Multilingual Education and India

Dear MLE friends, Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas was one of the main speakers at the MLE-JNU conference in Delhi a couple of years ago. Her new book " Indigenous Children's Education as Linguistic Genocide and a Crime Against Humanity? A Global View " has now been published, and is available free of charge as an e-book. You can read it at http://www.e-pages.dk/grusweb/55/

Dear MLE friends, Some of you have asked for funding opportunities for your language related project. You might want to check out this website of the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity. It gives an overview of potential donors and includes some general advice on applying for grants. http://www.rnld.org/node/76 (Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity)

Dear MLE friends, We sometimes talk as if India is unique in its multi-linguistic situation. And yes, of course it is. But the following quote might surprise you: "While there is no precise count, some experts believe New York is home to as many as 800 languages — far more than the 176 spoken by students in the city's public schools or the 138 that residents of Queens, New York's most diverse borough, listed on their 2000 census forms "

Dear MLE friends, Two items came in after the reports on the Right to Education act. Sanjeev Rai, National Manager-Education, Save the Children India , raises the complicated issue of the language constrains for children of migrant labourers: “ Language of instruction has become a major obstacle  before children of migrant labourers .No school could deny admission of these migrant children but  without ensuring proper provisions in the  destination schools children can’t stay  there. Save the Children has been working with the seasonal  migrant children from Jharkhand staying with their parents near Brick Kilns of West Bengal. The medium of instruction in elementary schools of West Bengal  is Bangla  and Hindi  for the  Jharkhand so inter-state coordination  must be in place to ensure the realization of Right to Education by the marginalized children of the country.”

Dear MLE friends, That the “Right to Education Bill” came in to force last week made several authors publish about it. Since the line on the use of the mother-tongue is rather weak, not too many articles focussed on MLE. Still a few interesting quotes from different places: In a broader article on the act in the Indian Express Madhavi Kapur states the following: “ Then there is the question of learning through the mother tongue. Educators have been crying themselves hoarse about the psychological, emotional and social implications of learning through a foreign language in the first five years of school. The aspirations of the people point clearly in the opposite direction. Everyone wants English for their children for obvious reasons. In enjoining us to “use the mother tongue as far as possible as the medium of instruction” the policy makers seem to be hunting with the hound and running with the hare. The possibilities of bilingualism have been left unexplored. It is time to