Dr. Philip Tachin, the immediate past Executive Chairman of Benue State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, has announced the adoption of the use of local languages in the teaching of science subjects in schools across the state.
While making the announcement on Sunday 28th July, 2019 in Makurdi, the state capital, Tachin stated, “I discovered that our children are veering away from sciences into arts and other subjects. And you know that science is a critical aspect of development in the 21st century. So I thought that something has to be done in order to arrest the situation because if we leave the trend, with time, we will lose significantly”.
He also stated that he had travelled worldwide and studied in Asia, Middle East. “From experience, they do not study in English,” he said.
“We will translate or write sciences from English to native languages. So, I got a team of scientists that wrote sciences in English and translated into Tiv language.
“The Idomas are also about finishing their own job; the Igedes are still working on their translation aspect. And so I think that if we get this right and we start implementing, we will train science teachers on how to teach these two texts, English and the indigenous side-by-side.
“So we want to train teachers to know how to balance these two texts at a time and it will help our children to do well. “I shared this in UBEC and they found it fascinating, they even told other State Universal Education Boards to emulate what Benue has started.
“But if we start with our children at the basic level here and they understand as they grow up, it won’t be a big challenge when they get to higher institutions”.
