Ngugi's Decolonising The Mind

Ngugi wa Thiong, East Africa’s leading novelist and social critic, in his essay “Decolonising the Mind” illustrates what the colonists were doing to the children in Africa. He first introduces his argument by describing his early childhood in which he spoke Gikuyu, the language that the people spoke, and how there were good and bad story-tellers. He then goes on to describing how things changed after he went to colonial school, where English was the main language and Gikuyu was looked down upon. He then explains the three elements of the language: language of real life, speech, and written signs. He finally asserts what the government has done to the children. I agree with Ngugi’s point that the children should not have been alienated from the language of the people. The children deserve to learn about their own culture, not only the language that was imposed to them. They should learn about what makes them who they are and also learn who they belong to. Ngugi begins his essay by first describing his early child. He grew up in a large family of with twenty eight children and spoke Gikuyu as his main language. Almost all of the stories that were told were in Gikuyu. In his town, there were good and bad story-tellers. The good story-tellers …show more content…
Learning English became a cerebral activity for children and children would not feel any emotional connection to the language like they did with Gikuyu. The colonists imposed a foreign language and suppressed the native language of the people, and as a result, children were not able to feel harmony between the three aspects of language. Once a child is alienated from their own language, it makes the children see the world in which their language inferior to English. It also gives the children image of their place in the world in which they are depicted to be lower than