[lg policy] Language exodus reshapes India's schools

Wed May 16 14:59:40 UTC 2012

Language exodus reshapes India's schools

The belief shared at all levels of Indian society that an
English-medium education is the key to children's prosperity is
changing classroom teaching but experts worry about standards

Dinesh Mandal, an illiterate villager from Bihar, came to India's
capital city nearly three decades ago with a dream – to make sure
that, unlike him, his son Umesh would get a proper education.

To make that possible, Mandal took up work in a home in the heart of
Delhi, in an area built by the colonial British and popularly known
after its chief planner and architect Edwin Lutyens. Lutyens's Delhi
not only has extensive quarters for household staff attached to its
sprawling government bungalows; it also provides schools where the
families of the poor working for top politicians and officials can get
their children educated.

But Mandal's dream has remained unfulfilled. His son Umesh failed to
graduate from his local school, where he was taught in Hindi, one of
India's official languages. Though he finds work intermittently, he is
at present unemployed. As a result, he has moved to a satellite
settlement 50km away.

Mandal, though, hasn't given up on wanting to educate his progeny –
only the language has changed. He has kept back his three
grandchildren – a boy and two girls – with him in his one-room
tenement, and is now convinced that educating them in a school with
English as the medium of instruction will emancipate his family.

"If my son Umesh had studied in an English-medium school, our life
would've been different today," said Mandal. "Now my grandson is doing
that, and I'm doing all I can to ensure my two granddaughters also get
admitted to an English-medium school."

More and more across India, parents are forsaking educating their kids
in their mother tongue in favour of English. Despite warnings from
educationists that a child's cognitive development is affected by
early schooling in an unfamiliar language, there has been an
exponential increase during the last decade in English-medium schools
in the country.

The latest data compiled by the National University of Education,
Planning and Administration (NUEPA) shows that the number of children
studying in English-medium schools has increased by a staggering 274%
between 2003 and 2011, to over 20 million students.

"In village after village you will see signboards for English schools
which are no more than private shops," said Anil Gupta of the Indian
Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. "They're capitalising on the
huge aspirations of people wanting to improve themselves economically.
The desire for education is no more an argument."

After two decades of rapid economic growth, landing employment has
also become equated with knowing English, especially due to the
software boom and the expansion of the service sector. Corporates,
though, still complain of poor skills among job seekers.

"There are lots of schools, but no trained teachers," said Gupta. "The
issue is not of quality going down, but of no quality to begin with."

But it's not just private entrepreneurs who are riding the "educate
your child in English" wave. In response to lobbying from parents,
even provincial governments are abandoning their diehard commitment to
the language of the region and increasingly supporting English.
Votaries of regional tongues are now seen as impractical language
chauvinists, while more informed debate on the importance of language
in child development is lost in the din of politics.

Goa is a good example. Last year the authorities reversed the state's
language policy and announced that even English-medium schools would
get grants. The Catholic church runs a majority of Goa's
government-aided schools, and it switched to English overnight.
Opponents of the move have gone to court, but people dismiss regional
language advocates as hypocrites since contrary to their public stand,
they too send their children to English-medium schools.

"Indian politicians basically want to keep us docile and backward,"
said English language activist Savio Lopes. "If my child is schooled
in [Goa's official language] Konkani, how will he find a job outside
the state, when English is the nation's link language?"

Educationists argue the real problem is the method of teaching, since
a child can become proficient in English if it is taught properly even
as a second language. India's poorly skilled teachers are a dilemma –
only 9% of 730,000 teachers from private and government schools, for
instance, passed a recent national eligibility test.

When the standard of teaching in a regional language school is good,
the difference becomes apparent. "In India, teaching of languages is
generally very outdated, no matter which language," said Anita Rampal,
professor of education at Delhi University. "But a study we did in
Delhi showed that students who began learning in Hindi for the first
five years in a school that taught language well showed the ability
later to think independently and write creatively in both Hindi and
English."

NUEPA vice-chancellor R Govinda pointed out that many high achievers,
such as former prime minister PV Narasimha Rao, did elementary
schooling in a regional language, and later became proficient in other
languages. Govinda himself went to a Kannada-medium school.

"The current perception that English will resolve everything is not
correct," he said. "States should invest more in developing good
English teaching, and evolve a comprehensive language policy."

Cultural theorist Rita Kothari pointed out that English and regional
languages contain different "storehouses of knowledge", both of which
are essential for a student. English provides a wealth of modern ideas
and historical understanding. "But without regional languages, the
richness of the landscape will get flattened," she said.

The real challenge is to raise standards in all languages, and produce
good teachers. "The best don't want to teach," said Paul Gunashekar of
the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad. "In my
university, we don't feel the focus should be on English alone at the
expense of the mother tongue and regional languages."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/may/15/india-schools-english?newsfeed=true

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