“Nobody says that children should not learn English. But why demand from teenagers fluency to write essays, understand thick textbooks and the question papers in their exams? They need to learn the basics, like students in other countries do. Why burden them so young with tomes in an alien language? This happens in no developed country, only in a few former colonies, including India.” – Maria Wirth
A national newspaper carried an article on July 1st that bemoaned (rightly so) the disparity in education between the haves and the have-nots, between the 20 per cent who study in English medium private schools and the 80 per cent who study in vernacular government schools. The author proposed an outlandish solution to bridge the disparity: ‘Introduce English in government schools right from nursery to bring the education standards on par for all children.’
I was amazed at this proposal. How can an Indian want more colonisation instead of getting rid of the remnants? Why would Indians want to hold on to that colonial language baggage that was burdened on them in 1835 on suggestion of Thomas Macauley? Don’t they know that the intention was to make the ‘natives’ lose pride in their clearly superior culture and make them mental slaves of the British without them actually realising that they were made into slaves? Why would a free India want to continue with English as the preferred language at the expense of Indian languages and at the expense of Sanskrit which is the basis of those languages and is praised the world over? In which country the upper classes do not to speak in their mother tongue?
Well, amazing as it is, many of the Indian elite actually want an ‘English India’. It feels natural to them. They feel more at home in English than in their mother tongue because of their education in English medium. And so far, they were even allowed to feel superior to the masses, who don’t speak this ‘world language’. Without being spelt out, the fact is that those fluent in English with the right accent form the topmost class in Indian society. This fact does not prevent many of them from castigating “the Brahmins” as those who unfairly ‘oppress’ others.
However, at present a churning takes place that shakes this privileged position. There is certain resurgence of an Indian identity, and tradition and language are major aspects of it. The Prime Minister taking his oath of office in Hindi and several MPs in Sanskrit, would have put the English-speaking elite ill at ease. Maybe the attack on Smirti Irani as HRD minister was not so much because of her missing academic credential, but because of her fluency in Hindi. Those who are fluent only in English may fear that she does not share their conviction that English medium is a must for higher education.
The English-speaking class naturally have an interest to continue with the status quo, where jobs at the top-level require fluency in English whether it is in the judiciary, the defence forces, in academia, science or administration. It is in their interest and in the interest of their children.
As they lack good arguments in favour of English medium education, they use different methods. One is ridiculing those who speak bad English. I saw comments who read “Before posting first learn proper English”. If you tell this to a German, he may just ask back “Why should I?” But if you tell this to a Frenchman, beware! Yet Indians keep quiet and may even take it to heart.
Another method is to obfuscate the language issue. “India has a huge advantage because her population speaks English, they claim. But two points are not made clear:
First point: only a small percentage of Indians actually speak English – only about 15 per cent know English and only a few lakh (0,05 per cent) speak it fluently as primary language.
Second point: it is not easy to learn a foreign language which one doesn’t hear spoken in one’s daily life, but only for a few hours in school. It is of course easy if you hear it spoken from childhood at home.
I could directly observe this: In 2006, in the span of a few months, six babies were born in my surrounding – three of them to acquaintances who speak English at home and three to servants. All six of them are now in English medium schools. Meanwhile the disparity is huge. The children of the former are at ease in English and ‘good’ in school, the others struggle, in spite of being sent to tuition which is a burden for their parents. The disparity is not in their level of intelligence. All of them are bright and full of zest. In fact, the children of the servants seem to have grown up faster. They are highly observant, don’t throw tantrums when they don’t get what they want and are better behaved towards elders.
Nobody says that children should not learn English. But why demand from teenagers fluency to write essays, understand thick textbooks and the question papers in their exams? They need to learn the basics, like students in other countries do. Why burden them so young with tomes in an alien language? This happens in no developed country, only in a few former colonies, including India.
English medium in education has an advantage only for those few who want to study abroad, and is easy only for those who hear English at home. They are at present greatly privileged, but are a miniscule minority.
