Multilingual education in India: tasks and challenges

"Multilingual education in India: tasks and challenges" was the (online) talk I gave on 22 August at the London Esperanto Club (in Esperanto). Some 60 Esperantists from around the world logged in. The 30-minute talk followed by an hour's conversation with the audience is available here on YouTube. Do listen to some of it if you want to hear Esperanto spoken more or less as an everyday (second) language! :-) Absorbing as the discussion was, in this post, already too long, I will limit myself to a report on my talk.

The talk began by setting the context of Azim Premji University's social purpose and engagement with school education in India. We then launched into the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020 [PDF]) -- more precisely, to this recommendation:

Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language / mother-tongue / local language. Thereafter, the home / local language shall continue to be taught as a language wherever possible. This will be followed by both public and private schools. (Para 4.9, p. 12)

However, before looking at the recommendation more closely, I said that the urgent task at hand during the pandemic was to reopen schools. This has to be done safely. Governments and NGOs like Azim Premji Foundation are putting together guidelines and resources for this. The educational needs of the most vulnerable learners -- Dalits and Adivasis; the nutritional needs of growing children being met through the mid-day meal scheme; the rising incidence of child labour; and especially for girls, early marriages -- these are all aspects of that urgency. The longer the school remains closed, the greater the number of children who will never return to school.

We then came back to the mother-tongue education recommendation in NEP 2020. We noted the difficulty of specifying the mother tongue. Bhojpuri is a case in point. Although it has 51 million native speakers, it is listed (PDF) in the Indian census 2011 as one of the 56 "mother tongues" under Hindi -- as part of the "Hindi belt". Thus, if a Bhojpuri child is being taught in Hindi, it is misleading to claim that the child is being educated in their mother tongue. In operationalizing the policy, the compound "home language / mother-tongue / local language" will need a more nuanced approach.

A second difficulty with the NEP 2020 recommendation is the last sentence in the part cited above: "This will be followed by both public [that is, free] and private [fee-paying] schools." Now, the profit-model of private schools in India crucially depends on English-medium teaching: it is their USP! No wonder, then, that this recommendation has come in for some severe criticism from this vocal and influential lobby. See some of the links in the initial part of this sensible article by Shoaib Daniyal, "Why is India obsessed with English-medium education -- when it goes against scientific consensus?" How policymakers will get this lobby to the table remains to be seen. There may be possibilities in the promise of bilingual education that is mentioned later in the talk.

Fortunately for the private-school lobby, NEP 2020 itself provides several "escape routes"! In the passage cited above, "wherever possible" occurs twice; the 60-page document offers many such "opt-outs, modifications, alternatives, claw-backs" -- as Tove Skutnabb-Kangas has called them. Instead of framing the issue as a matter of linguistic rights, the document presents it as a desirable. Thereby, those reluctant to implement the recommendations will find it easy to not act.

A third battle front for the NEP 2020 recommendation is the fact that in several states the public school system itself is switching to English as medium of instruction! Karnataka has identified a thousand government schools where English-medium education is being given. Neighbouring Telangana is currently training nearly 2000 elementary school teachers to teach in English. These states have adopted English in order to counter the "outflow" of children from regional-language medium government schools to English-medium private schools.

It is too early to say whether the project has worked, but now that government schools themselves are offering English-medium education, parents have started to pull their children out of private schools, and admit them into public schools. The current pandemic, in which millions have lost their livelihoods, has made this option even more attractive. To that extent, one might say that the project is successful.

As I noted in the talk, this third difficulty has shown up a certain incoherence between the NEP 2020 recommendation and the state governments' language policies. This has begun to be noticed elsewhere too as the title of this article indicates: "Will the NEP Throw a Spanner in Jagan Reddy's Plans for English-Medium Education?" What then might be the way forward?

One possible solution seems to be to develop various models of bilingual education. By this, NEP 2020 means English and a regional language. The document mentions bilingual education at several places. For example here:

Students whose medium of instruction is the local / home language will begin to learn science and mathematics bilingually in Grade 6 so that by the end of Grade 9 they can speak about science and other subjects both in their home language and English. In this regard, all efforts will be made in preparing high-quality bilingual textbooks and teaching-learning materials. (Para 4.12, p. 12-13)

If that is indeed the aim, then the extensive English-training programmes that some states are currently undertaking can be seen as preparatory capacity-building for a transition to bilingual education. As the document notes, a great deal of material will need to be developed. In fact, NEP 2020 recommends the setting up of an "Indian Institute of Translation and Interpretation" (IITI) (Para 22.11, p. 53). The availability of such "high-quality" material might prove to be attractive to the private-school system -- including for-profit educational start-ups -- as well.

