Multilingual Education and India

Dear multilingual education friends, In Assam some good pilots are going on and the press has found them. Last week the attached article appeared in a newspaper in Assam. Interestingly the article highlights that from the boy they feature his English has become better. It seems that is an important point for advocacy because it is English that the society values most. A quote: "Kisun, however, is an exception. He is the only one in the family who attends an Adivasiya school and can read and write English" "'Earlier when I was studying in the LP school in the village, I could not understand English or follow any of my lessons. However, after coming to Adivasiya school, I can read and write English to some extent. I have also learned my own language better now.'" The article then continues to explain more about the school, the pilot project and the brother MLE efforts in the country an...

Dear Multilingual Education friends, A group of writers in Karnataka submitted a petition to the supreme court in favour of mother tongue medium education supporting the state government's rule on this regard Are you interested in this in more detail, control click on the following: Times of India: Writers pitch for mother tongue A quote from the petition: " Children can learn better in their mother tongue and it's the appropriate medium. Even Mahatma Gandhi had echoed the same view. Nobody has opposed English. English can be taught as one of the subjects at primary level. ”

Dear multilingual education friends, The first End of Decade Note on Education for All 2012 is on Early Childhood Care and Education . It is published by UNICEF and UNESCO Asia Pacific.“The EDN present a review of regional and national progress toward the six EFA goals, take stock of the progress, persisting issues and remaining challenges in achieving the goals, and highlight examples of innovative policy reforms and strategies, particularly those aimed at reducing disparities in access to and quality of education.” Have a look at Section 4.3 on MLE’s value for addressing language inequities, “ Addressing Language Inequities in Ethnolinguistic and Indigenous Communities: The Value of Multilingual ...

Dear  Multilingual Education friends, Is three years of mother tongue medium education long enough? There is a report ( “ The Kom Experimental Mother Tongue Education Pilot Project. Report for 2012 ,” by Stephen L. Walter and Kain Godfrey Chuo) on the Kom Pilot project in Cameron where children from 12 different schools were educated in their mother tongue, Kom, for three years and joined the main stream school grade 4 onwards. The research compares these students with their comparison group with English medium education while they are grade 3, 4, and 5. Here I quote some of their main findings and suggestions. The three year period of the intervention ...

Dear Multilingual Education Friends, Here is an video on mother tongue based MLE in Timor Leste by ABC Australia. Note that there IS opposition and misunderstanding to the program but the program is still going on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft6Y5bSARyU&feature=plcp  

Dear Multilingual Education friends, A recent study from Europe is showing that Children from low income families benefit from being bilingual. NALDIC (National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum) based in England highlights an interesting study on this topic in their website ( http://www.naldic.org.uk/eal-advocacy/eal-news-summary/200912?dm_i=11M1,Z16E,7M1CX5,2XSTQ,1  ). Quote: “ This is the first study to show that, although they may face linguistic challenges, minority bilingual children from low-income families demonstrate important strengths in other cognitive domains..... Our study suggests that intervention programs that are based on second ...

Dear multilingual Education friends, “ Shrimp ’ s back gets broken when whales fight. ” This is an idiom from Korean, meaning when there is fighting between powerful men, weak people could be a scapegoat of the fighting unless they are very careful. This metaphor seems to fit well in this big fighting between English and Hindi and many other local languages which could be scapegoats of this fighting. The English whale seems to be winning the game as there are scare materials available in Hindi for tertiary level education in Delhi and even many government schools in Karnataka will use English as a medium to compete with English medium private schools. Sumanyu Satpathy, linguist at the University of Delhi, wrote an article on it in the Hindu. A few quotes: “The domination of English and Hindi is turning Indian education and culture into a depre...

