Multilingual Education and India

This week is the International week of Sign Languages. When I watched a few years ago the Oscar winning short movie " The Silent Child ", it made a big impression on me: everywhere in the world many deaf children grow up without a language at all. What a tragedy!  In recent years more attention has been given to sign languages. Including in India. Still we have a long way to go! The International Day of Sign Languages , observed on September 23, promotes awareness of sign languages in ensuring equal rights for the deaf community and the last week of September is observed as the International week of the Deaf . This year’s theme  for the International Day of Sign Languages highlights inclusivity and accessible communication for all. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 63 million people in India have significant auditory impairment, which is roughly 6.3% of the population.  The National Education Policy 2020(NEP 2020) recognizes the importance of prom...

We often hear that multilingual education sounds good in theory but is hard in practice. The Citizens Foundation came up with a concept that can help in the design of a good program: The Language Ladder approach. As this approach places comprehension at the centre of learning, it is worth  taking note of. The beautiful materials help to get the message across. It was nice to even see a graphic of the  drawing colleague Dennis Malone made of pupils falling off the bridge that is supposed to bridge the gap between home and school. The concept of ‘Language Ladders’ was researched for six years before the report was written: ‘Language ladders’ show promise for introducing multilingual instruction in classrooms . Just like in India, the researched country has policies advocating for the use of the home language in education; however, the practical implementation of these policies is lacking. Students are unable to ‘comprehend’ the lessons taught in an unfamiliar language and end up...

When I read the news that “Tribal children in Jharkhand get lessons in their own language”, I checked back with my friend Binay Pattanayak (Senior Education Consultant at the World Bank). I was pleased to note that he confirmed that there are indeed things moving there! There has been a push for tribal schools in Jharkhand to use the local languages since 2015. The development of textbooks in 5 tribal languages (Santhali, Mundari, Ho, Kuruh and Kharia) and 2 regional languages (Bangla and Odia) that were published back in 2016 was a step in that direction. In accordance with the NEP, Jharkhand education department now says that children are to be instructed in their mother tongue till the 3rd standard. 

  The NCERT/LLF  video lesson is making the concepts very clear for teachers There is quite a bit of material on the Internet about multilingual education aimed at an academic audience. This week I watched the newly published video lesson  hosted by NCERT aimed at primary school teachers. Dhir Jingran, together with other LLF staff are the resource persons and are making multilingual education very practical. I love the participatory way the lesson is designed: there are interactions, video fragments, brief explanations, helpful graphics and ways for the audience to ask questions: worth watching!

The Hindu reported Nov 19, 2021 on Project ‘Samhati’   Odisha has been for years the most active Indian state with regards to Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTB – MLE). In the context of the new National Education Policy it has recently initiated Project ‘Samhati’ to ensure that tribal children are indeed taught in their own languages.

  The World Bank has for many years been supportive of the concept of mother tongue-based multilingual education, (MTBMLE) but this year for the first time they produced a policy paper on it. The launch of the report last week was accompanied by a webinar on "Effective language of instruction policies for learning". The webinar included roundtable discussions with politicians, policymakers and practitioners. One of them being Dhir Jingran, the director of LLF in India.

KISS website screen capture A couple of weeks ago I was asking a few colleagues about the famous Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) Boarding school in Orissa. A sponsored Internet article stated that they were involved in mother-tongue-based multilingual education. But this week I came across research which is questioning previously published reports about the tribal boarding schools and KISS in particular.

Photo by Jaikishan Patel from Unsplash Last week the Indian government cleared a new National Education Policy (NEP). An NEP sets the framework for education for approximately the next 10 years. It is therefore worth looking at it from a language perspective. The policy gives a push for multilingualism and at first glance it seems that the pedagogical principle of children being taught in their mother tongue is kept up. However a closer look reveals that it is more complex than that.

Quality Training for teachers and policy makers on the topic of Multilingual Education has always been a challenge. It is therefore good to note that a Certificate Course is under development in collaboration with Guwahati University.

Dictionaries in 21 indigenous languages Over the last several weeks the Multilingual Education (MLE) program of the government of Odisha came 3 times to my attention: A presentation from the recent MLE conference in Bangkok, an excellent video clip explaining how the program works in the classroom and the news that 21 dictionaries were published.

