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Read these developments with great interest. See all news articles here (google news).

Court says un-aided schools can't be forced to use kannada as the medium of instruction, because parents have the right to choose. Quoting a newspaper, the court also said:

"The parents’ decision to impart education in a well-known international language like English cannot be bypassed. The government can make Kannada or (the) mother tongue compulsory in schools run or aided by the government"

Two questions that I got are:

• Can this logic be extended by some schools to say that they can't be forced to teach the local language? Schools will say we will keep local language subject optional (elective) so that parents can decide what languages they want their children to study. I think Maharashtra and possibly some other states too have laws to make teaching local language compulsory i certain classes (Class 5 to 9 ?).
• Why does this logic (freedom to choose) extend only to un-aided schools? Are the courts saying that aided or government schools have the freedom to force a medium of instruction, but unaide/private schools don't? So the poor people (who are more likely to go to government schools) don't have a choice, but middle and upper class do?

We know this is an emotive subject. Hope we can do a reasonable and sane discussion here :)

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nothing new. basically, a ruling that is in par with the current shallow depth of the debate on medium and the generally apathy towards language. what is the honarable judge saying? to be able to communicate in a language we need to do all our learning in that language? that flies in face of the experience of 100s of millions of indian who migrate to different parts of the country and pick up the local language within a short period for all the communication. clearly the judge is no enthusiast, forget expert, in the field of communication. or in education ... if i have to lay blame on anybody, i would lay it on the intellectuals of KA. they have reduced this to an all or nothing proposition. no point in blaming private school walas, they are playing this education game to their depth and charging a pretty paisa for that too. as i said before, the only solution is to make education in government so good and so sexy that these private schools and conments become redundant.

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TS,

The judge is not an expert on education.  He does not have to be.  His job is to give a ruling that he sees constitutionally fair.  He hears both arguments - we have seen enough movies :).

At no point has he said that we need to outdo the queen.  His point was simply that the parents have a right to choose the medium of instruction for their children? You can disagree on his POV about English being the link language, etc.  but here we are communicating in that language.  The petition was not about the quality of education.

Still not sure why you confuse English and convent education :).

A number of things are sales pitches.  Why does one need to take a huge loan to buy a fancy car when a Maruti 800 will do?  One does so because I think it fit to do so and I have not stolen your money and have paid my taxes. 

There is no guarantee that I would learn science better if I learnt it in a  Kannada medium school.  There is no guarantee that I will learn anything in our schools except rote.  And the root cause lies elsewhere.  You really think this would have been solved by the judge giving the opposite judgement?

"from my education in and out of school one of the things i have learnt is that diversity of worldviews and opinions is what it is all about. kannada is not some magical language, but it is a language that has its own worldview. in any other part of the world they would endeavor to preserve it."  So what would your ruling have been to ensure this?

Srivathsa

 

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This ruling does not infringe on anyone's right to study in a Kannada medium school or to start one. 

There are always reasonable restrictions on any fundamental right.  I doubt schools can get away with not teaching the local language.  Schools would be foolish to bring the court's wrath down on them by doing something like this.

As parents I think we all like to do what is in the best interests of our children.  There might be volumes of data and evidence that learning in the mother tongue is ideal and so and so forth.  But leave it to the parents at the end of it.  I am responsible enough to decide these things for myself. 

Let us say tomorrow the government comes out saying that however sick your child is you must take him/her to only an ayurvedic doctor because we know best (4000 years of tradition blah blah) and also otherwise Ayurveda will suffer.  What would your first reaction be?

I also believe that the language is for the people and not the other way round (similarly the State is for the people, laws are for the people, etc etc).  To say that I must study  in Kannada/Telegu/Hindi whatever medium because

a. The government knows best in these matters.

b. Kannada/Telegu/Hindi will suffer otherwise

is unfair.  On the first one, the government's credibility is not particularly high.  On the second one between choosing to be the saviour of a language and trying to do what is right for my child, the latter wins everytime. My parents might have made the worst possible error in sending me to an English medium school, but given my personal experience, I don't think I suffered much by learning English. 

Bashing another language is easier than promoting one's own - start libraries, story telling sessions, classical movie screenings among many other things.  No one is stopping you.

Education is a state subject and hence the government can decide on what the medium of instruction is.  Sadly the poor don't have a say in most things in India.  The one way of overcoming this is to offer coupons which give BPL parents a chance to choose their schools too.  But there might be merits/demerits to this which I have not thought about.  We are capable of abusing and misusing any system in India.

IMHO, the real problem is not the medium of instruction but the quality of instruction.  Whether a child is taught badly in Kannada or in English does not change the fact that he/she is going to come out badly taught.  And I don't know which policy is addressing that?

Srivathsa

 

 

 

 

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I am entering this discussion late and so I will try to add my thoughts based on educational research I've come into contact with.

That is not to say that this issue shouldn't be politicized -- English was used as a tool for subjugation by the British and it would be silly to imagine that the role of English in India today isn't related to the way power is distributed and the way cultural hierarchies have been handed down for generations.

 But a few points that help me to think about this issue.  This isn't, after all, JUST a political issue.  It also has to do with how children learn to read.

 1) Educationists the world over agree that mother tongue instruction is the best kind of instruction.  This is mainly because it's easier to learn to read  in a language in which you've already developed a vocabulary that helps you find meaning in what you read.  Learning in your mother tongue improves not only your skills in your own language but also your ability to pick up new languages and even your ability to learn math and science.  

3) A different kind of point.  When the court talks about unaided schools, it's not talking about the old convent schools.  The law that has been struck down only applied to schools opened after 1994.  We are not talking about Bishop Cotton's here.  We are talking more about the hundreds of low-cost private schools that hvae cropped up all over urban India, claiming to teach good English to children of parents who don't know how to tell if their children are actually learning in good English or not.  (James Tooley has put out some interesting studies on this) All they know is that the rich people they see speak English.  These schools are Kannada-medium on paper.  If you look at Pratham's ASER report, you will also see that many of these schools aren't particularly better at teaching children to read and do math than government schools.  Parents just choose them because they teach in English.

3) A language doesn't have to be the medium of instruction to be well learned.  If Kannada-medium schools taught English superbly, this whole discussion would be irrelevant.  Solid bilingual education has worked well in English-Spanish-speaking communities in the US and tends to improve children's learning in all subjects.

To me it's unfair to children when the discussion on language focuses on the "development of Kannada" instead of "the development of the child".  Obviously they do not lead to opposing conclusions, but they can lead to different policy structures.  For example, focusing on children's learning would lay more emphasis on the fact that lots of children in Bangalore -- nearly 30% according to my research -- actually speak Urdu and Telugu and Tamil and tribal languages and Hindi and Gujarati.  Kannada is a second language for them.  It also would bring more weight to the argument that sometimes, even if the state doesn't like it, the parent's decisions for her children must be respected.  It's not just an argument on principle.  If parents want English medium instruction, they will find it.  James Tooley found that parents preferred unaccredited schools -- literally just opened up by a local entrepreneur who wants to make some extra money -- to government schools just because of medium of instruction.  

 So I would say the best approaches are 1) to make the teaching of English excellent in Kannada medium schools -- perhaps even through a bilingual school model -- so that children have the benefit of learning in their mother tongue while developing the skills their parents want them to have in English and 2) to develop the demand for Kannada medium instruction by investing in Kannada art and culture without becoming so tyrannical that Kannada gets associated with the police state and English seems like the language of democracy and freedom.  

 

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