Implementing the new language formulations in the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 will produce more problems than it will solve. For instance, in whose mother tongue is a child in a multilingual, inter-State migrant society like ours, going to study?
An elderly man asked me recently, “How many languages does the government expect my primary school-going granddaughter to study? Her father has been transferred to three States in three years.”
Children of parents in transferable jobs repeatedly undergo a cultural shock. Everything changes from the uniform, teachers, classmates and textbooks to the school environment. I studied in seven schools — one each in Delhi, Haryana and Maharashtra and two each in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. The only advantage I had was the common medium of instruction — English.
Kendriya Vidyalayas were introduced in 1963. But not all parents are keen on sending their children there because of the variation in standards.
State to State
There are millions of Union government employees, armed forces personnel and public sector bank employees. The exact number of State government employees is unknown. Even if half the number of Union and State Government employees have school-going children, one can imagine the magnitude of the problem the question of medium of instruction can create for them as they get transferred every three or four years within the State or outside.
According to the NEP, “wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Class 5, but preferably till Class 8 and beyond, will be the home language/mother tongue/local language/regional language.” The all-India implementation of teaching in the mother tongue will create chaos if its ultimate motive is to dislodge English from schools, the one language which connects us with one another and the world.
It is compulsory, for example, for a student to learn the State language in SSC schools. I was in Standard 9 when our father moved from Amritsar in Punjab to Solapur in Maharashtra. I also had to change from an ICSE school to the SSCE Board. In those days, non-Maharashtrian children of parents with transferable jobs could seek exemption from learning Marathi. Otherwise, imagine my fate if I had to learn the letters of the alphabet of Marathi and clear it the following year.
Many schools even today offer instruction in the State language and Hindi or Urdu, besides English. Parents choose the school they want their children to study in. The NEP’s recommendation is not as new as it appears. What is new is the gloved manner in which it is being piloted. The pressure with which it is likely to be implemented can cause unimaginable harm to the existing system and national equilibrium.
Support for teaching in the mother tongue often comes from those who have studied in English schools and whose children are studying in IB schools or foreign universities. They recommend the policy should be implemented in English schools too. Converting all schools into vernacular medium schools works against the poor. It distracts the country from the promise of providing a sound education and decent work opportunities to everyone. Already on the margins for want of knowing English, the poor remain cheap labour for the rich.
While working with schools in Pune, we saw an exodus of children from Marathi schools to paid English schools. The writing on the wall is clear: the poor know where their children’s future lies.
English is the language of well-paid jobs and economic opportunity in India and abroad even today. Poor schools teach in the mother tongue but do not build the child’s foundation in any subject or language, including English. Twenty-five per cent of their children in the four to eight age group “do not have age-appropriate and essential cognitive and numeracy skills”, which makes for a “learning crisis” at an early stage, according to the Annual Status Educational Report (ASER), 2019 released in January 2020.
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