Becoming part of the information societyBy

Tunde Adegbola (Ph.D)

What is the Information Society

➲ Human society is always undergoing changes, but there have been three major revolutions in human history

➲ A Revolution is a significant and rapid change, a change of remarkable pace and intensity

➲ The three major revolutions Neolithic revolution: Domestication of food crops and livestock

Industrial revolution: Replacement of manual labour by machines

Information revolution: Replacement of transportation with communication

➲ The Information Society is a product of the Information Revolution

The Information Society

➲ Information has economic, political and cultural significance

➲ Wealth is created through the economic exploitation of information rather than the exploitation of tangible physical resources

➲ Physical labour based on muscle power gives way to informational labour based on intellectual power

➲ Matter and energy are de-emphasised

Language and Information

➲ Language is the fundamental channel of information

➲ It is the store-house of the totality of human knowledge

➲ Languages evolve, basically to codify their local ecologies

➲ No example in history!➲ Language has effects on capacity for

industrialisation?

Mother-tongue instruction for Science and Technology

➲ There is significant correlation between mother-tongue instruction in Science and Technology and capacity for industrialisation

➲ Countries that opted to teach science and technology in their mother-tongues have industrialised

➲ All those that opted to teach science and technology in foreign languages are still struggling with unfulfilled promises of the industrial age while the information age is dawning

Six Year Primary Project (SYPP)

➲ A project of the University Of Ife (now OAU) Institute of Education, between 1970 and 1979

➲ Objectives: To develop a coherent primary education that

would use mother-tongue as the medium of instruction

To test the assumption that a child would benefit cognitively, socially, culturally, and linguistically through the use of his/her mother-tongue as the language of instruction throughout primary school

The Experiment

➲ An experimental class of primary school children were taught Social and Cultural Studies, Science, Mathematics, Yoruba Language and Literature, all in the Yoruba language. English was taught to them as a second language

➲ A control class was taught the same subjects in English. Yoruba was taught as another language

➲ There were regular intakes into Primary 1 of both classes each year from 1970 to 1975

The Results➲ A total of 183 textbooks for the various subjects

were produced in Yoruba as a result of the project

➲ Students in the experimental class performed significantly better in all school subjects than those in the control class in the same external examination taken by all primary school children in the state

➲ 10% of the experimental class dropped out of school, while 30% of the control class dropped out of school within the six year period. The national drop out rate was between 40% and 60% around the same period

The Results (Cont.)

➲ 100% of the first group of the experimental class passed the First School-Leaving Certificate Examination while a sizable number of the control class failed

➲ While in Secondary School, students of the experimental class were found to be at an advantage academically over their counterparts in most subjects, especially in Yoruba, English Language and Mathematics

➲ Out of the 820 that enrolled in Primary 1 by 1973, more than 300 had graduated from Nigerian universities by 1987

The Results (Cont.)

➲ Spurred by the success of the project, various scholars, groups and institutions produced orthographies for over twenty-five Nigerian languages that remained unwritten till then

➲ But the philistinism of Nigeria's successive military governments during the period was too deep that they could not see the point even with Prof. Fafunwa, the lead investigator of the SYPP as the Minister for Education

Mother-tongue instruction for Science and Technology

What are the effects of mother-tongue instruction for Science and Technology?

Malaysia

➲ Independence from Britain in 1957➲ Parents may choose between Bahasa

Malaysia, Chinese, or Tamil as the language of instruction for their primary-school children

➲ Bahasa Malaysia is the primary language of instruction in all secondary schools, although continued learning in Chinese and Tamil is available and English is a compulsory second language

Nigeria

➲ Independence from Britain in 1960➲ Parents have little choice in the language of education

for their Primary-School children➲ The National Policy on Education stipulates Mother-

Tongue and/or Language of the immediate community (LIC) as the language of initial literacy at pre-primary and junior primary education

➲ But parents work and pray hard towards enrolling their children in fee-paying, English-speaking pre-primary education so that they can better cope with instruction in English in later life

Elaesis Guineensis➲ Elaesis guineensis – African Oil Palm was rare

outside West Africa until mid 1800s➲ It was the primary export of West Africa in the late

1800s and contributed to the international renown of Onitsha market as the largest market in West Africa

➲ It played major roles in the industrial revolution as the main source of lubricants for the turning wheels in European and American industries and as a raw material in the saponification industry - It gave birth to Sunlight Soap in Britain and Palmolive Soap in the USA

➲ It was introduced to Java by the Dutch in 1848 and to Malaysia by the British in 1910 in a strategic move to diversify the sources of their industrial raw materials

Nigeria-Malaysian Cooperation

➲ Before 1970, the oil palm industry in Malaysia was virtually non existent

➲ In the early 1960s Malaysia invited Nigeria to help improve her palm produce

➲ Following this assistance, Malaysia commenced the refining of palm oil in the early 1970s

➲ Today Malaysia is the biggest producer of palm oil in the world. She accounts for 51% of palm oil production in the whole world

Some interesting facts

➲ The Malaysian palm oil refining industry is largely home grown

➲ The Nigerian petroleum industry depends largely on foreign expertise

➲ Malaysians learn Science and Technology in their local languages and use English, only as a second language

➲ Nigerians learn Science and Technology in English and get little or no credit for mastery of their local languages

But why the connection?

➲ Language is a set of symbols that describe reality in a given culture

If a reality does not exist in a culture, there will be no word for it in the language

➲ Language is the window into YOUR world➲ If the language you use does not

adequately describe your reality, you are bound to operate at a lower level of productivity

➲ A foreign language cannot describe your reality adequately

➲ The most consistently successful practice of technology in Nigeria is undertaken in local languages

➲ Even though training is done orally – a rather inefficient approach to learning (particularly for technology) its products have been more successful than University and Polytechnic products at technology

➲ Lack of common language between the formally trained technologists in tertiary institutions and the informally trained in the mechanic villages causes a disconnection between technology theory and practice in Nigeria.

➲ The theory-practice connection is fundamental in technology

Language and the information society

➲ Language is the fundamental channel of information

➲ If language played such a vital role in the industrial age, how much more will it play in the information age

➲ The importance of language in the information society has bred the field of Human Language Technology

Human Language Technology (HLT)

➲ The need to communicate through and with machines has arisen hence the development of such HLTs as:

Speech recognition Speech Synthesis Machine translation Natural language understanding Spelling checking and grammar correction

➲ What fate awaits our languages given the present scheme of things?

Thank you