Dear Multilingual Education friends, Samir Karmakar of Jadavpur University , Kolkata wrote on CounterCurrent an short article on Linguistic Right And Language of Politics . He points out through a powerful graph that even the state languages are declining. He criticises the multilingual education efforts as they still seems to promote a shift to English: The introduction of mother tongue in the elementary education, as is proposed by different agencies, is mainly from the angle of cognitive development. In order to facilitate the young learners' cognitive development, their mother tongues are proposed to include in the language curriculum in elementary level under the assumption that, as has been pointed out by World Bank in Priorities and Strategies for Education (1995), this approach will “promote the cognitive development needed for learning a second language”. As the learner moves to the h...

Dear multilingual education friends, The value of a working orthography is often overlooked while pursuing MLE. We often focus on the educational factors and tend to overlook the linguistics. Butch Hernandez wrote an article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Spell well, read well, write well in which he writes that teacher want to develop learning material, but often struggle: The problem lies in orthography, or more specifically, the absence of one for the desired mother tongue. Orthography is actually the set of spelling and writing rules that govern a particular language. In her piece “How Spelling Supports Reading,” Louisa Moats, a literacy research and professional development expert, explains that “research has shown that learning to spell and learning to read rely on much of the same underlying knowledge—such as the relationships between letters and sounds—and, not surprisingly, ...

Dear multilingual education friends, Using the mother tongue in the anganwadis or preschools is not only done in Orissa, but also in Malaysia. Dr Karla Smith wrote a book on it titled " Heritage Language Playschools for Indigenous Minorities ". The MTB-MLE website reports: This book contains administrative and curriculum materials that can be used to establish and operate playschool programmes for indigenous communities. Carefully sequenced steps, covering pre-planning to evaluation, outline the process of setting up a local playschool with the aid of community involvement. The content covers pre-reading, pre-writing and readiness skills and provides an abundance of practical advice, forms and ideas based on sound educational theory.

Dear multilingual education friends, There is more news on the new developments in Odisha / Orissa. Dharitri Patnaik of the Bernard van Leer Foundation wrote the below response to last week's message. To me the best news is that he reports that the demand is coming from the tribal communities themselves: The persistent campaign by tribals from the villages to the state capital has resulted in this directive. Demands for quality curriculum in tribal languages, recruitment of tribal men and women as teachers, centres in remote tribal hamlets and involvement of communities to monitor education are all part of the campaign.  This is confirmed by some of the newspaper links. It seems that the Odisha Adivashi Mancha (OAM) has been instrumental in this endeavour. DishaDiary reports : The OAM is currently working on details of a strategy to make the new directive effective. "We will meet the Chief ...

Dear multilingual education friends, Good news from Orissa. Chief Secretary Sri Bijay Kumar Patnaik has directed OPEPA to develop bilingual primers in tribal dialects for children from Class-1 to Class-III and cover all the schools having 100% monolingual tribal students. He also  directed to OPEPA to customize the Anganwadi study guide (Arunimain) in tribal languages in the context of their culture. The stories, rhymes, dance performances, folk-lores of the tribe concerned will be reflected in this.  In another development, nine new  tribal languages have been identified for inclusion in Multi  Lingual Education programme. These languages are Gutob, Ho, Gondi, Parja,Khaira, Didayita, Chhatisgarhi Odia, Binjhal (western Odisha) and Binjhal (for Bargarh region).

Dear Multilingual Education friends, The report " Language issues in Educational Policies and practices in Nepal: A critical review " draws an interesting conclusion. It builds a strong case that just doing MT for the first couple of years ("early exit") does not work. The 50 page report is published by Australian Aid.  A quote: " ... children are not able to develop strong competence in their mother tongues until there are taught through L1 for the first 8 years as in Ethiopia. To promote quality education in Nepal, it is mandatory to promote teaching in children’s first language (be it Nepali or other local languages) for the first six years (at least) (ideally 8 years). The Ethiopian evidence shows that children learn English better when they h...

