Multilingual Education in India: The concept, growth and Issues. Is it Important for the growth of India? Check it out.
Multilingualism is a subset of multiculturalism. The latter is a political and societal ideology that enshrines the existence, promotion and practice of various traditions, customs and cultures in a single society, and the former deals only with languages. The Indian multicultural framework portrays the social stratification and social limitations in the Indian subcontinent, in which social classes are characterized and categorized by a huge number of genetic groups, named jatis or castes.Religiously, Hindus frame the greater part of the multicultural ambit, followed by Muslims. The populations are as follows, Hindu (80.5%), Muslim (13.4%), Christian (2.3%) and Sikh (2.1%). Further, Buddhist, Jain, Jew and Parsipopulations contribute a meager part of the Indian subcontinent. India’s states have eventually been separated and reorganized on linguistic basis. Moving on to its subset, multilingualism, the Indian subcontinent is diverse in linguistic context, with about 3000 mother tongues. Therefore, states vary from each other in culture, architecture, food, attire, artistic style, design, music and festivities. A country’s financial system depends mostly on its human capital, which in India is from the numerous abilities, special societies and legacy of different kinds of individuals. Thus, multiculturalism is often placed as a reason for development to be conceded.
Focusing on my core topic, multilingual education is important to Indian students as they tend to be from various ethnic and cultural groups. It also creates an impact on the teachers in different parts of the country. Multicultural education and training should include agreeable and cooperative learning. The teacher and students work together and look for the collaboration in the group. The teacher studies and learns the culture and languages from the societies, the students belong to and the students learn those of the teachers. The educators sometimes don't have the idea and necessity to understand and learn the lingual and cultural matters of their students. This results in a one-way communication between the students and the teacher, which is an ineffective way of learning.Further, multilingual education bridges the gaps between different languages. It creates a two way bridge eventually achieving sustainability between languages, rather than a one way bridge, which merely moves one language. By two way bridge, I mean the competence which takes place in local, regional, national and international languages.Multilingual education makes all languages equal. Since, it creates a sense of identity, there is no language that is inferior to another. Thus, it enables to promote equity and equality among languages.
In the recent days, teaching languages should be multilingual not just as far as the
number of languages offered to kids, but additionally as far as developing procedures
that would utilize the multilingual classroom as an asset or a resource. Kids will get
multilingual training from the beginning. In the non-Hindi talking states, students learn
Hindi. But in Hindi speaking states, kids do not learn the other languages. Sanskrit can
be studied in addition to these languages.
Having a look into the bridging of languages, time management comes into picture. The
initial step is to connect Mother Tongue and the School language. 80% of the educational
time ought to be spent on reading and writing the Mother Tongue and 20% for the
language spoken at school. From that point more and more time ought to be given to
perusing what's more, written work of the school language. This time is to be adjusted to
the point that before the finish of the primary stage (Fifth Standard), the time ought to be
overhauled, 80% for the school language, 20% for the Mother Tongue. This time is not
fixed and can be balanced as per the need of the students.
The constitutional provisions recognize minority languages in the country. All the states
have linguistic minorities, but not all these languages are being taught in schools as a
medium of instruction. The survey by NCERT has proven that are not even textbooks
available for these languages. We should have a keen look on this, as minorities are a
very important part of our society. Doing this will eventually, lead to inequality in
languages. In states where Dravidian languages are spoken, people feel, imposition of
the mother tongue of a particular region in India, as the official language of a whole
country, as tyranny. The former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C N Annadurai once made
the following statements opposing Hindi imposition in the south: "It is claimed that Hindi
should be common language because it is spoken by the majority. Why should we then
claim the tiger as our national animal instead of the rat which is so much more
numerous? Or the peacock as our national bird when the crow is ubiquitous?”
Moving to one of the major establishments in the field of multilingual education, the
Three language formula is to be looked into. The All India Council for Education
recommended the adoption of this Formula in September 1956. According to this
formula, a child must learn the mother tongue or the regional language; the official
language of the union or the associate official language of the Union so long as it exists
(official language of the union is Hindi and its associate official language is English);
Modern Indian language like Sanskrit or a foreign language which is not the language of
medium of instruction.
- By Niranjan E V
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