The bilingual material will need to be both "from-below" (school textbooks and supplementary material for students) as well as "from-above" (teacher training material and university-level material). For decades, governments as well as NGOs have sporadically prepared bilingual material, often for Adivasi children -- that is, bilingual textbooks in the regional language and an Indigenous language. The main reason for these projects not scaling up is lack of sustained state and institutional support: they depended crucially on individual activists and sympathetic officials in the education bureaucracy. The Odisha project (about which I have blogged before) is one of the few with some sustained government support. Perhaps with an IITI that gap will be closed.

Meanwhile, in the sphere of higher education -- the "from-above" as I called it -- the talk gave two examples of intiatives already underway. The first is the "Translations Initiative" (TI) at Azim Premji University. A major objective of TI is to make all the readings of the various programmes of the university available (initially at least) in Hindi and Kannada as well. This will enable access to higher education to a much larger pool of students than only those proficient in English. Simultaneously, TI is organizing "seminars in Indian languages on subjects related to school education in collaboration with different Universities across India".

In alignment with TI is the second initiative that I mentioned in my talk: the National Translation Mission (NTM). I have blogged recently about its work of translating "knowledge texts" into all of India's 22 Official Languages. Hopefully, these initiatives -- those from-below and those from-above -- will together create a sustainable ecosystem for multilingual education in India.

Zooming out, the talk located the 60-page NEP 2020 in the context of a federal democracy: consultation, collaboration, and consent are necessary. And these have to be between multiple stakeholders: central government, state governments, and non-governmental agencies. Further, in the Indian constitution, education is in the Concurrent List -- states too can legislate on the subject. In such a political structure, a readiness to dialogue becomes that much more important.

Finally, the talk acknowledged that the road ahead was long, the challenges would need much work, and the task by its very nature was transgenerational. But without persistence, there would be no way to see the optimism that the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz holds out to us:

"It is but a night" by Faiz

The heart is not without hope
It has only not tasted success
Yes, the night of sorrow is long
But it is but a night.

Telugu-medium students do better at math than English-medium students - report

A recent report (PDF, 18 p. + appendices) concludes that "Telugu (mother tongue) medium students on an average perform significantly better as compared to English medium students after controlling for students ability, household characteristics and parental aspiration. This analysis suggests that introducing English medium of instruction at earlier grades during school life may negatively affect learning outcomes of students."

The report's author P. Sree Kumar Nair compared math test score data of 182 primary school students from 78 English-medium schools and 694 students in 144 Telugu-medium schools in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. He asks "does medium of instruction affect learning outcomes?" His answer is yes, it does. But the material conditions of these two groups of students are quite different. He notes:

"Summary statistics indicate that Telugu medium students are still substantial in number and are a disadvantaged lot as they not only have fewer infrastructural facilities but also their nutritional levels are significantly lower than their counterparts. Such a situation leads to lower cognitive development of students. Moreover Human Development Report of Telangana (2014) also reveals that there is lesser accountability on the part of government school permanent teachers that offer Telugu medium education. Against all such odds, there exists a strong potential for Telugu medium students to perform better. Thus, this evidence supports the claim that this paper strives to make about the need to give importance to mother tongue based education at primary levels of education." (p. 16)

Thus, the report cautions against changing the medium of primary education from Telugu to English. "In other words, a step towards a transition of schools at primary level from Telugu to English medium might create larger inequalities by widening the gap in the achievement levels.... Moreover, insistence on instruction in English is certainly a barrier for the poor, rural and lower caste students as revealed by this study." (p. 16-17).

Early childhood report overlooks language

The Law Commission of India has just published a good report called "Early Childhood Development and Legal Entitlements" (PDF). In a brief 73 pages it offers a useful overview of the concept and importance of early childhood care; the international conventions, treaties and declarations on the subject; the (Indian) constitutional context; and the various national policies and schemes dealing with health and nutrition, as well as care and education. The report concludes with a list of recommendations to strengthen the "statutory backing" for the various provisions already in existence.

