Will English become India’s weakness?

Via livemint.com

The Union government has itself recognized English as a vehicle of economic expansion and is moving to bridge the divide between those who speak it and those who don’t.

Intellectuals view English as the “link language” India needs to be on the same wavelength as other countries on a host of common global concerns.

But not everyone believes English is a cure-all. British linguist David Graddol argues in his soon-to-be-launched book English Next India that forcing primary school children to learn everything in a language that is not their mother tongue will only breed an under-educated generation. He recommends that English-medium teaching should begin only at the secondary level.

Historians see the introduction of English in India by British administrator Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1835 as an attempt to create a class of interpreters to do business in the colony.

Since then, English has come to be seen as the language of opportunity, and the number of English speakers has kept on rising. Some 191,000 Indians returned the language as their mother tongue, the language first learnt by a person, or the native language, in the 1971 census. Thirty years later, the number had increased to 226,000. The increase of English speakers from 1991 to 2001 was almost 27%.

Plugging the hole

Nonetheless, the spread of the language remains limited. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) for 2009, released by Pratham—the largest non-governmental organization in the education sector— shows only 43.8% of students in class I could read the English alphabet, even in upper case.

“The whole task of trying to teach English in government schools is an incredibly difficult one. It’s still a mystery to me why people study English when they cannot speak it. If you continue, you will have another generation coming out of schools which didn’t study other subjects properly because you put children prematurely in an English-medium school,’’ he says.

The new book argues that the advantage offered by its large population of English speakers, which has given India an edge over other developing countries until now, will be neutralized in the coming years.

ASER reports, released annually since 2004, have also pointed out a drop in learning levels in schools. Various other studies, including a 2008 report by software lobby group Nasscom, have shown only 10-15% graduates are “employable” in business services and only 26% engineers in technical services due to educational deficiencies.

Graddol suggests using the mother tongue at the primary level and adopting English as a medium of instruction only at the secondary level to ensure that the learning process is meaningful.

He also says consolidating multilingualism could be India’s strength and recommends a three-language formula codified in 1968. The formula promoted primary education in the mother tongue and the teaching of English, Hindi as well as other regional languages at the secondary level.

Read the entire article here.

Image Source : Julie70