Dear Multilingual Education friends, Samir Karmakar and Kinnari Pandya of the Azim Premji University, Bangalore published an article on Multilingual Education in India: Myth and Reality in which they plead to give more attention to the context: Any approach towards MLE is bound to fail if the stated form of the policy lacks an understanding of what is being aspired by the population with reference to the Indian languages which is often being decided by various economical and historical factors. Therefore, understanding the linguistic culture in India becomes a must. Very often the success and failure of a policy depends on the implicit, unofficial, unwritten, de facto aspect of what we call public opinion. Therefore, it becomes quintessential to understand the linguistic culture of the population to achieve the stated goals of the policy documents. This includes an in-depth invest...

Dear MultiLingual Education friends, The Guardian had last week an article on the role of English in the Indian education system. A few quotes: "More and more across India, parents are forsaking educating their kids in their mother tongue in favour of English. Despite warnings from educationalists that a child's cognitive development is affected by early schooling in an unfamiliar language, there has been an exponential increase during the last decade in English-medium schools in the country. The latest data compiled by the National University of Education, Planning and Administration (NUEPA) shows that the number of children studying in English-medium schools has increased by a staggering 274% between 2003 and 2011, to over 20 million students." "When the standard of teaching in a regional language school is good, the difference ...

Dear Multilingual Education friends, ASER does each year an independent assessment of the status of primary education in the country. ASER 2011 reached 558 districts, 16,017 villages, 327,372 households and 633,465 children. This year I somehow missed reporting on it in January. Here is a key finding you might find interesting: Nationally, reading levels are estimated to have declined in many states across North India. The All India figure for the proportion of children in Std V able to read a Std 2 level text has dropped from 53.7% in 2010 to 48.2% in 2011. Such declines are not visible in the southern states. However for this mailing list the most interesting thing is that this year for the first time the survey included a question on language :. The...

Dear MLE friends, Out of the 80 participants from 20 countries 4 people from India attended the Workshop on Bridging Between Languages in Mother Tongue-Based Bilingual/Multilingual Education in Bangkok last month. The India participants were from Guwahati University (Dr Anita Tamuli & Prafulla Basumatari), Promotion & Advocacy for Justice, Harmony & Rights for Adivasis , PAJHRA (Luke Horo) and Center for Tribal Culture and Art Society (Ft Mahipal Bhuriya).

Dear Multilingual Education Friends, The evaluation report by NCERT's Department of Elementary Education on the Orissa MultiLingual Education projects under SSA/OPEPA is now available on-line at the TCF-SSA website *. These are some highlights from the summary: Overall, results suggested that children in MLE schools (treatment group) received significantly higher achievement scores than children in non-MLE schools (comparison group). However, scores for several Tribal languages showed that students of non-MLE schools did as well or even slightly better than students of MLE ...

Dear Multilingual Education friends, The British Council, as well as some US agencies,  are active in south Asia and other places promoting the use of the English language in the classroom. A recent article by Robert Phillipson in The Guardian titled "Linguistic imperialism alive and kicking"   is criticising this as "undermining multilingualism and education opportunities". Some quotes: The myth is the belief that studying English is all you need for success in life. Policies influenced by this myth prevent most children from accessing relevant education. Is Anglo-American expertise really relevant in all such contexts? In fact educational "aid" worldwide does not have a strong record of success. There is scholarly evidence, for instance from Spain, that primary English is not an unmitigated success story: quite the opposite. Governments have tended to clutch at a...

Dear MLE friends, In April it will be two years since the the Right to Education (RTE) Act was introduced. Forward Press Magazine published a critical article on the progress made thus far:  A Fundamental Wrong: Education for too Few . The author, Suzana Andrade, makes an interesting comparison with Finland were they also implemented a major education transform several years back: "In 1971, Finland's government realised that the only way to modernise its economy and compete in an increased competitive world was to transform its basic education. According to a recent article in The Atlantic magazine, the secret to Finland's success is that the goal they pursued was not excellence, but equity". On India: "Today, though the policies and rhetoric have changed, the underlying worldview remains: our society continues to prioritise a few and exclude the rest".