The recommendations include making mandatory free preschool education (rather than optional as it currently is under the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RtE)). But the report is silent on what this might mean for children of Indigenous peoples and linguistic minorities (ILM -- incidentally, ilm is the Urdu word for knowledge and learning). As things stand, when a ILM child enters primary school, hardly anywhere in the country does she receive education in the mother tongue. The report's silence on the issue of medium of instruction indicates that for ILM children preschool education too will be in a non-mother tongue.

This flies in the face of the report's declaration that, "There should be a reference to quality of education in the Rules. Education for children under six must mean quality education and care to prepare them for elementary school and anything less than that should not be called education" (p. 61). Brave words! Similarly, the report also enjoins the state to provide training of preschool teachers "to ensure quality standards and a proper implementation of the best methods of promoting play and learning" (p 72). Let us hope that these admonitions to provide quality education through play and learning translate into a mother-tongue-medium education for our children.

Language and environment - a response to Madhav Gadgil

Professor Madhav Gadgil gave a talk at IIIT Hyderabad today. Among other things, he stressed the need to empower local communities with information on and knowledge of how various decisions by governments and corporations will impact their environment. Government-generated environmental information is poor, not-transparent, and frequently manipulated, he said. The Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill, 2013 came in for special castigation (see also this analysis of the bill by PRS Legislative Research).

He was tremendously optimistic about citizen-science initiatives (like the Australian WaterWatch) and using the Right to Information Act to generate knowledge for informed debate. He was equally optimistic that machine translation "within about 30-40 years" will make this knowledge available in any language.

In the Q&A that followed, I took the following line (spelt out here in greater detail than I had time for in the session):

(a) biodiversity hotspots are also hotspots of linguistic diversity -- researchers in fact speak of "biocultural diversity";

(b) knowledge of biodiversity maintenance is typically encoded in indigenous languages, and many of these are very small languages indeed -- the median number of speakers of the world's languages is a mere 7000 (compare it to the mean -- 878 thousand);

(c) thus, even from a purely instrumental point of view (setting aside any ethical arguments), there is a good case for the flourishing of these languages;

(d) but this linguistic diversity is disappearing very fast -- "between 1970 and 2005 the number of languages spoken globally has decreased by 20%";

(e) among the most effective mechanisms to ensure that a language disappears is an assimilationist language policy in education -- specifically, the use of  a non-mother-tongue as medium of instruction -- what we have elsewhere called "silent ethnocide -- a low-intensity warfare through formal education";

(f) thus, if information and knowledge are to benefit the environmentally most vulnerable in society, a mother-tongue-based multilingual education is necessary -- machine-translation technologies, while welcome, will not by themselves be enough.

Mother Language Day 2012

Nelson Mandela once said that "if you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart". Thus, Irina Bokova, Director-General of Unesco, begins her message (links to PDFs in the official languages of the UN) for this year's International Mother Language Day (IMLD), celebrated on 21 February every year.

The theme for IMLD 2012 is "Mother tongue instruction and inclusive education". Prominent in this year's celebration is the crucial role mother-tongues play in the right to education.

Among the interesting resources on the Unesco page are an article "Nisha's right" from The Kathmandu Post; an interview with Colette Grinevald: "Speaking your mother tongue is not a disability!"; as well as the following brief podcasts from SOAS radio (a resource well worth bookmarking):

• in English: Peter Austin on "Bangladesh, Australia and the importance of Mother Language Education"
• in Russian: Elena Giniotyte on "Archi, an Endangered Language in the Caucasus"
• in Mandarin: Lianhong Yo on "Language and Nation Building in Singapore"
• in Arabic: Samah Bushra Yousef on "Bilingual Education in Burkina Faso"
• in Portuguese: Helena De Moraes Achca on "Bilingual Education in Bolivia"

PROBE revisited

Probe Revisited: A Report on Elementary Education in India (OUP 2011) is the book-length version of the study that was reported in The Hindu and Frontline in 2009 (I blogged about those reports here). As one of the partners of the study, CORD, says: "Despite a quantum leap in the number of children able to access schooling in the last 10 years, the situation continues to be dismal."

Just how dismal can be guaged from a 2010 Working Paper for Oxfam: Elementary Education in India: Progress, Setbacks, and Challenges. This document was co-authored by A. K. Shiva Kumar -- one of the authors of the PROBE report. As it says:

"Even today, despite progress, nearly all the problems admitted in 1950 are still waiting to be tackled. Physical infrastructure is inadequate, not all children are enrolled, retention is poor with girls lagging behind boys, drop-out rates remain high, children belonging to scheduled caste, scheduled tribe, and Muslim communities are largely excluded, inequalities persist, quality is poor, and learning achievements are low."