In the last decade, strangely, the craze for English medium schools accelerated, and it may have been intentional. Government schools kept being in the news for poor results, and forthwith even those who did not know any English started sending their children to the mushrooming small private English medium schools. It became a business opportunity for some entrepreneurs and a prestige issue for parents who hardly could afford the school fee.
Friends, who had established primary schools in over 20 villages in the Himalayan foothills, closed them down some years ago. In tune with the times, parents had pressured them to change them to English medium. My friends took a principled stand and did not comply. The children landed up in dubious English medium schools.
No authority counselled the parents that it was a big blunder, as their children will be neither good in English nor in their mother tongue. They are unlikely to break through the glass ceiling that separates them from the haves. In fact, they would be much better off if they went to a gurukul like Baba Ramdev did, obtain knowledge that truly matters, develop body, mind and spirit and discover the purpose of their lives.
Baba Ramdev made me realise how odd it is to continue with English in India. He himself had escaped English education and the slave mentality that often comes with it and certainly is not the worse for it. There are few people who are as knowledgeable, energetic and successful in transforming their vision into reality, as he is. He is connected to his roots via Sanskrit, and can see the damage that the British have inflicted on India. During his talks across the country he kept thundering: “French study in French, Germans in German, Japanese in Japanese. Why do Indians study in English?”
I realised only then how shockingly disadvantaged Indian children are. I wondered what would have happened, if my parents had sent me to a (luckily non-existing) English medium school. It would surely have been a disaster, even though English is not as different from German as it is from Indian languages.
It happens occasionally that children from a non-English background get into prestigious higher education. The super 30 of Bihar who crack the IIT admission test are an example. But they could have honed their outstanding talent for maths even better, if they had not first to overcome this huge language hurdle.
An NRI from US tested the intelligence of Indian and American children via sign based IQ tests. Village children in India outperformed their city counterparts in India and in the US. In one village over 30 per cent scored over 90th percentile! An extraordinary result! Yet once these children aim at higher education, they lose confidence, all because they are not good in English.
A government school teacher told me that some of her students were drop-outs from English medium schools. They were now flowering in Hindi medium. “Here, they can be natural, have fun. Whereas in English medium they were always timid” she said. “Worst off”, she added “are poor kids that are admitted to expensive schools under the RTE Act. They clearly wither away as they feel inferior.”
The push for more English medium schools in recent years and the proposal to introduce it even in government schools is difficult to understand. Those planning the education policies would know that English medium for children from non-English background is too tough. The disparity can’t be removed in this way. It can be removed by giving them books and question papers in their mother tongue also for higher studies.
The parents from poorer sections think that they do the best for their children, as they learn now the same as the children of ‘big people’. They don’t realise how it stifles their development. They also don’t realise how much crap is written in those fancy textbooks. (I won’t go into details, as I wrote two articles on it earlier, links below).
Apart from making the children timid, being forced to speak English in school dilutes their Indian identity. Could this have actually been the objective – to make the children lose this identity at a time when many realise that India stands tall among the nations? This assumption is hopefully out-of-place. Yet watching discussions on English channels, one gets the impression that many panelists would wish for a fast westernisation of India. Those panelists however clearly do not represent the masses.
Can India, 67 years after independence, finally make a gradual transition to teaching all, including higher, education in the respective mother tongue and teach Sanskrit and English as obligatory languages and others optional? Europe with over 20 states and over 20 languages is in a similar position like India. There, each child is taught in his mother tongues right till university level. India could adopt this model. Some plans have already been drawn up, for example in an interesting slide show by Sankrant Sanu under: http://www.bhashaneeti.org/
India is more cohesive than the European Union. The underlying unity in her diversity is her common heritage. And this heritage is India’s strength. As much as the English-speaking left liberals may deny it, Sanskrit, Ramayana, Mahabharata and Vedic philosophy unite India even today. It would be foolish to further dilute this glue by promoting an “English India”, while the west discovers the value of Sanskrit and Indian philosophy and teaches it in their schools and universities. – Maria Wirth Blog, 11 July 2014
Filed under: india | Tagged: education, english, english language, english medium education, government education policy, indian languages, indian politics, macaulayism, politics, psychological warfare |
BHARATA BHARATI 
Indian languages suffer due to mindless English-medium advocacy – Sankrant Sanu – Niti Central – 12 Jul 2014
There are a slew of articles in mainstream English publications coming to the “defence” of English. All the king’s horses and all the king’s women have missed the really important issues in proclaiming — “English is Indian,” as if that slogan solves anything. Sagarika Ghose proclaims English as a language of advancement. Namita Bhandare, writing in the Hindustan Times, says, “…we speak in so many tongues. This imbue us with the richness of diversity that those who would impose the supremacy of just one language ignore.” The problem is not in accepting English as one of the languages of India. The problem is exactly in imposing the supremacy one language – English — to the detriment of all others.
