NEP 2020, NTM, and Indian Languages in Higher Education

Language region maps of India. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Language_region_maps_of_India.svg (Filpro / CC BY-SA)

 

 

The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) (PDF) makes several recommendations for education in Indian languages. The 60-page document's recommendations for languages in school education are being discussed quite a lot in the media. In the English media, "Why is India obsessed with English-medium education – when it goes against scientific consensus?", by Shoaib Daniyal, is a sensible look at the current debate, and points to several studies worldwide to make its arguments.

However, this post is about the National Translation Mission (NTM), which is already addressing several of the Policy's recommendations for Higher Education Institutes (HEIs). The Policy observes:

22.7. For languages to remain relevant and vibrant, there must be a steady stream of high-quality learning and print materials in these languages – including textbooks, workbooks, videos, plays, poems, novels, magazines etc. Languages must also have consistent official updates to their vocabularies and dictionaries, widely disseminated so that the most current issues and concepts can be effectively discussed in these languages. Enabling such learning materials, print materials, and translations of important materials from world languages, and constantly updating vocabularies has to become a national priority. (pp. 52-53)

NTM is seriously engaging with a part of this "national priority". Here is a list of the 69 "chief domains" in which NTM has identified "knowledge texts". As their website notes: "All prescribed text books, reference books and articles that are considered foundational in any discipline of college / university education are included for translation. Specific attention is given to the disciplines of Natural Sciences and Social Sciences." The result is a list that currently ranges, alphabetically, from "Adult / Continuing Education" and "Anthropology", through "Linguistics" and "Management", to "Women's Studies" and "Zoology (General)".

To create a network of translators for such a massive project, NTM has been conducting regular Translator Education programmes – currently on hold because of COVID-19.  Here is what their Translator Education page says:

Translator Education Programme of NTM primarily aims to orient the translator towards the translation of knowledge texts. It also offers academic support to those who are willing to take up translation as their profession. It orients translators about the history and tradition of translation in India, problems and challenges in knowledge text translation in Indian Languages and how to use translation tools such as dictionaries, glossaries and thesaurus. It also intends to prepare versatile and efficient professional translators. To achieve the said goal, NTM conducts events like Workshops, Orientation Programmes and Seminars. Translation Today (NTM′s biannual journal), Handbook for Translators, AV materials produced by NTM Media and NTM′s Course Materials would act as apparatus in educating translators.

Thus, NTM is already performing some of the functions envisaged in NEP 2020 for the "proposed Indian Institute of Translation and Interpretation" (p. 53).

Nor is all this somewhere in the future! Here is NTM's 2018-2019 Catalogue of 63 translations already published and available – in India's 22 Official Languages! A few examples of what is already available in their catalogue:

• Dogri, Telugu: An Introduction to the Study of Indian History by D. D. Kosambi
  
• Hindi: Abnormal Psychology by Carson et al.
• Kannada, Maithili: Fundamentals of Molecular Spectroscopy by Banwell and McCash
• Kannada, Marathi: Heat Transfer by J. P. Holman
• Malayalam: Principles of Mathematical Analysis by W. Rudin
• Bodo, Urdu: The Penguin History of Early India from the origins to AD 1300 by Romila Thapar

And here's a list of "Shortlisted Books for Translation". There are many more fascinating details: see NTM's Detailed Project Report. Further, appropriately enough for a project addressing India's multilingualism, the NTM website is available not only in English, but in all the other 22 Official Languages as well!

On a smaller scale, such systematic translation projects are going on in other places as well – at Azim Premji University, for example. As details become available, we will blog about those too.

However, as this post shows, there is much to learn from this National Translation Mission project to keep our languages "relevant and vibrant".

MTME needed beyond early grades

In his fortnightly column, Anurag Behar has just published 'The focus for education in 2017' - a comprehensive 'cheat-sheet' of 'approaches and issues, which will be worked upon and fought about, this year and next'. The list of 25 issues range from the high-minded (constitutional values) to the everyday (inadequate water in schools).

About mother-tongue education, he says:

21. Mother tongue is the most effective medium of education in early grades. However, given the reality of the social capital of English, all children must have the opportunity to learn the language.

In fact, mother-tongue medium (MTM) education is most effective not just in early grades. It is most effective throughout the schooling years. Several studies show that length of time spent in mother-tongue (L1) schooling is the best predictor of academic performance. This includes performance in the second language (L2). In the world's largest longitudinal study of minority education (over 210 000 students), Thomas and Collier (2002: 7) conclude that 'the strongest predictor of L2 student achievement is the amount of formal L1 schooling. The more L1 grade-level schooling, the higher L2 achievement'. Early-exit to a dominant language does not yield good outcomes. What is needed is a mother-tongue based multilingual education (MTME).

Regarding this study and another, Skutnabb-Kangas and Dunbar (2010: 96) note, 'The length of MTM education was... more important than any other factor (and many were included) in predicting the educational success of bilingual students. It was also much more important than socio-economic status.' We've blogged earlier about their excellent overview of education of indigenous peoples, tribals and minorities. In the context of this post, see especially Chapter 8, 'What forms of education would be consistent with law and research?' (and section 8.1.3 therein).

Earlier in their monograph, Skutnabb-Kangas and Dunbar also cite Kathleen Heugh's study (2000) in South Africa (which we've blogged about too) which shows that even under the racist policies of apartheid,

secondary school pass rate rose, with 8 years of MTM, to 83.7% by 1976 and the English language as a subject pass rate rose to over 78%. When after the Soweto uprising MTM education went down to only 4 years, with an earlier transition to English-medium, the secondary school pass rate declined to 44% by 1992, with a parallel decline in English language proficiency. (p. 53)

A final pair of examples for this post are from Assam and Odisha in India, from the work by Ajit Mohanty and his colleagues. In a well-controlled study, Bodo children learning in Bodo-medium outperformed Bodos studying in the regional language Assamese. In Odisha, Kui-speaking tribal Kond children in Kui-Odia bilingual programmes 'in their later grades (i.e. the high school grades) were found to perform in Odia language tasks at the same level as the Odia-only monolingual children'. (Skutnabb-Kangas and Dunbar, pp. 97, and 70-71)

So, a more accurate phrasing of Behar's point would be:

21. Mother tongue is the most effective medium of education. Given India's multilingual reality and the social capital of English, all children must have the opportunity to get a mother-tongue based multilingual education.

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)