To the above list of old problems, the Working Paper adds the "de-professionalization" of teaching. "The last decade has witnessed large-scale appointment of local 'contract teachers' (shiksha karmis, shiksha mitras, para-teachers, etc.) at salaries far below those paid to permanent teachers in the same government schools. The survey found that contract teachers account for nearly 40 per cent of all teachers in government primary schools."


Disappointingly, nowhere does the Working Paper mention issues of medium of instruction as barriers to universal access and inclusion, especially for linguistic minorities. As we saw above, it notes the disproportionate exclusion of indigenous children (and other minorities), but does not even touch upon language policy in education. Let us hope that the book-length PROBE study notes the need for a mother-tongue based multilingual education.

English from class 1 in Andhra Pradesh

A somewhat alarming February-2011 report in Deccan Chronicle - "English medium proposed in all government schools" - has morphed into a March-25th report - "AP schools to teach English from Class 1". Let us hope that the latter report is not a preliminary to implementing the February announcement. It is fine to "introduce English as a second language from Class 1 in all government schools... from 2011-2012". (It is now being taught from class 6.) But introducing English as a medium of instruction is a bad idea. Here's why.

The state's education system finds it difficult enough to impart education in the mother-tongue. The state's performance in the ASER survey is fairly dismal:

• only 60.3% of class 5 children (~ 11-year-olds) can read a class 2 text; nearly 40% cannot.
• of class 5 children, 18.3% can recognize the numbers 11-99, but cannot do subtraction; 37.7% can subtract, but not do division; 40.5% of class 5 children can divide. Nearly 60% cannot.

Nor is the situation in private schools much better. ASER reports that between 2007-2010, in private schools, some 5-10% more children have been able to do the reading and arithmetic tasks mentioned above.

And all this is in the mother-tongue, Telugu.

(As in other parts of India, in AP too, indigenous/tribal and minority children get only the dominant regional language - in AP's case, Telugu - as the medium of education, except for the small fraction that can afford to send children to an "English-medium" school. Combined with all the other systemic problems, education in a non-mother-tongue results nation-wide in a third of the enrolled children being "pushed-out" before class 5. And in AP, within the first 10 years of schooling, 82% of indigenous children leave school. References in my 2010 paper in Languaging.)

To come back to private schools in AP, their only-slightly better performance hasn't stopped parents from choosing them. As ASER reports, "Between 2009 and 2010, the percentage of children (age 6-14) enrolled in private school has increased from 29.7% to 36.1% in Andhra Pradesh."

The March-2011 report in Deccan Chronicle gives even more disquieting figures: "the percentage of enrolment... in government schools... came down... from 82.48 to 55.72 [percent] in primary and upper-primary schools, while private school enrolment increased from 17.52 to 44.28 percent... [between] 1995-96 and 2009-10."

With the quality of education in Telugu being what it is, introducing English as a second language is hardly likely to make much of a difference. And making English the medium of instruction is likely to prove disastrous.

Linguistic human rights in India: policy and practice

Last month EFLU's new journal Languaging published my article "Linguistic human rights in India: policy and practice".

The issue is not (yet?) available online. But the link above will take you to the PDF version of the manuscript that I submitted to the journal.

Comments, as ever, welcome!

Tamil-medium education

Prof. Thiruvasagam, the vice-chancellor of University of Madras, made a strong plea for a mother-tongue medium education at the World Classical Tamil Conference 2010.

He poignantly describes "our very own children hailing from Tamil medium schools who are confident and happy individuals" and the shock when they encounter English as the medium of instruction in higher education:

"We have seen these children transforming before our eyes into timid, sullen individuals whose creativity and voice are silenced by the linguistic imperialism of English."

He also cites yet another figure for English-speakers in India: "the percentage of people speaking English is supposedly about 23%". He gives no source.

In contrast, the English Wikipedia in its table of Countries in order of total speakers - using government of India census (2001) figures - says 12% of Indians speak English (which still gives a 125 million plus people!).

But, of course, all these figures make little sense unless we have some idea of what level of speaking (or knowing) we are talking about. This is where the various levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) are particularly useful: "CEFR describes what a learner is supposed to be able to do in reading, listening, speaking and writing at each level."