Let us accept English as an Indian language. Are Indian languages being treated equally? It turns out they are not. All high-value educational courses—engineering, medicine, business are available in India exclusively in English. Most High Courts and the Supreme Court function only in English. How does that not impose the supremacy of one language? When you realize that 80 per cent of India does not know English and an even greater percentage does not know it well, you see that English advocacy is not about diversity. It is about preserving the hegemony of an elite group over the others, a strategy that keeps the vast majority of Indians in poverty and away from the global economy. We can have medical colleges in English. But why can we not also have them in Tamil, Bengali and Hindi just as we can have them in Japanese, Hebrew or Turkish. As I mentioned in “Revitalising Indian Languages”, languages are made scientific. Virat Divyakriti points out that linguistic infrastructure requires investment like any other infrastructure. We have failed to make this investment for Indian languages.
The other ridiculous argument made by the advocate of colonialism is that the English “gave us so much” such are Railways and “the education system.” Why reject one “gift” and keep the others. The railways were not designed for our benefit. They were there to help the rulers move the loot—goods obtained through extortive taxation and keep the natives under control—a fast way to move troops in. In 1700 we were nearly 30 per cent of the world’s GDP (US at its peak never exceeded 25 per cent), by 1900, we were less than 1 per cent. Over a trillion dollars of wealth in today’s terms was stolen from us and the nation left impoverished.
The Railways were a rather expensive gift. The Japanese have a far better railway system than ours. They did not have to be colonised to build a great railway system, just as one doesn’t need to be raped to have sex. Colonial rape provides no “benefits” that we couldn’t obtain by proactively learning what we needed to from the West or others, just as the Japanese did in the Meiji reforms and afterwards. It’s about time we stopped justifying the depredations of colonial rule as a gift and perpetuating what Kenyan writer Thiongo wa Ngugi calls the “acceptance of the fatalistic logic of the unassailable position of English.”
Globalisation and modernisation are not the same as either Westernisation or Anglicisation. Countries around the world have modernised without turning to English medium. In fact, those that have taught modern science in their own languages have modernised better and faster — from Sweden to South Korea. This stands to reason. Why would we wait for everyone to be “converted” to English when the benefits of the global economy can be brought to them in their own languages? The obsession with English-medium-only science education is a unique artifact of societies colonised by the English. Less than 1 per cent of Chinese speak English but over 40 per cent of them are internet-literate as opposed to barely 10 per cent of Indians. This is because the Chinese learn to use computers in their own language, whereas India makes English a barrier to computer literacy, unlike most of the world.
Simply speaking, the English-medium system disconnects more than 80 per cent of Indians from the global economy and keeps them poor. We don’t need to learn to speak in a completely different language to get the benefits of penicillin or the Internet.
English-medium advocacy has become a religion that ignores research from around the world. A study from Turkey measured science learning when taught in children’s mother tongue versus a secondary language. It found “considerable difference between the two groups of students – those who studied the science course in the native language and those who studied in a foreign language.” The native language learners both understood scientific concepts better and could explain them better. The comprehensive ASER study in India also showed similar results. Students in Telugu medium private schools did better in science and math than in English medium private schools.
