[smc-discuss] What price English education?

[Shiju Alex]

പ്രാദേശികവത്ക്കരണം, ഭാഷാകമ്പ്യൂട്ടിംങ്ങ് എന്നിവയുമായി ബന്ധപ്പെട്ടു
പ്രവര്‍ത്തിക്കുന്നവര്‍ക്കു താല്പര്യമുണ്ടായേക്കാവുന്ന ഒരു ലേഖനം. ഇംഗ്ലീഷ്
വിദ്യാഭ്യാസത്തിന്റെ ഗുണദോഷങ്ങള്‍ വിലയിരുത്തുന്ന ഒരു ലേഖനമാണിത്.

ലേഖനത്തിലേക്കുള്ള കണ്ണി:
http://deccanherald.com/Content/Jul172008/dheducation2008071679144.asp

ഷിജു
 -----------------------------------------------------

  *What price English education*?  **  Knowledge of English may lead to
success today, but what if it comes at the cost of our own languages?
Sankara Rajanala writes on the perils of an English only approach.


English medium education is pricey: we all know that. But the price we pay
in terms of the damage to, indeed decay of, our national languages is hardly
ever realised.

My domestic help proudly tells me that her grandson goes to an English
school. It is no wonder that she is happy about it: the elite in our society
prefer education in English to mother tongue education. The trickle-down
effect ensures that everyone aspires to English education.

         <https://www.online.citibank.co.in/portal/Landingmaster.jsp?TID=t2&PID=reghm&CID=t2a1p7c1&LMS=RCA$RCAO$DDB$DEHWH180$DEHWH180$DECCANHERALD>
     *English as a medium  vs English as a subject
*
It is alright to have English as a subject from Class I and have good
teachers imparting knowledge of English, while the medium of instruction is
the mother tongue. That would ensure that children learn other subjects
better as pointed out in the following section Linguistic genocide?
Children's right to education in their own languages
[http://www.id21.org/insights/insights-ed05/art01.html]

Children learn better when they are taught through a language they know
well.

Children in mother tongue-based bilingual programmes in the USA learn
English more rapidly and do better academically than those in all-English
programmes. In the largest-ever study of minority education students who
reached the highest levels of bilingualism and school achievement were those
whose mother tongue was the main language of instruction for the longest
period of time.

While it cannot be denied that knowledge of English is the vehicle to
success in today's India (and most parts of the world), it is also true that
the medium of instruction need not be English for pupils to attain fluency
in English. It can be taught in the English class room, by well-trained
English teachers.

*Poor quality of English taught in primary schools
*
Many 'convented' children pick up inaccurate grammar because of poor quality
of English used by teachers at the primary level. Consider the salaries of
primary school teachers and people in advertising or media: those really
proficient in English tend to go to media or other lucrative jobs and only
those who cannot make it elsewhere end up teaching. The poor quality of
English they speak rubs off on to the pupils and we often hear convented
grown-ups using expressions like: "I don't think so it is true."

I myself did not go to a convent and know that the right way to say it is "I
don't think it is true."

*Decay of Indian languages
*
While bad English use is one concern, given the level of proficiency of
teachers, the other concern is what goes on with our own languages. In a
recent television show in Hindi (Are you smarter than a 5th standard kid?),
a major Hindi film maker was given three numbers in Hindi – 29, 37, 47 – and
was asked to say which was the lowest. He tried counting and ended up at 20
and could not remember – from his school days – what was 21 and beyond.

The worst part was, he seemed very pleased with his ignorance (though he was
proud to show off his competence in French, which he picked up while in
Switzerland). On a related note, when the song 'ek do teen' (from Tehzaab)
was translated into Telugu, it became "one two three". Of course the Telugu
numbers do not fit into the tune of 'ek do teen' but the point is, they used
English without much ado.

Moreover, it is becoming fashionable not to know one's own mother tongue
well enough. An example of this shocked me was when I was working on a
project at the CIEFL (now called the EFLU - English and Foreign Languages
University). I was trying to find children who spoke English at home and
study their acquisition patterns. In the course of that I met with a child's
parents and the father proudly said: "you speak to her in Telugu, she will
answer in English".

There are many people trying to bring up their children to learn English
even at home and not give them a proper mother tongue.  This could lead to
the death of our languages. Many languages are on the brink of extinction.
So what if some languages die out?

It leads to loss of information essential for survival.

Non-degraded ecosystems such as rainforests in the Amazon, Borneo or Papua
New Guinea are often inhabited only by indigenous and traditional peoples.
When their languages disappear, their knowledge about how to maintain
diverse ecosystems sustainably also disappears, including important
knowledge about human survival (for instance, about medicinal plants) that
is encoded in their languages. By killing languages, we are ruining the
prerequisites for human life on the planet.

*Is it going to happen to Indian languages?
*
Language death may be a distant eventuality, but language decay is seen in
our everyday life. When two educated Indians speak in their mother tongue,
30-40 per cent of it tends to be English words. Just like the famous film
director, we cannot find the right word in our own languages and fall back
on a 'convenient' English word.

In this way, over time, a lot of our idioms and expressions can become
obsolete like in the following example: The chipmunk (many people think it
is a squirrel, but a squirrel does not have the three stripes) got the
stripes – according to the Ramayana – when it was helping the building of
the Ram Setu by dipping into the sea, rolling in the sand, and carrying the
sand back into the Ram Setu. The dedication of the chipmunk is known as
'udata bhakti' in Telugu. Kids of 14 or 15 today don't know that expression
or don't use it – because they are 'soaked' in English.

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