To return to Coimbatore, the Tamil conference promises to be interesting. I'll be following it in English, of course! :-)

From mother-tongue to many tongues

"From mother-tongue to many tongues" is the title of my article in the current issue of the magazine Teacher Plus. The essay argues that a mother-tongue based multilingual education is both necessary and do-able.

The editors gave me a thousand-word limit. Listing all the references would have eaten up a large part of that word limit. So, I've re-published the article (with minor changes, and all the references) on my website. Do read "From mother-tongue to many tongues".

Comments, as always, welcome!

Skutnabb-Kangas on MTM Education

"Literacy and Oracy in Mother-Tongue Based Multi-Lingual Education" is the title of a public lecture which Tove Skutnabb-Kangas will deliver at Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Moka in Mauritius. She argues that, "The most important PEDAGOGICAL reason for the world’s ”illiteracy” is the wrong medium of teaching" (slide 37) - and proceeds to present a vast amount of evidence to show that linguistic genocide and lack of LHRs (linguistic human rights) in education is co-responsible for

• “illiteracy”, lack of school achievement, educational waste, poor life chances;
• disappearance of groups/nations/peoples (through forced assimilation);
• homogenising knowledges and ideas and preventing optimal multicreativity;
• killing of the world’s languages and linguistic diversity, and TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge), as prerequisites for the maintenance of biodiversity. (slide 99)

As David Hough did in his essay (about which I'd blogged this July), Skutnabb-Kangas too spends some time answering some frequently asked questions:

• Why should children be taught mainly through the medium of their mother tongue (MT) in school for the first 6-8 years? They know their MT already? (slide 107)
• Parents want children to learn English (and French). If children are taught mainly through their MT the first many years, how do they learn English (and French)? (slide 112)
•  Isn’t it enough if children have the first 3 years in the MT and then the teaching can be in English? (slide 116)
• Parents want English-medium schools. What are the likely results? (slide 121)
  

Her conclusion:

"Mother-tongue based MLE for the first 6-8 years, with good teaching of English as a second language and French as a foreign/second language, and possibly other languages too, with locally based materials which respect local knowledge, seems to be a good research-based recommendation for Mauritius." (slide 126)

Afrikaans and the mother tongue

Kathleen Heugh's wide-ranging essay "Literacy and Bi/Multilingual Education in Africa: Recovering Collective Memory and Experience" in Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalising the Local (click here for ordering information) has an ironic example of the effectiveness of Mother-Tongue Medium (MTM) education.

"Apartheid logic included separate ethnolinguistic education systems. This meant eight years of MTM education for African children, followed by a transition to an equal number of subjects in Afrikaans and English in secondary school. The use of MTM education under such circumstances tainted its educational legitimacy amongst African language communities in South Africa....

"Resistance to the compulsory use of Afrikaans medium for half of the subjects in secondary school for African students culminated in a student revolt in Soweto in 1976. Government was forced to make Afrikaans medium optional and MTM education was reduced from eight to four years of primary....

"At the time, heated political debates deflected attention from the de facto achievements of MTM education in South Africa. The secondary school leaving pass rate for African students rose to 83.7% by 1976. The English language (as subject) pass rate improved to over 78%. Within a few years of the reduction of MTM education to four years and earlier transition to English, the school leaving pass rates declined to 44% by 1992, with a parallel decline in English language proficiency (Heugh 2002). Macdonald (1990) was to show that students could not become sufficiently proficient in English by the end of the fourth year to facilitate a successful transition to English medium in grade 5.

"Although African parents hoped that extended and earlier access to English in school would deliver higher-level proficiency in English and educational success, the educational gap between speakers of African languages and speakers of Afrikaans and English, who have MTM education throughout, has widened. The knock-on effect of this is that those leaving school and going into the teaching profession are now less well-equipped for teaching and there is a downward spiral of teaching competence across the entire system....

"Ironically, by accident rather than design, apartheid education offered optimal opportunity for first and second language development alongside cognitive and academic development from 1955-1976. Despite the intention of separate and unequal education, an unintended consequence was greater educational success than other educational policy in the region. (pp. 101-2)

India's Supreme Court on mother and other tongues

"SC frowns at states' pro mother-tongue, anti-English policy" said the headline:

The apex court rejected the argument of senior counsel PP Rao appearing for the state [Karnataka] who, quoting experts, claimed that the mother tongue was essential to be imparted at an impressionable age for the overall intellectual and cultural development of a child.

