Two states—Jammu and
Kashmir and Nagaland—have made English the main medium of instruction in all
public and private schools. More and more states, such as Tamil Nadu,
Maharashtra and Delhi, are offering English-medium as an option in existing
state schools. Private English-medium schools are a growth industry—offering a
range of services to suit almost all budgets, from around Rs200 a month to Rs2
lakh a month. This
simple-minded link between job opportunities, economic success and the English
language has an increasing number of urban working class and lower middle-class
parents investing their hard-earned money in private English-medium schooling—
often of uncertain quality.
Today, almost a quarter
of all Indian children attend private schools. A significant proportion of
these schools is officially English-medium. This shift, in fact, has made
states like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra offer an English-medium option in
existing government schools in the hope of stemming the flow of children out of
state schools to private schools.
Primacy of the mother tongue
Yet, across the world,
and in India, there is a consensus among educators, educationists and linguists
that children learn most effectively in their mother tongues. Research collated
by the UNESCO shows that “children who begin their education in their mother
tongue make a better start, and continue to perform better, than those for whom
school starts with a new language.”
It’s a no-brainer. Using
a language that children are familiar with eases their transition from home to
school. They are more easily engaged in the classroom because they understand
what is going on, and are able to link it to their everyday lives. This helps
them easily develop literacy skills and general cognitive abilities.
A mass of research shows
that children’s ability to learn a second or even a third language improves
greatly if their first language skills are well developed. And, far from being
a burden, children who know one language well are very fast and receptive in
learning new languages. The three-language formula for schools, which
emphasised learning in the mother tongue, seemed to acknowledge this.
The transition from home
language to a school language is complicated enough in a country like India
where large proportions of the population do not speak the standardised
regional language but a dialect or, as with many tribal communities, an
entirely different language.
States with large adivasi (tribal) populations, for example, do
not even have sufficient teachers who understand, never mind teach in, their
languages. Starting to learn to read and write in a language that they never
hear at home or in the community makes learning difficult and reduces its
appeal.
