On the evolution of English as a written or spoken language.

That's a problem of course, but not nearly as big of a problem as trying to teach people world history without history text books or science without access to scientific journals and recent research. Then you (they) will fail.These movements have been gaining ground, but everywhere they've been established they've only decreased access to quality education, increased poverty, and further enlarged the gap between the haves and have-nots.In fact, they are so good at keeping the downtrodden down that one could speculate as to whether these movements are part of some conspiracy by the well-off to keep the masses manageable. It would almost be better if they were; as is, it's quite sad knowing that all of these plans are from a bunch of people thinking they are helping while doing all the wrong things.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

I imagine the rest spoke Canadian?

I was talking specifically about Africa, where a European language (English, French) is the typical option for a 'second' language.In Message 77 I discussed the reality as it affects the world as a whole, where I included the languages of Asia.The bottom line is that people can't be educated in some of the native African languages. If you try to educate folks in the native language, that education will be very limited; that's why the highschools switch the kids to English: there's no practical way to teach upper-level material in the native language because the tools (text books, online information, journal articles, etc.) just don't exist in the native language.If the folks want access to that world (and having access to that world is pretty much the only way out of crushing poverty) they'll have to learn the European language eventually, and better do it while they're young when it's easy.

I assumed that since Phat was talking about students in Africa and that I had written 'students' that my post was clearly linked to the discussion of Africa; but I will try to be more specific next time.This much is certain, though: assuming that any Asian language is as foreign to the students as any European language (which isn't true, but let's just assume it for the sake of simplicity), it makes much more sense to educate the students in a European language (especially English) for the reasons I gave about available learning materials which your list supports. Not even advanced degrees. The students Phat's article was talking about were going into highschool. Apparently it's not even possible to get a decent highschool education in Swahili. Equally apparent is the fact that the current system of educating in Swahili at the primary level doesn't do enough to prepare students for what will be required at the next level.And an education system should be, at the very least, capable of preparing people to obtain more education.These kids need to stop whining and start studying. You seemed to figure it out