"Parents are ready to pay Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000 for getting their children admitted in English medium schools. This is the real state of affairs. They do not want to send them to schools of their mother tongue. It should be left to the parents," the bench observed.

The court is right, of course: "This is the real state of affairs." Where it is wrong is in rejecting the overwhelming evidence of the effectiveness of mother-tongue medium education.

But it is not enough for Mr PP Rao to present this evidence. What he ought to have impressed upon the court was that it is not about mother tongue or "other" tongue; bilingual education is about acquiring both Kannada and English: additive bilingualism.

And the research is unequivocal on that as well. Coincidentally, I was just reading Stephen Krashen on bilingual education (PDF):

Scientifically valid controlled studies have been done, and they consistently show that students in properly organized bilingual programs acquire at least as much English as comparison students in all-English programs, and usually acquire more. The most recent review of this research is Greene (1997) (see also Willig, 1985), who used statistical tools far more precise than those used in previous reviews. Greene concluded that the use of the native language in instructing limited English proficient children has "beneficial effects" and that "efforts to eliminate the use of the native language in instruction ... harm children by denying them access to beneficial approaches."

Studies from other countries are very consistent with results from the United States. Children in well-organized bilingual programs acquire as much of the second language as those in "immersion" programs or more. Studies confirming this have been done with Turkish and Urdu speaking children in Norway, Punjabi speaking children in England, Turkish and Arabic speaking children in the Netherlands, Finnish-speaking children in Sweden, Gapapuyngu speaking children in Australia, and Tzeltal and Tzotzil speaking children in Mexico (Krashen, 1999a).

All the references are in Krashen's critical review.

This is a case where research results have not yet entered public awareness on the subject. Just as the Court would not leave many, many educational matters "to the parents" (or to teachers or school management), bilingual education too is a subject on which it should be guided by worldwide research. The fact is that children in Karnataka can speak about chemistry or geography in both Kannada and English - just as children in good bilingual programs across the world do.

Esperanto: A tool for decolonizing the mind

"Esperanto: A tool for decolonizing the mind" is the English version of the talk "Esperanto - ilo por la malkoloniigo" - that I gave at the 34th Catalonian Esperanto Congress in December 2008. Comments welcome!

MTM education in RtE Bill

The Right to Education (RtE) Bill - about which I blogged the other day - says, "medium of instructions [sic!] shall, as far as practicable, be in child's mother tongue" (emphasis added).

As far as practicable; appropriate; wherever possible; adequate; substantial numbers; if there is sufficient demand; endeavour; within the framework of their education systems; pupils who so wish in a number considered sufficient.... Tove Skutnabb-Kangas gives many examples of these "opt-outs, modifications, alternatives, claw-backs" in her UEA-UNHCR talk in April 2008 in Geneva (slides 63-71) - I had blogged about this talk in October 2008.

From her recent keynote in Bamako, Mali, I copied her recommendations in a post on the Jharkhand forum. Here they are:

madhu prasad wrote:

> The pedagogically sound solution would be to retain the former as the medium of
> instruction but to introduce English as a subject, to be taught adequately
> and imaginatively, even from Class 1.

Yes, here are the main recommendations (slides 30-33) from a recent keynote by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, a language-rights activist:

Recommendation 1: the mother tongue should be the main teaching language for the first eight years

1a. All Indigenous/tribal and other linguistic minority children (hereafter, IM children) should have their first or own language (or one of them, in case of multilingual children) as their main medium of education, during minimally the first eight years (but absolutely minimally the first six years), in non-fee state schools.

1b. Even if the mother tongue might no longer be used as a teaching language after grade 8, it should be used orally in the classroom, and it should be studied as a subject during the entire education process.

Recommendation 2: good teaching of a dominant local or national language as a subject

2. IM children should have good teaching of a dominant local or national language as a second language, given by competent bilingual teachers, from grade 1 or 2. It should be studied as a subject throughout the entire education process. It should be studied as a second (or foreign) language, using second/foreign language pedagogy/methods; it should not be studied as if it were the children's mother tongue.

Recommendation 3: transfer from mother tongue medium teaching to using a dominant local or national language as a teaching language

3a. Some subjects can be taught through the medium of a dominant local or national language and/or an international language in the upper grades, but not before grade 7 and only if there are competent teachers.

