International Mother Language Day- February 21, 2023
Contributor: The I.D.E.A Committee
International Mother Language Day is celebrated every year, on February 21st, to promote the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity in the country. The idea to celebrate this day was the initiative of Bangladesh.
The theme of the 2023 International Mother Language Day, “Multilingual Education-a necessity to transform education”, aligns with recommendations made during the Transforming Education Summit, where an emphasis was also placed on Indigenous people’s education and languages.
Multilingual education based on mother-tongue facilities provides access to and inclusion in learning for population groups that speak non-dominant languages, languages of minority groups, and indigenous languages.
It is a type of education that begins in the language that the learner masters most and then gradually introduces other languages. This approach enables learners whose mother tongue is different from the dominant language of instruction to bridge the gap between home and school, to discover the school environment in a familiar language, and thus, learn better.
A Few Interesting Facts: Did you know that ….
- The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) first established International Mother Language in 1999; and since then it has been observed throughout the world. The first inaugural celebration was held in 2000.
- There are over 7,000 languages spoken in the world
- Many ethnic languages, some of which are still spoken by small groups today, will most likely be extinct in a few decades. This is why International Mother Language Day is so important, as it is part of a larger initiative to revive many communities’ linguistic heritage.
- Globally 40% of the population does not have access to an education in a language they speak or understand. But progress is being made in multilingual education with growing understanding of its importance, particularly in early schooling.
What else might we do to go beyond the celebration of languages?
As well as celebrating languages this year, we - as individual teachers - can ask ourselves questions like:
- What languages and cultures are represented in our classrooms? How can we make others more visible?
- How might our units, lessons, and class activities be re-designed to more intentionally leverage the languages in our classrooms as resources for learning?
- How can we learn more about the linguistic and cultural identities of our students and how they feel about their languages and the space they are given (or not) in our classrooms?
And we can take actions like:
- Working with students in our classes to create a charter of language rights and responsibilities that sets out how we will respect and value each other’s multilingual identities.
- Creating opportunities for students to reflect on and share their own complex and dynamic language and cultural profiles using creative tasks like language portraits or identity collages.
- Educating ourselves about the languages and cultures of our students and learning more about pedagogical approaches like translanguaging to explore how we can open up spaces for those languages and cultures in our classrooms.
As well as celebrating languages this year, we - as school communities or leadership groups - can ask ourselves questions like:
- Who is involved in the process of creating policies related to languages in our schools? How could we include other voices and perspectives in these processes? How can we use these perspectives as lenses to improve school policies?
- To what extent are the visions, missions, and guiding statements of our school rooted in multilingualism and the development of multilingual competence?
- What processes are we using to gather and listen to the views and lived experiences of students, staff, and parents from different language and cultural communities?
And we can take actions like:
- Reviewing the curriculum across the whole school to audit the extent to which it meets the needs of students with different language profiles, including evaluating provision for mother language development and support for students developing proficiency in the language of instruction.
- Working with organizations like Language Friendly Schools to create a development plan focused on how you will work to become more linguistically and culturally inclusive.
- Arranging professional development for staff that enables them to develop skills to teach inclusively for students from different language backgrounds but also engages their hearts and minds in the development of empathy for multilingual learners and reflection on their own mindsets and internalized language ideologies.
A few Resources:
Video (6:47): International Language Day, February 21, 2023
What’s your mother language Video (2:10)
Sources:
https://www.un.org/en/observances/mother-language-day
https://nationaltoday.com/language-day/
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