To teach a second language requires special skills and particular methods that schools do not provide.

The education department would do well to learn from an organisation such as Teaching English as a Foreign Language about how a second language should be taught, and train its teachers properly to do so.

We were keen that our children should learn Xhosa, as our own attempts as adults to learn it, from tapes and books, were pathetic.

But trying to learn Xhosa at the junior school they attended was a disaster.

The school had difficulty finding a teacher of the language. The teacher changed more frequently than the weather. At times there was no teacher at all, and even when there was one, she frequently did not come to school.

Alas, by the time the children got to high school it was hopeless to continue with the subject as their grounding in the language had been so appalling.

Furthermore, I think it would be an economic and social disaster to teach everyone in their mother tongue. Unfortunately, or fortunately, English is an international language - it is the language of science and much literature.

Teaching children in a tongue spoken by a minority of people can only disadvantage them. Where will such youngsters find employment?

And how on earth will an education system with a culture of indifference ever get it together to teach in 11 official languages?

Children educated in Zimbabwe, troubled though the country is, still have an outstanding education and can work anywhere in the English-speaking world.

It's too easy to allow political and emotional views to colour the facts. In a perfect world we would all be educated in our mother tongue, in which we would have access to information, education and work. In that perfect world everyone would understand us.