3b. If necessary one or two practical subjects (physical education, music, cooking, etc) can be taught earlier through the medium of a second language, but cognitively and/or linguistically demanding subjects (such as mathematics or history) should be taught in the child's first language minimally up to grade 7, preferably longer.

Recommendation 4: additional languages as subjects

4. IM children should have an opportunity to learn other languages as school subjects, including a language in international use such as English, Spanish, French, Russian, Hindi, etc, if it is not a dominant local or national language mentioned in Recommendation 2 above.

This keynote - at the Bamako International Forum on Multilingualism (19-21 Jan), organized by the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN, the African Union) - is archived on her website.

The next three slides (34-36) give a slew of references to back up these recommendations. Skutnabb-Kangas concludes:

Research conclusions about results of present-day indigenous and minority education show that the length of mother tongue medium education is more important than any other factor (including socio-economic status) in predicting the educational success of IM students, including their competence in the dominant language....

Language and knowledge flows

Yesterday, in Hyderabad, there was a seminar on "Knowledge Society and Uncertain Futures", organized by STEPS - Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability - "a global research and policy engagement centre, funded by the ESRC, bringing together development studies with science and technology studies."

STEPS is collaborating in a series of consultations in India: "Knowledge Society Debates: A series of events exploring science, technology and innovation in India, 5-13 January 2009".

The premise (detailed in the Background Paper) is:

Though divided by colonial legacies – and further separated by media emphasis on today’s techno-economic rivalries – India and Europe present many parallels in their engagements with the knowledge society. They share an awareness of culture and history (with all their contingencies), a vibrantly critical politics of technology, and an imperative for inclusion and a plural understanding of the public good.

The key speakers at the seminar were: D Balasubramanian, Brian Wynne, Sheila Jasanoff, V Balaji, Shiv Visvanathan, and G Haragopal. More about (most of) them in the seminar announcement.

I (of course!) intervened. Here's more or less what I said:

My name is Giridhar Rao; I am from the World Esperanto Association. No surprise then that I focus on language.

Seems to me that neither the deliberations here nor those in the European Commission report that Dr Wynne has authored, have focused on the link between language and knowledge flows. I wish to highlight two domains where this link is clear: indigenous knowledges and higher education.

A considerable amount of knowledge about biodiversity management is encoded in indigenous languages. This cultural diversity is fast disappearing, faster than biological diversity. For this reason too, it is important to safeguard and promote the linguistic human rights of indigenous peoples - who, as Shiv Visvanathan has reminded us, are very much our contemporaries. And all the research shows that mother-tongue medium education is the most effective countermeasure to this "linguistic genocide", as Tove Skutnabb-Kangas calls those policies that result in the death of languages.

In the domain of indigenous knowledges, one sees clearly the link between knowledge flows and language.

Language is a bottleneck in knowledge flows in the domain of higher education and research.

In India, poor overall teaching in schools means poor cognitive skills in English - the language of higher education in India. In applied sciences like agriculture this disjunct sets up its own barriers to knowledge flows - between the home language and English: the farmer in the field and his son in the university cannot communicate with each other.

And in international scientific collaboration, there is considerable (anecdotal) evidence of disruptions in knowledge flows caused by language asymmetries.

Even in the European Union, where teaching is not poor, and where, for most citizens, the language of higher education is the home language, even there, language plays an important role in knowledge flows.

The Swiss economist François Grin in his 2005 report (in French), "Foreign language teaching as public policy", (summaries: Fr, Eo) estimates that every year the European Union transfers 25 billion euros - that's billion: 10 to the power 9 - 25 billion euros to the United Kingdom for language-related reasons. These include the sale of English-language learning materials; the 700,000 or so EU citizens who visit UK every year to learn English; and the savings for UK resulting from not having to teach foreign languages.

Thus, in vastly different areas of the human experience - from indigenous peoples in India to the European Union - one sees asymmetries and disruptions in knowledge flows because of language-related factors.

It's clear that both India and the European Union need to manage their complex multilingualism much better for more efficient, cost-effective and democratic knowledge flows.

And it is precisely at this point that one can point to the 120-year-old history of the Esperanto movement in creating more democratic communication between peoples. But that is a theme for another seminar.... :-)

Thank you.

Education Bill - three critiques by Anil Sadgopal

Here are three excellent articles by Prof. Anil Sadgopal arguing that the education bill just tabled in the Upper House of the Indian Parliament is deeply discriminatory, and needs to be radically amended or replaced.

