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| Sibal’s reforms must pass language test | | |
Kancha Ilaiah
July.17 : Union minister for human resource development (HRD) Kapil Sibal’s proposals for school education reforms have triggered controversy.
The proposal to scrap the common Board examination for Class 10 and make it optional from 2010 generated furious debate. The controversy also revolved around the issue of the powers of the state and Centre and how the reforms would affect this equation.
Several state governments objected to the idea of a common syllabus and the possibility of all high schools getting upgraded to enable students to continue their studies till Class 12 in the same school. They were also upset at the possibility of state-level school education boards getting abolished.
Of course, taking the board examination in Class 10 was to be optional, yet it was not taken positively by many state governments. The HRD ministry has now put the proposal in cold storage.
The objection of the states is based on the issue of power and resource distribution, as school education falls in the concurrent list of the Constitution.
Some states say that a common syllabus takes away their autonomy in terms of adopting a syllabus that has certain region-specific elements, and there’s the argument that students belonging to a particular state need to learn many things about that particular state and that a common national syllabus would take away that possibility.
But the fact is that a common syllabus with a common examination system would serve a much broader purpose. It would provide a uniform knowledge base across the nation and would put all the students on equal footing.
This does not in any way mean that all levels of educational inequalities would be removed once this system is adopted. But with the adoption of a common syllabus with a common examination system, a level-playing field would be established in our school education. With this aspect in view, one should support the HRD ministry’s proposal.
But neither the Yash Pal Committee report nor the HRD ministry addressed another major issue relating to school education: Whether a common syllabus and common examination system would operate in one common language.
How does the HRD ministry plan to resolve the contradiction that exists between private English-medium school education and the regional language-based government school education across the country, except perhaps in the Northeast?
In all major private English-medium schools, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and other languages are taught only as optional subjects. The entire teaching takes place just in one language — English.
In government schools across almost all the states, the medium of teaching is the respective regional language. English is just one subject, often from the primary stage onwards.
Imparting basic English language training to children below the age of six is not a part of the government school education system at all, while children going to private English-medium schools even in small urban towns start off their education in English from the age of three.
The labouring masses living in the villages do not have this facility and in urban areas they cannot afford such pre-school child training. Because of this, poor children lose out almost three years of pre-school experience. This is a very important stage of discipline and learning. Any common school education programme must examine all these aspects very seriously.
A discussion on common school education system should also trigger a major debate on the language question. The present dual (and hypocritical) approach in relation to language and pedagogic issues does not help the poor, dalits, tribals and Other Backward Classes much.
A member of the National Knowledge Commission sub-group that gave a report addressing the school and language question said the other day that the panel has recommended that "English should be taught to all children but not at the cost of regional languages". She also said that both the Yash Pal Committee and the HRD ministry ignored even that recommendation.
The moot question is whether this issue applies to private English-medium schools or not? Clearly, it does not affect the English-medium schools where the children and grandchildren of the members of the Knowledge Commission study.
Even Prof. Yash Pal and Mr Sibal do not think that the right to be taught in the same language is a fundamental right of all children, particularly in a country where English has become the preserve of the rich. Would the grandchildren of Prof. Yash Pal and Mr Sibal be sent to Hindi or Punjabi (or whatever be their mother tongue) medium schools? Of course not. Their children need to go to English-medium schools.
Then this should also be the right of all other children; they too should get education in that very language. Within this nation, whatever language is good for the education of the rich children should be good enough for others.
All talk of quality education remains meaningless if the issue of the medium of instruction is not resolved. The proposed school education reforms has to address this question squarely. Once this question is resolved, the other objections of the state governments could be set aside quite easily.
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