HIGHER EDUCATION TODAY - LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Guests: Professor Zubeida Desai, Dean of Education, University of the Western Cape, and Professor Shaun Viljoen, Chair, Department of English, Stellenbosch University Host: Steven Roy Goodman Original Air Date: 10 September 2013 In this episode of Higher Education Today, Steven interviews university professors from the University of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch University. These are two universities that were prominent in the apartheid era. Since the end of the apartheid regime, the schools have been in transition. Students on the campuses speak a variety of languages but they tend to gravitate towards people who speak their native tongue. Depending on your background, you can have some difficulties or have a seamless experience due to the universities moving to English-language instruction. This could go on for a while because finding the balance in literature in South Africa is such a complex task. There are so many pillars: British literature, American canon, South African canon and the African canon generally, which is separate from the South African canon. This can be very daunting when trying to find ways to blend it all together and put it into the syllabus. There needs to be more African literature written in indigenous languages to encourage reading and to help those students who have been instructed in their home languages. In a place like South Africa, multilingual teaching seems like the way to go but it will only work if teachers are fluent in two or more languages. This is especially true for primary learners or until a learner’s grasp of language has developed.