<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="">Beyond the language tussle<span class=""></span> ·
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<a class=""><span></span></a><h3 class=""> <a class="" href="http://www.thehindu.com/tag/arts-culture-and-entertainment/428/"> </a> </h3><br><h3 class=""> <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/tag/higher-education/951/"> </a> </h3>
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<h3 class=""> <a class="" href="http://www.thehindu.com/tag/language/546/"> </a> </h3>
<h3 class=""> <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/tag/sanskrit/557/"> </a> </h3> </div></div></div><div id="article-block"><div class=""><div class="">
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<h2>It might be more productive to see the ongoing Sanskrit versus
German controversy as a welcome opportunity to discuss the real and
persistent problems of our education system, not all of which have to do
with which languages children get to learn</h2>
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<p class="">
The ongoing <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/german-taken-off-third-language-slot/article6600359.ece?ref=relatedNews">Sanskrit vs. German controversy</a>
is being seen by some as the sign of a sinister conspiracy to change
educational options, and by others as a much-needed corrective to bring
back “Indian culture” into the schools. It might be more productive to
see it instead as a welcome opportunity to discuss the real and
persistent problems of our education system, not all of which have to do
with which languages children get to learn. The attempt to implement
the teaching of Sanskrit in schools seems to be supported by a
remarkably uninformed view about what sort of language policy we require
today. And this is not to say that previous governments had any greater
insight into how to handle either the medium of instruction problem or
the issue of how many languages to teach and at what level. </p>
<p class="">
<b>Education budget cut</b><br>
<br>
Far more disturbing than the Sanskrit-German debate was the news last
week that the new Central government has decided to cut Rs.11,000 crore
from the Education budget (<i>The Hindu</i>, “<a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/social-sector-funds-slashed/article6637180.ece">Social sector funds slashed</a>,”
Nov. 27). The favouring of physical infrastructure over “the social
sector” (health, education, social security, nutrition, etc.) disregards
the intangible factors that go into strengthening knowledge bases and
the setting up of infrastructure in the first place. One of the implicit
casualties of the massive cut in the Education budget is a proposed
12th Plan programme to revitalise Indian language resources in higher
education. The rationale for this programme was that generation of
knowledge in Indian languages would not only create new intellectual
resources but transform the teaching-learning process in positive ways.
The access-equity-quality triangle emphasised by policymakers could
effectively be strengthened through a focus on Indian languages. Since
the default medium of instruction at the tertiary level was actually a
local language rather than the “mandatory” English, the deliberate
blindness of successive governments to this fact was depriving students
across disciplines of good quality resources. This linguistic divide
affects the majority of tertiary students in the country. Thus,
investing in Indian language materials at the basic and advanced levels
is a sustainable (not to mention cost-effective) way by which Indian
higher education could be strengthened. </p>
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“</span>The long-term objective should be to make the student
bilingually proficient, so that he is able to bridge effectively the
conceptual worlds of the local and the global.<span style="font-size:30px">”</span>
</p>
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<p class="">
We should note here that the emphasis is not on how many languages the
student learns but on whether s/he is developing cognitive capabilities.
