00:00 Imagine a world where you can learn, but only in a language you don't speak at home.
00:05 That's the reality for nearly half the world's population.
00:09 The United Nations Cultural Agency, UNESCO, says 40% of people cannot access education in their mother tongue.
00:18 Meanwhile, there's another problem.
00:21 250 million children are not in school, even though the UN says education is a basic human right.
00:29 There are also more than 760 million adults who struggle to read and write.
00:35 There are a range of reasons for this, but experts say all these figures could drop if more children were taught in their home language.
00:44 Let's talk to an expert who's explored the links between language and education.
00:50 David Little is Associate Professor Emeritus at Trinity College, Dublin.
00:55 Professor, we know that it's important to learn in a mother tongue,
01:00 but classrooms are often very diverse and teachers can only speak so many languages.
01:06 How do we deal with that?
01:09 It's a very good question, and I think that the answer is perhaps more straightforward than we fondly imagine.
01:19 First of all, the pressure for mother tongue education is often explored in ways that seem to imply that learning through the mother tongue is the only way.
01:34 But there are, of course, so many circumstances in which it's just impossible to provide mother tongue education for practical reasons.
01:45 For example, in a Dublin primary school where the majority of pupils come from immigrant families,
01:52 and between them they've got more than 50 mother tongues.
01:57 What are we going to do then?
01:59 And these are circumstances that are very common worldwide.
02:03 The key thing is how do we make sure that the young child is helped as quickly and efficiently as possible to develop proficiency in the language of schooling?
02:16 Now, my own work shows that the mother tongue has a key role to play in each child's education.
02:23 And even though the teacher can't speak all the mother tongues present in her classroom,
02:29 she should nevertheless encourage the children to share their mother tongue and make use of it in school, inside and outside the classroom,
02:38 to create a multilingual environment which is gradually drawing all pupils into the language of schooling.
02:47 Now, you mentioned the teachers. No doubt they could eventually use artificial intelligence as a translation tool.
02:53 But a lot of schools in developing countries don't have a lot of resources, Professor.
02:58 How do you view the role of AI in all of this?
03:02 Well, I use highly efficient machine translation to coordinate an international educational project that involves four languages,
03:12 English, Greek, Slovak and Slovenian, and it works very well.
03:17 But in order to be able to do that, I and my international colleagues must first be highly literate in our respective mother tongues.
03:28 The idea that a dependable electricity supply, a strong Internet connection and iPads for everyone will somehow solve these educational problems is a fantasy.
03:42 Developed societies are developed thanks to literacy and their continuing development depends on literacy.
03:52 And that means that our ability to exploit artificial intelligence will also always depend on our literacy.
04:00 Professor David Little, thank you so much for your time.
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