The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Mother tongue as the medium of instruction

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Wednesday, Feb 20, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Mother tongue as the medium of instruction

Chitra V. Ramani

Bangalore: The issue of what should be the medium of instruction in schools remains unresolved. Should the schools have the mother tongue or the local language as the medium of instruction? The issue, however, is not new. The Gokak agitation was launched in 1982-83 to demand primacy for Kannada in schools as a medium of instruction and its introduction in the administration. The litigation over the State’s Language Policy that came into force in 1994 is still pending in the High Court of Karnataka.

In this day and age, most parents prefer to send their children to English medium schools. Parents seem to prefer English, as they feel that the “universal language” will ensure that their children have a better future.

G.S. Sharma, President of Karnataka (Recognised) Unaided Schools Managements’ Association, is of the opinion that it is next to impossible to implement mother tongue as the medium of instruction in schools. “For example, if a Malayali marries a Telugu-speaking person, what is their child’s mother tongue — Malayalam or Telugu?”

Mr. Sharma said that it would be impractical to implement mother tongue as a medium of instruction in schools, especially in a cosmopolitan city like Bangalore.

Common schools

U.R. Ananthamurthy, litterateur, has been promoting common schools for a long time. He told The Hindu that the medium of instruction, up to class 10, should be in Kannada. He said that children should be taught mane bhashe (mother tongue), beedi bhashe (local language) and attada bhashe (English). “However, English should be taught as a non-examination subject in schools. In fact, teachers should be encouraged to discuss the game of cricket for at least half-an-hour with the students, so that they can hone their conversational English.”

T.M. Vijay Bhaskar, Secretary, Department of Education (Primary and Secondary Education), said that 99 per cent of the respondents (parents) in a survey conducted by the department supported the introduction of English in class one in all government schools. “There has been a good response all over the State. The Government took the decision in view of the larger public opinion. The Government did not want the children from rural areas to suffer due to lack of knowledge of English,” he said.

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