This too has been a serious blind spot in modern Indian education over
the decades, right up to the recent May 2014 Supreme Court judgment on
the non-enforceability of mother-tongue instruction. The Court invoked
the right to freedom of speech and expression in this instance to say
that children and parents could choose the language in which the child
wanted to be educated. With all respect to the learned judges, one
wonders if they sought expert opinion in the matter or merely relied on
their common sense. If they had done the former, they might have found
out that worldwide research has proved that the most effective teaching
and learning happens through the use of the mother tongue. If exposing a
child to English at a very young age is dictated by opportunism and a
skewed sense of what makes social mobility possible, this choice flies
in the face of language and education research as well as the most
enlightened pedagogic practices available. If mother tongue or Indian
language education is not practical today, it’s because of the enormous
lack of good educational resources in those languages, another need that
state initiatives have failed to address adequately. </p>
<p class="">
<b>Parallel with China</b><br>
<br>
Since, these days, China is the favourite country of comparison for us,
we should pay attention to the fact that students in China start
learning English in the fourth standard and for the most part study all
their subjects in Mandarin. In my experience, the English fluency of the
average Chinese undergraduate ranges from functional knowledge of
English to complete proficiency, with an emphasis on reading and writing
rather than speaking. Even those with functional knowledge are far more
capable of dealing with the world of higher education today than most
students I encounter in India. The single most important variable here
would have to be that of mother tongue instruction combined with later
exposure to a language that gives students access to resources not so
readily available in Chinese. It’s a different matter that Internet use
is so heavily policed in China. However, every person I know inside and
outside the university has figured out how exactly to access the
resources they want, which is much more than can be said of Indian
students who don’t experience government-imposed firewalls. So, again,
is the ability to navigate the digital domain related to language skills
or critical skills? </p>
<p class="">
<b>Lack of clarity</b><br>
<br>
The inability to create a systematic curricular exposure to language and
critical skills is perhaps what prompts periodic outbursts like the
Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) directive to replace German
in Kendriya Vidyalaya schools with Sanskrit. Combined with this lack of
application is what can only be seen as the extraordinarily resilient
prejudices about what constitutes “Indian culture.” We routinely tend to
forget that this is a modern concept, mobilised by colonialist as well
as nationalist perspectives on our society. Lack of clarity about what
education is for leads to muddled thinking about what should be done in
the space of education. We should not confusedly believe that the
primary task of education is to pass on ways of living — we do that in
almost every domain of social engagement. The task of education is to
foster and strengthen cognitive capacities that can equip students to
produce original knowledge on their own terms, for which we are likely
to need bilingual and trilingual education. Debating whether we should
learn Sanskrit instead of German is a distraction from the real tasks
that lie ahead. We need to reorient the language debate to focus not on
learning the language (any language) but learning how to think. </p>
<p class="">
<b>Language use analysis</b><br>
<br>
The CBSE circular of June 30, 2014, instructing its affiliated schools
to observe ‘Sanskrit Week’, introduced the topic by stating that
“Sanskrit and Indian culture are intertwined as most of the indigenous
knowledge is available in this language.” It’s shocking to see that
people in the business of education are unaware about the fundamental
histories of language use in our country, and that mere assertion can
pass for accurate information. Apart from the facile collapsing of
“culture” onto “knowledge,” the circular’s statement about Sanskrit as
the language of indigenous knowledge appears as a sweeping
generalisation when you look at it from the point of view of medical,
artisanal or performing arts knowledge forms. Even if we stay with just
one example, that of indigenous medicine, and even if we stay with the
venerable Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and its
Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), a quick overview of the
books listed would show that the languages of indigenous knowledge
include Persian, Arabic, Urdu and Tamil in addition to Sanskrit. The
library currently lists 137 Tamil books on Siddha, for example, with 157
Sanskrit books on Ayurveda. Some of this knowledge is also available in
Malayalam, like the important works on <i>vishavaidyam</i>. </p>
<p class="">
Coming to contemporary language use in India, it would be important to
note that just as modern Kannada, Marathi or Telugu for example have
drawn on Sanskrit to build their vocabulary, they have equally strongly
drawn on other languages. Here are some sample Kannada words that reveal
the original language coiled inside the present day usage: <i>adalat</i>, <i>vakila</i>, <i>javabu</i>, <i>ambari</i>, <i>gulabi</i>, <i>sipayi</i>, <i>taakathhu</i>, <i>firyadu</i>, <i>bunadi</i>, <i>najooku </i>(Persian/Urdu).
This kind of sampling could be replicated for any contemporary Indian
language, and an exhaustive mapping exercise might reveal fascinating
borrowings and transformations that gesture well beyond language use. </p>
<p class="">
Most of our languages cannot sustain teaching and research in the
context of the modern university and its disciplines. We need to create
critical vocabularies across several conceptual domains. Students need
to learn the ability to distinguish between levels of meaning, to
contextualise/translate, and to create new concepts that capture the
life of our societies and our institutions. And in doing this, they have
to learn to draw on multiple linguistic resources. </p>
<p class="">
Ensuring the entry of Indian language resources into the mainstream of
our higher education system is a long-delayed project. By bringing these
resources into a national educational structure, we will be (a)
expanding the analytical abilities of these languages, and (b) making
the curriculum more relevant to the society we live in. The long-term
objective should be to make the student bilingually proficient, so that
he is able to bridge effectively the conceptual worlds of the local and
the global. </p>
<p class="">
<i>(Tejaswini Niranjana is with the Centre for Indian Languages in
Higher Education at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.) </i></p><p class=""><a href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/beyond-the-language-tussle/article6665681.ece">http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/beyond-the-language-tussle/article6665681.ece</a><br></p></div></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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