India, As everybody know, is a hub of multi languages, also called as multilingual society in the world. India has over 1000 living languages existing at present. The Peoples Linguistic Survey of India led by linguist Ganesh Devy identified almost 780 languages in the country throughout 2010-12. It has been found that the highest mortality rate lies in India.
Language is always identified in terms of academics instead it’s also a part of culture which nobody notices. But Nowadays, it is not even termed as culture is has tied knots with politics as well. Due to this, it has been observe that languages spoken by smaller groups are tarnished with time from the public memory. English is termed as the language gaining political gain and also people speaking English feel belonged in the global society.
English, being a beautiful language, is not just a language anymore, it is associated with social and economic gain. Also, English is a language which forces people to sacrifice their mother tongue to fit into social and economic groups.
This brings to the education in schools, which is focusing on English way too much making children sacrifice their own language. It has been observed that the curriculum in schools is either taught in English or totally in ‘regional language’. Nowadays, English has been the medium of education, and a regional language is just left out as a subject out of courtesy. Naturally with time, children are used to think in English, speak in English.
There are studies and researches in motion, which reveals whether or not the earlier version of teaching was effective or not. The Earlier teaching method involved teaching children in the regional language until Grade 5th or 7th and then slowly they were introduced with the new language, with this method, the students were able to be fluent in both languages unlike today, many Indians are unaware of their own national language focusing on foreign languages way too much.
Europe is also termed as a hub of multi languages. It also encourages multiple language learning in their country. It has also developed Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) – teaching language through content. With this various courses taught in the colleges and schools in the country are in two different languages. For Example in Spain few courses are taught in Spanish, English , and French etc.
Also this model is similar to the earlier model taught by the Kendriya Vidyalayas where they proposed a model and followed it that some courses will be taught in English and some in Hindi, and also Hindi could be replaced by other ‘regional languages’ giving equal share to both languages and not declaring any language a winner, which removes the conflict of competition.
Now the question arises, which courses should be taught in English and which in regional or Hindi language. Interestingly, it was suggested by an Italy teacher that , “parents feel subjects like math and science are far too important to be taught in any other language than mother tongue”. It was suggested that regional or mother languages should be used in thinking process of the children. Mother tongues have been taken for granted for too long. This is because there no such demands made by the public.
There are many researches, surveys, and findings that reveal advantages of learning content in their mother tongue. It was also found that at a young age, their mind is able to learn almost four languages. These scientific findings can help remove the politics from the multi-language learning that creates hatred among children for other languages, and culture which is harmful. The ability to learn more languages, should be treated positively and we should save that ability and make efforts to learn other languages and respecting them.