Dr Michel Kenmogne gives a welcome speech at the reception on the first day of the conference. Last week I attended  the “Inclusion, Mobility and Multilingual Education Conference” in Bangkok. This time the MLE conference was done together with the British Council’s recurring conference on Language and Education which resulted in a larger and richer conference with about 450 participants from a broad range of disciplines participating. The topic of “inclusion and mobility” provided a good opportunity to link MLE to the increasing number of issues around migration and identity. At least 30 participants were from India, several of who gave a presentation. For now, we will give a few impressions with links to abstracts. At a later stage, the full presentations will become available.

Final Report “Early Literacy and Multilingual Education in South Asia”  A few months ago UNICEF published the final report on their research on Early Literacy and Multilingual Education in South Asia. The study is based on literature review on early literacy and multilingual education, surveys of students’ literacy achievements in primary grades, analysis of sociolinguistic situations, and policy and programme documents. That 100 page report is worth noting!

Copyright  SIL-LEAD.org  Many of you might have met Dr. Susan Malone at one of her lectures during visits to India. As she has been training and mentoring teachers, supervisors, trainers and planners all across the globe she generated lots of articles, training modules and other resources that now have been made available for all of us.

Studies suggest that multilingualism has its benefits. (Getty Images) Rather than dichotomizing the teaching of English against in any local language, professor Neeta Inamdar argues that research shows that a simultaneous approach of multiple languages works better.

MLE5 Partners  Copyright © 2018   SIL International Every two years the International MLE conference in Bangkok is a highlight for MLE practitioners and scholars. This year the 6th Multilingual Education Conference will be combined with the 13th Language and Development Conference (LDC) and address the important issues of language, human mobility, multilingual education and development. Proposals for individual presentations and panels must be received by 28 February 2019. Below are some of the details.

Copyright © 2018  SIL International Often the writings about MLE are quite theoretical. Recently I came across a great resource that addresses several of the key practical questions. The main one being an issue we have been wrestling with in India for years: How to deal with multiple languages in one classroom? Some key people have written practical responses based on their experience and research.

Grassroot level research is rare. Dr Cynthia Groff lived for months with girls in a hostel in the Kumaun area of Uttarakhand (North India) and researched how the local language is used in different settings. Her PhD research has now resulted in a book: The Ecology of Language in Multilingual India: Voices of Women and Educators in the Himalayan Foothills .

Last month textbooks in 5 tribal languages and 2 regional languages were released by the government of Jharkhand.   Last month textbooks in 5 tribal languages and 2 regional languages were released by the government of Jharkhand. They have been distributed to around 1,000 schools in 8 districts for initiating the Mother-Tongue-Based Multilingual Edu...

We are often asked for research evidence with regards to the impact of MLE. Even though the below write up is not on a project in India, it seems to have enough similarity to make it relevant to take note of. The Endline survey of the pilot is showing that MLE children do better in particularly reading. In the article Building bridges through multilingual schooling: a mother-tongue pilot in East Timor is showing the way , Kerry Taylor-leech writes with enthusiasm about the classes she observed. “The children love it and I too am enjoying myself immensely.”. About the evaluation report she states: the survey compared children’s performance in EMBLI schools, government schools and Portuguese-immersion schools. Not surprisingly, the results show the benefits of learning in a language a child understands best. EMBLI children showed marked gains compared to the other children, especially in reading

International Mother Language Day 2017 (Image source- en.unesco.org) In the week of the  International Mother Language Day  there are usually extra postings related to language and education. Particularly because this year the theme is: “Towards Sustainable Futures through Multilingual Education”. It is also a good excuse to list a few (new) resources. The postings in the  India Express  and  India Today  are quite general in nature with some quotations from Unesco and background on the history of the day.  WebIndia  reports that activist used the day to demand linguistic parity for the regional languages. Chanpreet Kaur published an interview with Dr Mukti Sanyal on  How the focus on English could be seriously damaging India's future  with an interesting link to self-esteem: “We are losing our mother languages. And with it, we are losing self esteem, different ways of seeing the world, and encouraging the mugging up of the concept...