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The Supreme Court’s decision to stop the Karnataka
government from imposing Kannada as the medium of instruction in all primary
schools of the state should be viewed pragmatically and not emotionally.
We now live in a global village where English is the most
essential language for global business success. Estimates show that 2 billion
people worldwide will be learning English by 2020. As India’s integration with
the global economy picks up pace, new job opportunities will be created wherein
strong English language skills will be a key requirement. Denying our children
the opportunity of picking up English language skills now would have put them
at a competitive disadvantage later when they would have entered the job
market.
Preventing children from accessing English language
education in their formative years is not only irresponsible but irrational.
The misconception here seems to be that an overemphasis on
English in schools would erode Kannada language skills in young people and
hamper their ability to communicate in their mother tongue.
However, that line of thinking is completely fallacious.
Scientific studies have shown that between birth and the age of ten or eleven,
the human brain makes new connections all the time and that gives children the
ability to quickly pick up many new skills, including multiple languages. This
means that schools can simultaneously use both Kannada and English as their
medium of instruction.
Therefore, insisting on using Kannada to the exclusion of
all other languages in primary schools is imprudent.
Just look at what our neighbouring states are doing. To
improve the teaching of English language in the state, the Maharashtra
government has tied up with the British Council of India for the Maharashtra
English Language Initiative for Primary Schools, under which thousands of
primary school teachers have received training. Does this mean the people of
Maharashtra are less devoted to their mother tongue? I don’t think so.
Cultural chauvinism is misplaced in today’s world. That is
not to say that we should ignore our language and culture. Preserving our
language and culture is important, but so is ensuring our economic
competitiveness.
Karnataka is known for its visionary policies that have
established Bangalore as the IT and BT capital of India. In that context,
making Kannada the sole medium of instruction at the primary level would have
been a very regressive step with the potential of undermining Karnataka’s
standing as an economically progressive state.
Learning a foreign language is a lot different from learning in a foreign language. While kids can pick up new languages really fast, studies have shown that they would not have acquired enough proficiency to learn reading, writing and to acquire abstract concepts. This is done best in the mother tongue, and once the learning skills are firmly established in the formative years, kids can later easily use the same skills in a foreign language. UNESCO too strongly recommends mother tongue medium education and calls it every child's right. You may hold a different opinion but being a revered public figure we expect you to be be responsible enough to not falsely use science and the argument of economic competetiveness to endorse your personal opinion and mislead people.
ReplyDeleteIt is incorrect to quote that studying in Kannada medium means undermining Karnataka’s standing as an economically progressive state. In contrast we see examples of all progressive communities like Germans, Japanese , Koreans and many other having their entire education in their language.
ReplyDeleteYet another myth is the following statement "Scientific studies have shown that between birth and the age of ten or eleven, the human brain makes new connections all the time and that gives children the ability to quickly pick up many new skills, including multiple languages. This means that schools can simultaneously use both Kannada and English as their medium of instruction."
There is a difference between learning a language and learning in a language.
Pls read UNESCO paper on mother tongue based education in this link:
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001466/146632e.pdf
It clearly says that it is axiomatic that the medium of education for a child should be the mother tongue of the child.
Calling the scientific method of mother tongue education as cultural chaunism is gross ignorance.