Maternal language texts

PES covers the period 1980-2/83 and is based on interviews with school officials and trainees and visits to experimental schools. Good progress has been made, even though production of maternal language textbooks is behind schedule. Niger"s Institut Nationale de Documentation, de Recherche, et d"Animation Pedogogique (INDRAP) has trained 42 teachers from 20 experimental schools (and 30 other persons) to collect and transcribe oral tradition materials. Tales, riddles, songs, histories, etc., (most in the Hausa language) were collected on 891 cassettes, 328 of which have been transcribed and used as the basis for 15 readers (vs. 10 planned), one in each of the five maternal languages for each of the first 3 primary grades. The readers, evaluated and revised at an 8/82 national workshop, are being tested with 1,200 experimental school students. Experimental school teachers were given special lesson guides and pedagogical training before teaching with the new readers. Methodologies for evaluating the new readers will be developed by INDRAP. Such an evaluation will necessarily be tentative however, due to lack of staff experience in this area. On the other hand, INDRAP staff have acquired significant experience in oral tradition collection and textbook production. Experimental school teachers, while enthusiastic about the project, need more encouragement and supervison, especially at remote schools, to which few INDRAP visits have been made due to budget constraints. Other problems include a paucity of linguists in Kanuri, Fulfulde, and Tamajeq, none of which languages yet has an accepted orthography, and lack of interest on the part of some primary school inspectors. Lessons learned are: publishing timetables fall behind schedule everywhere, but especially in developing countries; textbooks should be tested in classrooms for a year before being printed in mass quantities; and working seminars for teachers and potential contributors (university professors, school inspectors) are useful in textbook development projects. The project should be extended to 6/84 to permit dovetailing with a planned World Bank project.