Sampati, a first-year nursing student of the National Medical College in Kolkata, committed suicide on Saturday. In her suicide note, she cited difficulty in following lectures in English as the reason for her extreme step as also the weight of expectations from her debt-ridden family. Tragedies like that of Sampati are not isolated. There have been several such suicides in higher institutes of learning in Andhra Pradesh in the last few years. Yet, there is hardly any mention of this life and death issue in the raging debate on the Jagan Mohan Reddy government’s decision to make English the only medium of instruction in all government schools from Class I to Class VI from the next academic year.
On the contrary, Opposition parties and Telugu chauvinists are worried about what they call the ‘impending death of the language.’ How could Telugu be dead if children of the poor -- they are the only ones who enroll in government schools -- get educated in English medium? But then, the narrative being set by the TDP, actor Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena, their supporters and Telugu chauvinists is based more on politics, and emotion rather than reason.
Their objections are mainly-- a) Telugu will die a natural death; b) other states take pride in their language and are at best running parallel English medium schools; c) when other countries such as Germany, Japan, China, and Russia teach only in their mother tongue why can’t we?; d) it will be difficult to introduce English medium from next academic year given the quality of our teachers, and students will be put to inconvenience. Of their arguments, only the last has some sense. It is conventional wisdom endorsed by the National Education Policy that children can learn fast if taught in mother tongue at the primary level. And, yes, it is a herculean task to train teachers to teach in English since there is hardly six months left for the next academic year. The government will have to train 98,000 teachers by then.
As per a study by three US-based academics including linguist Steven Pinker, children have a natural ability to learn languages until they attain the age of 17.4 years. If they begin before 17, they have greater chances of doing well. Those who start before turning 10 do very well. Obviously, introducing children to English medium at an early age --- and also Telugu as a language – will bear better results. For them to learn everything all over again in English after going to college is turning out to be next to impossible. A random check of any student from the districts in our universities will be enough to know this. The question then is what about the National Education Policy guidelines? For every study, there is an alternate study.
According to an Oxford University Press paper titled, “The Role of the First Language in English-Medium Instruction,” the concept of ‘translanguaging’ is catching up and could prove a better bet than teaching students exclusively in one language. Translanguaging means usage of both English and mother tongue in school work – which by the way, by accident, will happen in our schools once they are converted to English medium. It could well be a blessing for children.
Beating chests over how other States are faring is absurd since they too are recognizing the writing on the wall that unless children study in English, their prospects will be dim. Uttar Pradesh is toying with it as did Karnataka under Siddaramaiah. Comparing ourselves with Germany et al is worse. Germany developed science and technology on its own. It has a different history unlike us who were introduced to modern education by the English and for us, higher education is available only in English even now.
Finally, will Telugu be dead? If its champions fear so, depriving the poor of upward mobility and English education is no way to protect it. Telugu is mandatory till Class XII. To promote it further, what is needed is affirmative action. Steps must be taken to inculcate a taste and flair for the language and literature by making students familiar with classics and culture.
At present, no such effort is being made and Telugu medium schools are simply making modern education difficult by artificially translating English terms and making learning experience a nightmare. The less said about Telugu University the better and ironically, none in this entire debate has uttered a word on getting it from Telangana.