Languages link speaks volumes on citizenship

Published on Tuesday 9 December 2008 20:48

THE French class at Calderglen High in East Kilbride knows that Aimée Chimbouka lives near a war zone. But they have a whole lot of other questions they want to ask the Congolese teenager.

"I want to know what her town's like, what her school's like, what her plays and stories are like," says Kaitlin Gibb. "I just want to know what her family are like and how she lives on a day-to-day basis," says Amy Scott.

Aime has come into the lives of this S2 class via a teaching resource that links global citizenship and modern languages.

Citizens of the World – Life in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Citoyens du Monde – La Vie en RDC) includes a web-based video wall of young Congolese talking about their lives and aspirations, as well as an interactive blog. The South Lanarkshire pupils have already posted questions to Aime, which she will answer from an internet caf in her home town of Bukavu.

Launched last month across Scotland, La Vie en RDC, which has been designed to support Curriculum for Excellence for pupils aged 12 to 18, will give vivid and up-to-date insights into an African country that is roughly the size of western Europe and, despite its vast mineral wealth, is racked by war and poverty. As well as French, the teaching resource overlaps with geography, history and modern studies.

"This is about global awareness, making a real-life connection," says Tony McDaid, headteacher at Calderglen High. "Sometimes that's been a limitation of the traditional curriculum model – that you don't see the relevance. If it's only tokenism there's no point in doing it. But with this we can say the work we do in class involves the same people we're talking about in the news.

"Young people are more socially aware and socially responsible than they used to be. Whether that's to do with the great work going on in primary schools, they are much more sophisticated and attuned to problems. Quite often they come to you with an issue (reported in the media] and ask, 'Is there anything we can do?' Then they set about raising money or raising consciousness."

Val Morgan, of the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (Sciaf), which designed and produced the Congo resource, says: "What is happening in eastern Congo is horrific, so it's not right to talk of good timing, but the fact that the country is featuring so prominently in the news does make this even more relevant as a resource for young people.

"The pair who feature, Aime and Joseph, live in Bukavu, which is the capital of South Kivu province, whereas Goma, where much of the latest upheaval has been focused, is the capital of North Kivu, so we're talking 100 miles or so at most.

"For young Scottish people to be able to e-mail and ask what's happening is quite amazing in itself, as well as being a major tool for learning French."

Fighting between Tutsi rebels and government soldiers and their allies has driven tens of thousands of people from their homes in recent months in an area where hunger and disease were already killing an estimated 45,000 Congolese a month, even though the last war officially ended five years ago.

Yet Aime and Joseph can also connect young Scots to a Congo not defined merely by conflict. Aime writes plays and short stories, likes Jennifer Lopez and hopes one day to become a human rights lawyer. Joseph is a Chelsea supporter, enjoys physics and would like to be an accountant. Both are involved in voluntary Aids education work.

John Sharp, a Sciaf schools officer, says: "The Congo has been very under-reported considering it's been the site of the largest number of deaths through conflict since the Second World War.

"But Aime and Joseph are inspiring. They have risen to the enormous challenges. They've got involved rather than stood back and been spectators, and that's what we're trying to encourage young people here to do – get involved in their communities.

"We often think it's a one-way street, our relationship: the rich, developed, globalised north and the poor, developing south. But we can learn a lot from people in the developing world."

If the response to La Vie en RDC is as positive as early signals suggest, Sciaf will consider doing something similar with Spanish and Latin America, Mr Sharp says.

The aid agency provides emergency and development aid as well as campaigning for trade justice, debt relief, more and better aid, and to address climate change.

Brian McLinden, who helped develop the resource as principal teacher of modern languages at Calderglen High, says: "The global citizenship part is very important. For instance, this will help pupils understand the reasons for the arrival in the UK of Congolese refugees and asylum families.

"At Calderglen High we have quite ethnically diverse pupils. We don't have any French-speaking pupils from Africa, but where I live in Motherwell, for example, I have contact with a group of families from Congo who have settled in the past two years."

Joanna McPake, director of the Scottish Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (Scilt) – based at the University of Stirling – which has backed the Congo resource, says this project reflects a growing trend to add cultural substance to the classroom experience.

"There has been a big change in the way languages are marketed – teachers now talk about marketing, whereas I'm sure that before about 2000 the notion would have been anathema."

As the focus has shifted in the past few decades from intensive grammar, translation, reading and writing to the "communicative method" – first and foremost enabling students to speak and understand a foreign tongue – a fundamental flaw developed, Ms McPake argues.

"The communicative method focused on languages as something you would use as a tourist. It seemed attractive because pupils would imagine going to France or Spain or wherever, and ordering baguettes and booking train tickets, and that would be much more interesting than learning the imperative subjunctive. I'm sure for many pupils it is," she says. "But it also probably trivialised the subject.

"When you're asked to choose subjects for your future career a subject that seems to be about going on holiday isn't going to rate very highly against, let's say, doing biology or chemistry because you've decided to be a doctor or something."

The Congo resource, by contrast, offers "stimulating and challenging learning experiences, while deepening knowledge and understanding of other cultures, places and people," according to another Scilt official.

Early impressions have certainly been positive for Pamela Clarke, 12, another Calderglen High pupil.

"It's really fun. It makes French much more interesting," she enthuses.

Hopeful signs despite country's short history marked by violence

THE Democratic Republic of Congo is a former Belgian colony in central Africa. It is the continent's third largest country by area and home to about 62 million people.

Formerly the Belgian Congo, it gained independence in 1960 and was renamed Republic of the Congo. In 1965, Colonel Mobutu Sese Seko took power in a military coup and remained in charge for 32 years.

He re-named the country Zaire in 1971 and presided over a period of relative stability, despite widespread human rights abuses and political oppression.

In 1996, militia forces from neighbouring Rwanda joined forces with Zaire's army to fight ethnic Tutsis in the east of the country, where the capital city, Kinshasa, is located. This violence led to the deposition of Mobutu a year later. He was replaced by Laurent Kabila.

In 1998, the fighting escalated into a war that dragged in six other nations and was to cost an estimated 3.9 million lives. The conflict was fought for control of the country's lucrative mineral deposits which include diamonds, zinc and copper.

Kabila was assassinated in 2001 and replaced by his son, Joseph, who remains in charge. The war ended in 2003, but militia violence persists and the country's infrastructure remains in a dreadful state after years of conflict.