There is no stronger education for a child than the teaching given in his mother tongue. This language that the child already speaks at home, in his neighborhood, with his parents and friends. This is the language in which he thinks, imagines, questions, and begins to understand the world. It is also in this language that he begins to build an identity.

Sadly, in most African countries, especially Guinea, this natural process is brutally disrupted. As a child is naturally learning his mother tongue at home and in the neighborhood, he is ripped from this linguistic universe as soon as he crosses the threshold of school to force him to start over. He is forced to learn to speak again, but this time in a foreign language. He is forced to study in a language he does not master, as if knowledge could only be acquired through a language that came from elsewhere.

By forcing him to study in a foreign language, an artificial barrier is created between the child and his knowledge. Instead of focusing on math, science or reading, a child must first struggle to understand a new language so that the doors of knowledge can be opened. Thus it carries an exhausting double burden: understanding the language, then understanding science.

This cognitive overload slows learning, weakens understanding, and bridges the gap between Africa and the rest of the world. Thus, while little Africans spend a lot of time learning in foreign languages, little Asians and Europeans studying in their own language focus directly on acquiring scientific knowledge.

Even worse, with this linguistic gap in which the language of the school is different from that of the home, children sometimes end up perceiving their own language and culture as something inferior. Thus is born in us this dangerous perception that everything that comes from the language we learn would be superior to anything that comes from us.

Eating a foreign food, dressing like a toubab, speaking French like a Parisian become symbols of status or success. Meanwhile our languages are relegated to dialects or vernacular to deny them any scientific or vehicle capability. Our clothes and dresses are described as traditional, never modern.

This conditioning inherited from colonization starts at school. The curriculum itself is a legacy of the colonial system that was designed to develop in Africans an inferiority complex that still persists.

Instead of building the child, this school, which previously served to strengthen the colonial system and instill European superiority in our intellectuals, can only weaken its confidence in him. She can make him think he's less intelligent simply because he can't speak a foreign language. Sometimes she can push him out of school, mistakenly believing that school is not for him, that he is not smart enough. However, this is absolutely not a lack of intelligence, but rather a lack of adaptation of our educational systems to the reality of the child.

The research is clear, however, that children who first learn to read and write in their mother tongue develop better cognitive skills, a deeper understanding of concepts, and then become more easily acquainted with science and other languages.

The Chinese example should be a lesson to us. China didn't develop by studying English or German. Same goes for Japan or Korea. Not all these countries developed by abandoning their languages for a foreign language, but by consolidating thought in the languages of their peoples. By the way, no European country, regardless of its size or the multitude of languages that coexist within it, initially teaches its children in a foreign language. Switzerland, which is six times smaller than Guinea, teaches its children in its four national languages. Every child studies in his mother tongue according to his/her canton.

Therefore, in order to foster knowledge acquisition and to be respected in the world, we must value our linguistic and cultural heritage. Teaching a child in their mother tongue at school does not necessarily mean abandoning foreign languages. We just have to differentiate between studying a foreign language and studying in a foreign language.

Teaching our children in our languages, especially with our home characters like ADLaM, is restoring and strengthening their confidence in them. The use of writing born from our own genius is a tangible proof of our ability to create and value our cultural and linguistic heritage. This may show them that if those like them can create, invent, produce knowledge, they too can create and invent. Children first learn from what they observe around them. If the child sees that people like him invent, write books, develop sciences, he will naturally say: I can do it too. I can invent and create something else to serve my nation.

Unfortunately, Africa is today being mocked by those who see us imitate them. How many times have we heard that African invented nothing or Africa hasn't made history yet? Those who say it do it because they see us studying in their languages, with their alphabets and their curriculum. They see us magnify their history and their ancestors at the expense of ours. So why don't they come and ridicule us all the way to our homes and serve insulting speeches like the one Nicolas Sarkozy gave in Dakar in 2007, during which he said "the African man has not made history enough"?

We can only impose respect by giving respect to our languages and cultures. Speeches alone, even Pan-Africanists, are no longer enough. It's time we wake up. We need to value our languages and alphabets, reform our education systems and adapt them to our languages and cultural realities. This is where the key to our true emancipation lies.

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See Also: Granting Citizenship to Black Americans Is Fixing History and Investing In The Future by Abdoulaye J. Barry.