhile... in Senegal, elementary schools are experimenting with teaching students in the native language of Wolof
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/The-Home-Forum/2018/0125/Meanwhile-in-Senegal-elementary-schools-are-experimenting-with-teaching-students-in-the-native-language-of-Wolof
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe