Oyo state government has tasked parents on the promotion of indigenous languages at the various homes, describing it as a veritable tool for educational development.
The State Commissioner of Education, Prof Salihu Adelabu made this known at a one-day workshop on ‘Early Childhood Care Development Education on Policy Implementation and Best Practices’ in Oyo state in Ibadan on Tuesday.
Adelabu submitted that the promotion of Indigenous languages became imperative at the formative stage (0-8 years) of a child to enhance the speedy assimilation rate.
The state government in cognizance of this is focusing its attention on the Early Childhood Care Development Education on Policy Implementation.
According to him, “Starting from where there is conception up to the age of 8 by the ECCDE policy at the federal level, language is germane. What is in the policy is that whether you have your children in the Creche or the pre-primary school level, you can use the mother tongue language or the immediate language of the environment.
“We are sustaining this in Oyo state but other areas we need to look into that because of ECCDE. They are not known to the field officers who are the participants at the one-day workshop.
“What about the methodologies of carrying these children along so that no skill is skipped. There can, the any gaps. They won’t miss any skill. We wouldn’t want the children to miss any of these skills.
“There are two major skills apart from the long rich is about the literary and numeracy skills. That is what makes them to become what they want to be in life.
“Literary skill focusses in the areas of law, art, humanities and management and for the numeracy skill that is about quantitative, calculation, numerals. This develops our children in the areas of medicine, engineering, physical science, aeronautics and others.
“That is why we feel that all our field officers should be trained so that by the time they are going into these schools and they come across the children they should know why they are in the school at that age either private or public schools.
On the involvement of the private especially in the usage of the mother tongue for dissemination of information, the Commissioner said, “The problem is societal understanding. We shall soon commence training on advocacy. If you look at the elitist society that we have today. Most of the elite parents don’t speak Yoruba language or the language of their immediate environment to their children at home not to talk of school. That is the problem we are having at the Ministry.
“Some parents even withdraw their children from school the moment they say that today our sister spoke Yoruba to me. This has to be corrected.”
In attendance at the workshop were stakeholders in education, Commissioner of Education, Professor Soliu Adelabu, an educationist from Obafemi Awolowo University; Professor Hanah Ajayi, Dr Adeosun, Local and Zonal Inspector of Education, representatives from schools and Public Advocacy groups and organisations from the 33 local governments in the state.
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