Mother-tongue based primary education should be our priority for better schooling results. It is unfortunate that while resources are available, the will is lacking
Saving our mother tongue should not be taken as a linguists' romance but as the most important national agenda. An understanding, that all must learn and speak one single language, is erroneous. A large number of those languages, which we call dialects, have an enormous wealth of information accumulated in them. Millions of children drop out of schools because the transition from home language to school language (medium of instruction) becomes so wide that children find themselves lost. A major contributor to this gulf is the language difference between home and school. Home language and school language invariably do not match because even at the lower primary level (i.e. classes I to III) children start talking in their mother tongue. Children between six and seven years are admitted to school and by this time, they acquire one language, their mother tongue, to understand and express themselves. However, they may not be able to understand or express themselves in any of the scheduled languages in the Constitution.
The debate about providing primary education in mother tongue has been going on since Independence but little efforts have been made in this direction. Most of those who make policies, believe that there are just 22 languages spoken in our country and all our children speak only these languages included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. Unfortunately, research findings and recommendations about the role of mother tongue in education and reasons for child dropouts remain in university libraries and research institutes. Those who drop out because of language barrier are the first generation learners and they are nobody's concern.
Our policy-makers are unaware of the actual linguistic scenario and those who understand the role of language in education are not even consulted. The question we need to ask is: Are we neglecting education in mother tongue because those who suffer the loss are not ‘our' children but ‘their' childrenIJ Our children obviously go to English medium schools and we prepare them at home to cope with English medium classrooms. This argument may pinch many but this is the truth. Protecting our languages should be our concern.
Every language has rare knowledge relevant to the geographical area and people who speak that language. local language includes words and expressions which are relevant to express activities — social, environmental and others — mostly to the people whose ancestors developed the language and transferred from generation to generation. As we have a primary school at an average distance of one kilometre available to all children below the age of nine, it is apparent the language of instruction can be the mother tongue. As we choose any other language in place of the mother tongue, we do away with the wealth of knowledge which explains the milieu of the child. By the time the child comes to school, he/she has already spent hours learning the other (mother) tongue but by choosing a different language for classroom interaction, we brush aside the time and effort spent by that child in learning his/her mother tongue.
Prime Minister Modi, while addressing the students in Pariksha pe Charcha, a show organised by the Ministry of Human Development on February 16 , aptly said, “I cannot speak many languages but I would like this interaction to be reached in all Indian languages”. He also mentioned that there are more than 1,500 languages spoken in India. A few years back, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani started a project which she herself chaired to translate textbooks in all Indian languages. In the first instance, textbooks were to be translated into 100 languages. There could be no other initiative more important than this at this juncture.
We must have our translation machinery geared up for swift action. This has been mentioned again and again but it is surprising that neither the National Translation Mission (NTM) nor any other agency has been able to do this. Not providing textbooks to primary children in their mother tongue results in dropouts (not the only cause but a major reason) from school which also results in wastage of expenditure made on other areas like construction of classrooms, libraries, playgrounds and also salary of teachers.
The question is: If this has been realised and reported many times, then why are we not able to work on itIJ The answer is simple: Translation is a low return job. Construction of a building will always be more lucrative than translation of textbooks. Providing primary education in mother tongue should be our priority in the educational front but it does not seem to be happening. Neither the budget not the expertise is lacking.The argument often given is that we do not have enough experts in these languages; which does not stand as translation of primary textbooks does not require great linguistic competence. School teachers, who might know one of these languages, can easily translate primary textbooks. We have resources available but the will to do it is lacking.
We need to work on schemes and also create pressure on the Government so that not only children who drop out of school because they could not cope with an alien language of instruction are retained but also to save thousands of language that have grown and survived for millennia. This is the most pressuring national agenda which the Government is ignoring at the cost of the nation.
(The author is Professor of Education at the Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi. Views expressed are personal)
