Die stand van moedertaal na 1994: 'n gevallestudie van die Xhariep-distrik

[摘要] English: The changing political environment after 1994 brought about changes in educationas well as mother tongue education. The biggest change in mother tongue educationis the clause in the Constitution 108 of 1996, section 6, which stipulates that mothertongue education is merely an option and not a requirement like before. Furtherlanguage legislation implemented after 1994 was: National Education Policy (nr. 27of 1996), the South African Schools Act (nr. 84 of 1996) and the Language-in-Education Policy (1997).The main focus areas of the study are language planning, language policy andlanguage management within education. These terms are closely tied together, andone of the primary goals surrounding these terms is to solve language problems.Various other facets in language policy and language planning as discipline form theframework for the study: the process of language planning from initiation through toimplementation, management agents (central government, provincial government,external and internal agents) who are to be found in the education system, as well asexternal factors in the process that can influence the choice of education medium.The goals of the study are to determine which of the schools in the Xhariep, whichare mainly Afrikaans and seSotho, changed their language of education policies after1994, which process was followed in order to do this, who the agents were whoparticipated in the changes, and which factors led to the changes as well as thechoice of language of education.The study utilises a historical approach. Due to the gaps in documentation, the datais dependent on interviews. Printed media was also utilised as a source ofinformation in order to support the information of the intervlews.The South African context was discussed within the framework of the literature, dueto the fact that the history of the country influenced the Xhariep's schools choicesregarding language policy. The data indicated that the governing body did not makethe overhead decisions, even though this is indicated on paper. A specific process oflanguage planning was not followed and a policy was compiled according to thecriteria of the Department of Education. The approval of the policy was dependent onthe community before it was sent to the Department of Education.In addition to history being a factor, politics also contributed to the changes that tookplace in the Xhariep schools. The printed media indicated that two towns hadresorted to violence and boycotts, due to the fact that the English medium schoolwanted to make use of some of the Afrikaans medium school's buildings. With thechanging context in mind, the Afrikaans community feared that their children wouldnot receive a good education and consequently sent their children to schools innearby towns or cities. This left the Afrikaans medium schools in the district almostwithout any learners, which is an indication that the changes also took place due todemographics.There are various correspondences between the literature and the data, but thestudy also indicated that it is difficult to create a framework and expect that eachschool's situation can be studied and explained by means of this framework.Language policy and language planning have many facets, and consequently thedisciplines in education need to be approached in the same way.

[发布机构] University of the Free State