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| Role of technology in our multilingual education | | |
Vijay Garg
The mother tongue forms the cultural identity of an individual or community. India has a reputation in the world because of our age-old linguistic and cultural diversity. Diversity is the hallmark of our Sanatan culture. Mother tongue gives expression to our hopes, experiences, ideals, beliefs and limitations, mother tongue is the medium of our literary, artistic expression.
Language is that thread of cultural continuity, which binds the present with the past. Globalization and westernization have not only affected economic progress, but also linguistic and cultural diversity, that is why International Mother Language Day has special significance in Indian contexts. In November 1999, UNESCO decided to celebrate 21 February every year as International Mother Language Day. The aim was to preserve the disappearing languages. According to the United Nations, 43 percent of the approximately 6,000 languages spoken in the world are endangered.
The theme of International Mother Language Day in 2022 is Use of Technology in Multilingual Education: Challenges and Opportunities. This is especially relevant for a country with linguistic diversity like ours. Technology is also essential for a good and inclusive education system. UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay has also said in her message that technology has a role in preserving linguistic diversity. Technology can be helpful in preserving such dialects, which have only been an oral tradition.
The new education policy is visionary, advocating for keeping the medium of instruction in the mother tongue at least till class 5. By the way, education in mother tongue should be given till class 8 or even beyond. In the new education policy, special emphasis has been laid on life values, moral education and inclusive education.
Education in the medium of mother tongue will not only make it inclusive but will also make the subject easy and accessible to the students. It is also necessary to develop simple vocabulary of scientific and technical terms in Indian languages also.
CV Raman, the country’s eminent physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize, had even advocated for the education of science in mother tongues, otherwise science would be limited to just a particular class, in which the participation of the general public would not be possible. CV Raman’s fears seem to be coming true. We have established a large number of colleges in which medical and engineering education is being imparted in English medium, but this system of higher education is beyond the reach of a large section of the youth of our country. Therefore, it is necessary to provide opportunities for higher education in different languages. In a survey in 2020, 44 percent of students supported taking engineering education in their mother tongue.
In this sequence, SWAYAM’s courses are being translated into eight Indian languages, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam and Gujarati, in collaboration between IIT Madras and AICTE. With such technology-based efforts, higher education will become democratic. Similarly, AICTE’s approval to teach B.Tech education in eleven Indian languages is a historic step and in line with the objectives of the New Education Policy. We must give full respect to every language, but at the same time the regrettable fact cannot be ignored that some teachers and parents give priority to English education over education in Indian languages. As a result, children are unable to fully adopt their mother tongue and are cut off from their socio-cultural roots.
According to the Linguistic Census, 121 of India’s 19,500 dialects and languages are now spoken by 10,000 or fewer people. It is our responsibility to preserve those 196 Indian languages which are on the verge of extinction. |
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