Multilingual Education and India

    National Geographic Reports on MLE in Assam National Geographic published last month a brief article on the multilingual educations program the NGO  PAJHRA  is doing among the tea planters in Assam.   The article titled " A Talk over Tea: Preserving India's Indigenous Languages" states: " Although Adivasis account for about 20 percent of the population, most local schools do not teach in Adivasi...

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MLE Research partnership for India Panel Discussion   Dear Multilingual Education Friends, Last month the English Partnerships team of the British Council of India convened a research round-table on multilingual education in India . The reason for the meeting was that the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism at the University of Reading had proposed a collaborative research partnership with Indian universities and institutions to investigate the issues around multilingual literacy and education at the primary level in India. At the meetings, a framework was discussed for “setting up a longitudinal project into the role of mother tongues and regional languages in learning and teaching in India.” During one of the evenings, there was a panel discussion on the “Benefits and challenges of multilingual education in India” with several people included who are well known to many of us: Dr Dhir Jhingran (UNICEF India), Prof. Ianthi Tsimpli, Dr Rukmini Banerji (Prat...

Learning in English and mother tongue are not mutually exclusive   Kieran Cooke from the Universal Learning Solutions , claims that if a synthetic phonics approach for literacy is taken governments do not need to choose between the mother tongue and e.g. English but can do both simultaniously. The article on the World Education Blog   describes a Synthetic phonetic approach to reading as : "This approach teaches pupils letter sounds (for example, mmm not em, sss not es) and how to blend those sounds together to read words (so d-o-g makes ʻdogʼ). At the same time they learn how to write words by segmenting a word into its sounds, and then forming letters for those sounds." It then gives some examples from Africa which proof that also for non Mothertingue English children this approach gives better results than conventional methods. There is also a reference to India: "One study using this approach with Kannada-speaking children in India shows ...

Pre-primary education in tribal language in Kerala Tribal children at an anganwadi in Attappady. Photo: K. K. Mustafah       The Hindu reports that  The Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR) is planning an educational package for tribal pre-primary children in their own language.    The article titled Pre-primary education in tribal language states: "Anganwadi teachers will use languages of different tribal ethnic groups to impart pre-primary education. The curriculum has been prepared, and it includes details of the origin, history, cultural diversity, and social life among different tribal groups " The given rationale reads: “When these children begin their education, at the pre-primary stage in the anganwadis near their settlements, they find themselves lost. The language used for instruction and communication here is frighteningly strange. The process flows on to the primary level too. Majority...

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Last Month the government of Odisha made a significant move in the expansion of the multilingual education program. The Times of India reports: "In a bid to extend the mother-tongue based Multilingual Education Programme (MLE), the state government has decided to use mother tongues as medium of instruction for the first five years in primary schools. In these classes, Odia will be taught as the second language from Class II and English will be introduced as a language subject from Class III."   Usha Padhee, secretary, school and mass education department, Government of Odisha affirms the long-term benefits of multilingual education. It seems that the Odisha government is the first one to take the education in the Mothertongue really serious. Mr Usha Padhee, secretary, school and mass education department states: "Continuing primary education for the first five years of school in the mother tongue will have several long-term benefits like sustained a...

Dear MultiLingual Education Friends, The report on the  National Seminar on Language Education  has come out . The seminar was  organized  jointly by the SCERT and IFIG  at 21-23  February,  2014  at Raipur  Chhattisgarh with Dr Mahendra Mishra as convenor. The three main issues addressed at this seminar are stated as follows:        How multilinguality is a reality and how our schools are unable to ensure the linguistic rights of the children. How language of the text book is teacher-centric and unable to represent the meaning of the texts in a language that is not understood by the children. How education can  be imparted  –  as far as practicable to those children who are linguistic minority,  and  eq...

Dear multilingual education friends, Usually newspaper articles report on something new starting. This time Republic in Nepal reports on a failing project. The article Multilingual education fails to attract students in Jhapa points out that due to book supply challenges and resistance from the parents, several MLE classes have stopped.  It would be interesting to investigate further what is going on there. If you know any background on this, please put your comments on the MLE-India blog just below this entry. A few quotes: In Jhapa district, more than three dozen schools had been conducting classes in around half a dozen local languages, including Rajbanshi, Limbu, and Santhal. However, many of these schools could not implement the mother-tongue based education after stakeholders criticized the use of local languages as the medium of instruction. It seems one of the problems was with the teache...

Dear multilingual education friends, There seem to be some significant moves in the language policies of our northern neighbour Pakistan. The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage earlier this months " declared major mother tongues as national languages and pledged not to allow 1linguiside'  of rich mother tongues " A few quotes from the article  NA panel for declaring mother tongues as national languages : This one was new to me: Punjabi scholar Saeed Farani said many verses in the Holy Quran have emphasised the importance of mother tongue and all Sufi poetry was in local languages. With regards to MLE: They urged the federal and provincial governments to take concrete steps for imparting education in mother tongues, as several regional languages were rapidly disappearing. On regional versus national: Th...

Dear Multilingual education friends, Some of the tribal groups in need for education in their mother tongue do not yet have a proper orthography. A new books has come out that topic:   Developing Orthographies for Unwritten Languages Linguistics and Orthography   ·          Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (Editors). 2014. Developing Orthographies for Unwritten Languages . SIL International. 276 pgs ·           It is available in India via flipkart and Amazon . The table of content is given below.