CHENNAI: I always felt dumb amid the presence of proficient English speakers, for not being adept in the language, says Gayathri (name changed) an aspiring physics teacher and a district-level physics topper, preparing for National Eligibility Test (NET).
“I studied in a Tamil medium school till class 12 and joined an arts and science women’s college in Chennai. I felt so isolated at college because I was not a first-rated English speaker.”
“While my classmates spent time preparing for competitive exams and were applying for fellowships, I was spending hours in the library trying to get command over the language. Even though English was taught as a second language at school, we were never trained to use it for communication. I wish we had good English teachers at school,” adds Gayathri.
This is not only an isolated case, as many experts have given similar opinion. English language education must be strengthened in rural schools before switching the medium of instruction to a mother tongue in elementary school, opine many experts responding to the recent National Educational Policy.
Promoting education in regional language, without offering robust English training to students, will widen the rural-urban gap, said stakeholders speaking to Express.
The National Education Policy, released recently by the Centre, says, “Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language or mother tongue or local language or regional language.”
While most agree with the policy’s rationale that young children learn non-trivial concepts quickly in their mother tongue, the transition into education and employment opportunities of their choice has been bumpy.
This is primarily because most schools in rural India do not have competent English teachers.
Over the last few decades, English has often been considered as an easy path for getting into better higher education degrees and high paying white-collar jobs.
KR Nandhakumar, the leader of the Tamil Nadu Matriculation, Higher Secondary and CBSE Schools Association, told Express, “Private schools in the State will train students in Tamil only if private schools across the country do the same. Delhi Public School or Kendriya Vidyalaya will not teach students in Hindi till Class 8. Why should we?” he questions.
However, Anna University Vice Chancellor MK Surappa, who studied in Kannada medium school, thought that it was a good idea to teach school children in their mother tongue.
He however said that it is not very functional to run college courses in regional languages.
“You have a better grasp of your fundamentals in your mother tongue,” he said elaborating that running technical courses in regional languages limits a student’s employment.
“There are not many good regional language textbooks for science and technology. It is shortsighted as only a small per cent of people will find mobility to larger organisations without knowing technical details in English,” he said.
P Duraisamy, the former Vice Chancellor of Madras University also said that English teaching at school level has to be improved.
“We tried to introduce many higher education programmes in Tamil to provide good opportunities for students from Tamil medium.
But the problem occurs when they wish to migrate to another State or want resource materials for research,” he said. He said that students who had good bilingual training, found it much easier to switch from mother tongue to English during higher education.
An official from the school education department told Express that they have been partnering with English training institutes to coach government schools in spoken English.
“Many parents want to send their kids to English medium schools. But students prefer learning in their mother tongue. We are trying to bridge this gap,” the official said.