Children in the city’s Early Childhood Development Education centres might soon be having mother tongue lessons if Nairobi County Assembly adopts a proposal on it.
Nominated MCA Silvia Museiya on Thursday suggested that the executive through the Education department develop a policy to have every ECDE centre have lessons on language and culture.
According to Museiya, indigenous languages are quickly becoming extinct, especially in metropolitan areas and having a lesson dedicated to these languages will help children identify with their culture.
“Our children need to be able to embrace and identify with their African culture which will also reduce the western influence on them. If we continue losing our culture, then we will even lose our social norms and values,” she said.
Education being a devolved function, Museiya said the department can come up with a policy and circulate in the ECDEs to have at least a weekly lesson called language and culture.
“Young learners between 3 to 7 years grasp easily and if they are taught their mother tongue during this period it will will go a long way. This will even help to erode sheng’ language which is being used a lot by our young children,” she added.
The nominated MCA said the lessons will not be targeting children to forget or the English or Kiswahili.
Musiya said if we have children who learn foreign languages like French,Spanish and even Arabic in school, the same can be extended to have them learn their cultural languages.
She said if the policy is adopted it will help children identify with their background as well as embrace their culture.
“We need a revival of African indigenous languages as there is a concern about the loss of these languages. Children at this age can pick as many languages as possible as they are at the peak of learning" she said.
