Blog: Creole in Education - Dr Bunwaree's Folly !

If a group comes up with a script for the Madame Séré language, will the government introduce it as an option in primary schools?

The justification for the introduction of Creole as an option in primary schools is said to be because it is allegedly an ancestral language, meaning a language of slaves and which culture the so-called descendants of slaves wish to preserve.

Firstly, Creole is not an ancestral language like Hindi or Urdu simply because Creole is not an African language while Hindi & Urdu are Indian languages.  Creole is a language local to the colony. African-Mauritians who reject their African ancestry in favour of a European-based Creole ancestry do so at their own peril. Secondly, Mauritian patois differs from region to region and from community to community. It follows that Mauritians have several mother tongues. There is no evidence how slaves spoke or wrote. Hence, Creole long ceased to exist in freedom.

What politicians like Dev Virahsawmy have done is invent a way of speaking and writing since the 1960's and, many years later, called the script 'Grafilarmoni', without stating harmony between which scripts, deform and butcher proper French words, respect no rules of grammar, and, through media propaganda, imposed it on the people for half a century. They call this 'Kreol' as in Haiti. It is clear that this is not the language of the people, but a fabricated language imposed on the people. No responsible parent would like his/her child to spell mauve 'mov' or rouge 'ruz'. Dr Bunwaree, the Minister for Education, does not appear to have recognised reports, based on representative population samples, which tell him how Mauritians in different regions and different communities pronounce and spell, for example, the word “éducation”, and which spellings to adopt. There is no way a child who learns and forms himself in an imposed butchered French or English language can subsequently possibly be better 'equipped' to learn French or English properly.

At the discretion of the teacher, Mauritian patois is already informally used as a medium of instruction. Dr Bunwaree's decision to introduce in the near future this recently fabricated 'Kreol' in the primary school curriculum is a political one and does not look after the interests of the child because it is regressive and damaging to the child. British and French primary schools do not teach children in Cockney or Argot! Moreover, this 'Kreol' fabrication cannot be considered pari passu with languages like Hindi, Urdu, Bhojpuri or Tamil and will give an unfair advantage to the child who cannot spell properly and who knows no rules of grammar in a script not internationally recognised as an academic language. Creole has become a language for children with special need (recalés) when, in fact, the government should employ sociologists, psychologists and linguists to help those children overcome their limitations. Teaching them 'Creole' is certainly not the solution. In fact, it is an inherent part of the problem.