The Hindu : Kerala News : A suicidal exercise

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 05, 2008
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Kerala

Kerala

A suicidal exercise

Making Malayalam the language for instructions at the higher secondary-level is obviously a suicidal exercise. When the present administration is trying hard to project Kerala as the ultimate destination for knowledge-based industries, such an act seems to be counterproductive. Also, we cannot afford to be blind to the fact of hundreds of ‘spoken English’ trainers see Kerala as a goldmine as the State has the dubious distinction of having highly qualified individuals with very poor English speaking abilities. It is also very trivial to treat this as a noble initiative to benefit thousands of students who is said to find education a bore due to inability to comprehend the facts in English. This argument is often supplemented saying that literature related to the advances in science and technology are available in native languages in industrialised countries like France, Japan, Netherlands, Russia etc. We must know that this is due to the fundamental research competence that these countries have in each domain by virtue of the teaching/learning methodology they follow. The present attempt to impose a Malayalam-based learning process would be a mere translation of Western information into the local language and take way the only available opportunity for our younger generation to master the English language.

A. Praveen, Swapna K.P.

Kottayam

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