1. "C For Commerce", Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 23, Dated June 14, 2008
http://tehelka.com/story_main39.asp?filename=cr140608cforcommerce.asp

A new Bill seeks to put the constitutional promise of free and quality education for all at the mercy of market forces, warns ANIL SADGOPAL

2. "Education Bill: dismantling rights", Anil Sadgopal, Financial Express, Posted: 2008-11-09
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/education-bill-dismantling-rights/383177/0

3. "The 'Trickle Down' Trick", Tehelka Magazine, September 2007
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main34.asp?filename=Ws290907The_Trickle.asp

The Prime Minister’s promise of "6000 high quality schools" is clearly designed to divert attention from the issue of long-pending structural transformation in the school system, says Prof. Anil Sadgopal

20% Indian kids have different home and school languages

Peru: 18.5%
India: 19.1%
Paraguay: 63.5%
Phillipines: 79.7%

These are the percentages of primary pupils in schools where school heads reported that for 'most' or 'all' pupils "First language [was] different from language of instruction". The data is from a 2008 Unesco report, A View Inside Primary Schools: A World Education Indicators (WEI) cross-national study (p. 56, Table 3.1).

These percentages have important implications for the global initiative Education for All, especially, its sixth goal, "Improve the quality of education". When so many have to struggle with a non-mother-tongue, what learning can happen?

With language barriers adding to the difficulties of minority and indigenous children, the findings of India's ASER 2007 report are not surprising at all: only 58.3% children in class 5 can read a class 2 level text (p. 32). For some 20% of the 41% who can't read even a class 2 text, the language of instruction must be a formidable challenge. In the Phillipines 80% suffer a non-home-language in the school. Imagine the challenges there in providing "quality education"!

The Unesco report, however, draws a very mild conclusion from the data:

"Schools and teachers needed to take these different linguistic backgrounds into account, not only in the development of language instruction but in other parts of the curriculum to ensure that all pupils had the opportunity to succeed academically."

No! A much stronger recommendation is warranted: ensure mother-tongue medium education. Only then will Unesco and governments have a chance to achieve the relevant Millennium Development Goals.

Arapaho revitalization

Its Native Tongue Facing Extinction, Arapaho Tribe Teaches the Young
By DAN FROSCH
The New York Times
October 16, 2008

"[O]nly about 200 Arapaho speakers are still alive, and tribal leaders at Wind River, Wyoming’s only Indian reservation, fear their language will not survive. As part of an intensifying effort to save that language, this tribe of 8,791, known as the Northern Arapaho, recently opened a new school where students will be taught in Arapaho. Elders and educators say they hope it will create a new generation of native speakers.

[...]

"Studies show that language fluency among young Indians is tied to overall academic achievement, and experts say such learning can have other positive effects."

Do read the full article.

Language, Education and (violations of) Human Rights

"Language, Education and (violations of) Human Rights" is the keynote that Tove Skutnabb-Kangas gave at a symposium on "Linguistic Rights in the World, the current situation", at the United Nations in Geneva, in April 2008. The symposium commemorated the 100th Anniversary of the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) and the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Skutnabb-Kangas argues forcefully that:

The most important Linguistic Human Right (LHR) in education for Indigenous peoples and minorities, if they want to reproduce themselves as peoples/minorities, is an unconditional right to mainly mother tongue medium education in non-fee state schools. This education (of course including teaching of a dominant language as a subject, by bilingual teachers) should continue minimally 8 years, preferably longer. Today, binding educational LHRs are more or less non-existent.

Meanwhile, as she points out, "According to pessimistic but realistic estimates, 90-95% of today’s spoken languages may be very seriously endangered or extinct by the year 2100."

She demonstrates that for children of indigenous and minority groups, dominant-language-medium education policies the world over are both widespread and destructive. She argues that these policies can be described legally (in international law) as "linguistic genocide" and "crimes against humanity".

Her "positive examples" of mother-tongue medium based multilingual education are from India, Nepal, Norway, Finland, and Ethiopia, and adds that there are encouraging reports also from Peru, Bolivia, and Bangladesh. But, as she says, "in today's situation there is a lot of nice talk and far too little action".

"Most countries are hypocritical", she concludes.

Her information-rich talk is best heard (or downloaded as an MP3 file) with the PDF of her presentation - both archived on Linguistic-rights.org (so far in English, Esperanto and French - more language-versions to be available soon).