Dear MLE friends, I don't think I have ever come across such an extensive analyses of the MLE programme in Orissa as the one from Dr Urmishree Bedamatta presented at the 2nd Philippine Conference Workshop on Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education   held February 16-18, 2012 titled: The politics of mother tongue based multilingual education: A case study on MLE for Juanga children in an eastern state of India The author does base her analyses on field visits, interviews and a wide range of literature study. Her analyses is critical. The abstract states: The analysis of the MLE programme with reference to classroom transaction, the teacher and the teaching learning materials led to the following conclusions: (a) the use of the mother tongue is a strategy to improve statistics on access with little concern for retention, (b) the use of the mother tongue does not guarantee ...

Dear multilingual education friends, Last week I had the privilege to meet the new UNESCO director for this region at their Delhi office: Mr Shigeru Aoyagi . Only now I discovered he had just that week written an article on the issue of language: Languages are vehicles of understanding, tolerance . In that article he e.g. wrote: Mother languages, along with linguistic diversity, matter for the identity of individuals. As sources of creativity and vehicles for cultural expression, they are also important for the health of societies. Studies and researches show that use of mother language at initial stage of education would enhance children’s comprehension skills. We know how important education in the mother language is for learning outcomes. Mother language instruction is also a powerful way to fight discrimination ...

Congratulations with International Mother Language day! D e ar m ultilingual education friends, Yesterday was International Mother Language Day . A good reason for giving extra attention to the use of the mother tongue. Here are some relevant links to events and resources: Save the Children made a nice animation video clip to mark the occasion. An occasion at the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy (JNMDA) Imphal on the Manipuri language Even in the business world the days got some attention: Microsoft to add more languages to Project Bhasha Here is a link to the history of the International Mother Language day

Dear Multilingual Education Friends, At a recent consultation someone quoted several times from papers that were presented at the 9th International Language and Development Conference held last year in Sri Lanka. That made me look up the website to see what all was posted there. I found over 20 papers on Language and Social Cohesion. A selection from what is there: Prem Bahadur Phyak Language-in-education policy in Nepal and its implications for social cohesion Prof Marie Perera “Building bridges” - National Integration through the teaching of the Second National Language Dr Gladys Focho Education and the language dilemma in multilingual societies: The case of Cameroon Tony Capstick Language in education policy and multilingual literacies research in Pakistan Leslie Gumba Mother tongue based literacy a tool for indigenous people’s empowerment Helen...

Dear multilingual education friends, Earlier this months the People's Linguistic Survey of India   (PLSI) conference took place. 900 delegates from all over the world gathered in Baroda to celebrate the progress on survey. A quote from the Lit-Ityadi report Anyone familiar with George Grierson's historic work, the Linguistic Survey of India , compiled nearly 100 years ago, will immediately note the similarities. What is different however, about the PLSI, is the notion of networking, now made by possible by modern methods of communication, that enables adivasi people from Orissa to dance shoulder to shoulder with Bhili tribesmen from Gujarat. This sense of solidarity was felt, not only between the Indian delegates, but also internationally as we heard from indigenous people from Papua New Guinea and various parts of Africa. A quote from the Times of India report This is...

Dear MLE friends, It is not often that top politicians write elaborately about issues related to multilingualism. Lee Kuan Yew the former prime minister of Singapore published recently " My lifelong challenge: Singapore's bilingual journey ". He has been strong advocate of maintaining Chinese and other mother tongues within the schools in Singapore while still making English the mainstream language. Some quotes from a Asia One newspaper review: My Lifelong Challenge is the story of Mr Lee Kuan Yew's 50-year struggle to transform Singapore from a polyglot former British colony into a united nation where everyone, while knowing English, knows at least one other language, his own mother tongue. The founding prime minister of Singapore tells why he did away with vernacular schools in spite of violent political resistance, why he closed Nanyang University, why he la...

Dear multilingual education friends, The MLE India webblog is celebrating its first birthday! A good excuse for giving it a easier URL www.mle-india.net and a facelift: have look at the new lay-out. The site i s more than just a list of the postings on the MLE mailing list. It also has the following pages: MLE Related Projects : An overview of multilingual education related project...