Keetmanshoop
There are only about ten teachers qualified and capable of teaching Khoekhoegowab in the //Karas Region.
This was revealed by acting education director and deputy director in the department of Lifelong Learning, Jacqueline Rukamba, in an interview with New Era.
Although she could not provide official statistics at the time, Rukamba said there is a dire need for qualified teachers to teach Khoekhoegowab in the region and the country, noting that the number of teachers qualified in the language has declined drastically, while there are almost no students at tertiary institutions taking up Khoekhoegowab as a major subject.
She pointed out that one of the factors that brought about this situation is the lack of interest by local people in taking up Khoekhoegowab as a major subject at institutions of higher learning, suggesting that for some reason people do not want to be associated with the indigenous language.
“There are only about 10 qualified teachers. The others are only teaching the language because they can speak it,” she stressed. There are currently over 40 schools in the //Karas Region.
Rukamba, who was speaking at the hand-over of prize money to three Khoekhoewab students enrolled at the University of Namibia’s southern campus, said the education directorate aims to strategise to encourage learners to take up Khoekhoewab as a subject.
She said the prize money given to the top three performers in the language is one of the incentives aimed at attracting more learners to study their mother tongue at higher level. She pleaded with the community to be proud of their language and not to shy away from studying it as an academic course.
There are currently only 14 students registered for the Khoekhoegowab major at the southern campus of the University of Namibia. Handing over the prize money of N$2 500 to each of the students at Keetmanshoop on Tuesday, she urged the students to use the money wisely.
“Please invest this money wisely so that today’s seed will multiply so that one day you can also become donors,” she urged.
The problem of young people being reluctant to take up their home language at university level, however, seems to be deep-going. In 2014 New Era reported that parents in the region are against their children being taught in the mother-tongue, although research shows that children taught in their vernacular attain higher grades. The report suggested that parents prefer their children to be taught in Afrikaans.