CHANDIGARH: Just when the Punjab government was contemplating of introducing the Chinese language Mandarin in state schools, over 27,000 students of Class 10 of the Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) flunked in Punjabi paper.
Being the mother tongue of the residents of Punjab, is a compulsory subject up to Class 10 being the official language of the state.
In the budget session of the state assembly in March this year, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had announced that Mandarin would now be introduced as an optional subject in government schools at the senior secondary level.
According to the educationists and experts of Punjabi language, the condition of Punjabi as a subject is deplorable in rural as well as urban areas.
Educationists feel the state does not seem too serious about the survival of Punjabi language.
They stated that the government has standardised the syllabus, but failed to standardise the teaching. The language has to be viewed as a subject not as a mother tongue because the common mindset is that Punjabi is the mother tongue, so every student feels he is a master in it.
On being asked about not promoting Punjab's own Punjabi language, the secretary board assured of focussing on the Punjabi language with other languages in schools of Punjab.