Diluting the Quality of Education!

 

 

 

Diluting the Quality of Education!

The Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal has recently announced that the India’s premier engineering institutes, IIts and NITs, will start offering engineering education in regional languages from the academic year 2021-22.

At the outset it is important to remember that without Indian technical education in English, the massive IT sector growth would have been impossible. India before the 1990s liberalisation was clearly ‘Atmanirbhar’ with all goods in a typical Indian household being 'Made in India’. The quality of Indian products was so poor that they could not withstand the global competition when the economy opened up. The IITs have produced graduates with global opportunities, significantly helped by education in English. The success of alumni both within and outside India has contributed to the brand image of IITs.

Strangely, the education ministry wants higher educational institutions to compete with the best universities in the world, and now by this short sighted approach of offering technical education in native mother tongue, the ministry  will  lower the status of these institutions to that of regional institutions. An overwhelming majority of faculty in the IITs has exposure to global education and research. With the need to teach in a language in which the person is neither educated nor conducting research, the quality of education would suffer immensely. The ‘Institution of Eminence’ scheme that energised the institutions to think out of the box to take on the best in the world, the “move to teach in regional languages is not going to help IITs compete either for Indian or global talent,” says Professor M.Balakrishnan, IIT Delhi. There is an inherent contradiction in what the ministry says and what it does.

According to AICTE Chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe,“engineering students, especially from the underprivileged sections lack fluency in English and suffer from an inferiority complex”.  Therefore, “the translated works will empower them and provide a more enabling environment to pursue higher education”.  This is not going to help the students to overcome the “inferiority complex”. The remedial classes in English is a solution to vernacular medium students studying in institutions of higher learning, including IITs and NITs ,to overcome  their inability to communicate effectively in English. Instead of  emphasizing on raising the degree of proficiency in English,  what the education ministry  is proposing will only perpetuate the “inferiority complex”  among the under privileged students. They won’t be able to overcome the ‘inferiority complex’, unless and until they develop effective communal skills in English.  

And who will opt for mother tongue as the medium of education in institutions of higher learning? It is the children of the poor and the deprived, unable to learn English and communicate in English effectively, due to poor education and neglect of English in government schools, will alone opt for education in mother tongue, as a second best option, while the rich and the affluent will continue to receive education in English from private elite schools and institutions of higher learning, as they know the value and importance of English in job market and the status of elitism it affords. So the weaker students from the marginalized sections will continue to suffer the disadvantage both in terms of learning and job opportunities.  Education in mother tongue will harm them more rather than facilitating them to receive quality education.

As the IIT Delhi Director Ramgopal Rao  argues “ having an entire degree course in mother tongue might be the beginning of the end of IITs…By just translating a few textbooks into local languages, one will not be able to provide the same learning environment for these students as that of regular students.” All research material is available only in English. And even the top Chinese and Japanese researchers publish their best quality research papers in English journals. Moreover, “those seeking to pursue higher studies in top US Universities, GRE needs to be taken which is offered only in English”.  India is fortunate in having the advantage of English language, at a time when China, Japan, Germany, France and many European countries are promoting the English in a big way, having realized its global relevance and importance.

The controversy of mother tongue-versus- English is unnecessarily created. If the three-language formula is observed, there should be no scope for the controversy as children will have the option to study in schools either in English medium or vernacular medium, and acquire proficiency in the three languages- mother tongue, Hindi and English and where mother tongue happens to be Hindi one of the Indian languages, preferably from among the four southern classical languages. Then students will have no difficulty in pursuing higher education in English. However, due to narrow vision and political consideration, every state is pushing its own regional language as the medium of instruction at the school level, neglecting English, leading to linguistic chauvinism, and making the future of the children bleak in the process. It is interesting to know as to which medium the children of the protagonists of regional languages are studying in. They send their own children to English medium schools, while taking a public posture of promoting education in mother tongue.

There is very high aspiration for English medium education, even among the poorest.  According to the National Statistical Organisation’s latest report, preference for English as a medium of instruction is more prevalent at the starting phase of schooling. That explains why the parents countryside taking away their children from government schools and enrolling them in private English medium schools, though they can’t afford them. The best way to address this problem is: (a) to raise the standard of government schools across the country to the level of Kendriya Vidyalayas;(b) to ensure the English is introduced right at the primary level in government vernacular medium schools; and (c) the English to be taught seriously by a trained and qualified teacher- a teacher who majored in English at the Bachelor’s Degree-and not by any teacher in a casual perfunctory manner, as is the case now. This way the students in vernacular medium schools will never be able to learn English and speak fluently in English. The education ministry is not addressing this real problem.

Instead of making serious efforts to ensure bilingual proficiency- mother tongue and English- the government is resorting to a shortcut method of promoting the mother tongue undermining the importance of English. It is necessary to give equal importance to both the mother tongue and the English, irrespective of the medium of instruction, so as to ensure a level playing field and secure better future, especially for the children of marginalised sections. If higher education is imparted in mother tongue, it will ruin the future of poor students. What is the relevance of a degree with mother tongue as the medium?  How does that ensure inter-state mobility of students and opportunities to study abroad?  How are these students going to face stiff competition and get jobs in multinational companies and big corporate houses?

Kancha Chellai, a dalit intellectual, thinks the English is a great equalizer.  It is due to the mastery of the English language and huge learning and knowledge acquired through that language that could make B.R. Ambedkar the Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee to draft the Constitution for India. Otherwise, he would not have reached the exalted position that he had. Our freedom fighters could fight the British by mastering and communicating in English. President Abdul Kalam expressed how difficult it was for him to overcome the deficiency in communicating in English, having schooled in Tamil medium. My own experience was somewhat similar. The University of Bombay  had denied me admission to its affiliated colleges, where the medium of instruction was English, because I studied in Telugu medium and didn’t score good marks in English at the Board exam. It was only when I turned into a voracious reader that I acquired mastery in English language. It is interesting to know that, though the UPSC allows candidates to write its examinations in their mother tongue, an overwhelming majority of them prefer English to crack the prestigious Civil Services examination.

What we see is muddled thinking on the part of policy makers of education. In the name of promoting the regional languages, they are unable to see the damage inflicted and the quality of education diluted both in schools and institutions of higher learning. They are creating two classes of students-English medium students and vernacular medium students, with the latter, being unequal, eventually losing out to the former in the competitive world.