Language Rights, Racisms, and Language Education Policy in Angola

Abstract

The issue of language is a fundamental factor for redressing social inequalities in education. Language is also central to policy measures and management reflections, on political events and social processes that are often not factored in education policy discussions in Angola. Critical stance affords a growing acceptance of teaching and learning as a complex situated social practice. Critical multiculturalism insights and perspectives on language rights enable theproblematization of the media of instruction policies and how existing education policies downplay the question of inequalities to access quality education based on social class and race in Angolan education. Language education policies in Angola represent colonial legacy. Lusotropicalism ideologies are often used to reinforce colonial social and cultural imaginaries that result in disenfranchised indigenous communities. Thus, in the context of globalization, in which immigration imposes rapid changes in the sociolinguistic landscape of the country, initiatives aiming to promote the use of African languages in education (acquisition planning) might provide an opportunity for people who viscerally suffer from the marginalization of these languages. However, the opportunity to carve out a space for candid debate on the issues of language, social class, and education are fraught with tensions due to the fact that the issue of language, education, and race remains a taboo that has not deserved any systematic attention on the part of the government and educationists in particular. Therefore, complementarity between literacy teaching in African languages and Portuguese might project African languages into the linguistic market, provide privileged planning opportunities, and develop an educational system toward bilingual and multilingual literacy. In the heyday of postnational ideologies, language diversity is an asset that needs to be harnessed through critical engagement and critical multicultural education, while recognizing the role that language plays in enabling and disabling both majority and minority groups to access social, cultural, and economic resources that are necessary for surviving in the increasingly commodified and globalized world.