Attitudes towards the use of soŋay as a language of education in gao (northern mali)

Abstract

Experimentation of the mother tongues as media of education started in Mali in 1979. In 1994, mother-tongue based education started to be generalised to all the Malian public schools. But, how do key school stakeholders feel about this policy? Adpoting the mentalist approach to attitude study, the researcher has used the self-report method for the data collection. The analysis of the data shows that most participants have an aversion for Soŋay as their children’s language of education and advocate French as the only language of instruction. It equally displays that educated and wealthy people withdraw their children from public Soŋay-based schools and send them to private classical French-based ones