Children, students to be taught in mother tongue: Residents

KABUL (TOLOnews): On “International Mother Language Day”, some citizens of the country said they want elementary education to be taught in the mother tongue of students.
The citizens said that education in their mother language will strengthen and expand languages in the country.
“When we send our children to school for learning, we have to learn our other national languages like German, English and other languages which takes a year, and that’s a long time,” said Mohammad Ismail, a Nooristan resident.
“Pre-school education for children who are seven to eight years old, should be taught in their mother language and work on languages that are disappearing,” Samandar Samandari, a Badakhshan resident told TOLOnews.
Meanwhile, some writers asked the government not to allow differences between the languages of the country to emerge.
Shafi Baburzai, a Pashto language poet, said: “If people speak it more or less, we should not consider one language inferior to another language. If languages are enriched, our identity will be enriched.”
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) celebrated this year’s International Mother Language Day with the theme “Multilingual education is a pillar of intergenerational learning.”
UNESCO said: “Today, 250 million children and young people still do not attend school and 763 million adults do not master basic literacy skills. Mother tongue education supports learning, literacy and the acquisition of additional languages.”
Noorhabib Nisar, deputy chief researcher of Afghanistan’s Academy of Sciences, said: “It is important that the countries themselves work for the development of the national and local languages of their country.”
“If there is prejudice in the language, that language will stop growing, so let’s try to keep the language open,” said Mohammad Mateen Munes, a member of Farsi-Dari literature Institute.
According to the statistics of the Academy of Sciences, the number of languages in the country is 32.
In 1999, February 21st was named International Mother Language Day in order to help linguistic and cultural diversity, and the United Nations General Assembly declared 2008 as the International Year of Languages.