My proposal is really simple. It is not about whether we should ban English or whether the PM should tweet in it or not. Rather we need to build the linguistic infrastructure to upgrade all our languages to the same level of privilege that we accord English in India. We need to provide equal access to all Indian languages, in the Courts, in our higher education system, in UPSC examination and all other avenues. We also don’t need to privilege Hindi above regional languages either in terms of using it as a primary medium. With the assistance of rapidly improving automatic translation there is little reason why our laws cannot be released in all 22 Indian languages. It is easier to translate 10,000 books than to coerce a billion people to switch their primary medium of learning to a new language, whether that is English or Hindi.
The rush to English-medium in India is not because of a global imperative. Mutli-nationals localise and conduct business in many different languages and locales across the world. It is because our state has failed in it responsibility to create the appropriate linguistic infrastructure for Indian languages and so English-medium has become a proxy for the aspiration to be part of the global economy. While we should learn English, English-medium is not needed. Indian languages are not only bigger and more scientific than many other languages around the world, in which modern scientific infrastructure has been created, but they are also deeply connected to our roots. English remains an impediment for social justice in India only because is privileged above others. If we provide equal access in all Indian languages there would be little resistance to English being also acceptable as one of India’s languages.
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नमस्ते!
I read your article – Decolonising India’s Education and I felt very relieved after reading it. Thank you so so so much!!! 🙂
I am an Indian (Marathi) and I studied in an English Medium School. My father is an Engineer and he wanted me and my sisters to study in an English School. He had studied in a Marathi School and he faced a lot of difficulties in his higher education. It was very thoughtful of him to enroll us into an English School so that we will not face problems in our higher studies in future and I highly appreciate him for this decision.
Studying in an English School had some detrimental effects on me. Firstly, there is indeed a big problem when a person is enrolled in an English School while his family speaks to him in Marathi. In my school, the teachers would speak in English always (even when I was in Kindergarten) and it used to put an enormous stress on my little brain to decipher their sentences. In addition, the teachers were mostly from Tamil Nadu & Kerala and they did not speak Marathi since they were new to Maharashtra. As a result, I used to remain timid and nervous most of the time in my school.
Secondly, I never had a connection with my teachers during the twelve years of my schooling. I feel that to some extent the difference in religious beliefs was also responsible for this. I come from a strict Hindu family whereas my school was Christian and most of my teachers were also Christian. There was never a proper clarity of thoughts, expressions and communication between me and my teachers.
Finally, since English was a new language for me, I had developed the bad habit to learn (literally mug up) answers for all subjects – Science, History, Geography, Civics, etc. and even sometimes for English language. I hardly used to understand what I am learning. As a result, my creativity and understanding did not develop properly because of the language barrier.
Your article provides a clear understanding of the problems with Indian Education System and I strongly feel that some solution must be worked out for it. Thank you again!
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How true, India is still proud of her colonial legacy! Andre d’ Allemagne put the entire problem in one sentence: “Colonialism reduces the culture of the colonized person to the level of folklore and propaganda”. I found another author who left a bitter, may be truer statement, stating, ‘colonialism leaves the colonized mainly in two classes, ‘gulams’ and ‘dalals’, but no citizens! We Indians excel as loyal, subservient and proudly discard our own heritage! It took a lot of doing to bring us down to this level.
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150 more Chennai Corporation teachers to be trained in English – The Hindu – Chennai – July 16, 2014
For Rafala Ranji, a teacher at Chennai Primary School in Thiru-Vi-Ka Nagar, the biggest takeaway from the three-month English-language training she underwent was that she was not afraid to speak the language anymore.
She was one of the 100 teachers who were part of a pilot English language skill-development programme for Corporation teachers, handling mainly primary classes.
With the Corporation offering English-medium education in several of its schools, they have tied up with Tech Mahindra Foundation, the CSR arm of Tech Mahindra, and Cambridge English Language Assessment — a not-for-profit department of the University of Cambridge — to deliver a 48-hour programme covering English language and pedagogy for teachers.
Mayor Saidai Duraisamy distributed certificates to the first batch of teachers who cleared a level of the Cambridge English Language Assessment, and said 150 others would undergo training. Corporation commissioner Vikram Kapur said that declining enrolment was a concern despite the infrastructure in schools.
The programme, said Loveleen Kacker, CEO, TMF, would work towards improving teachers’ capacity and working grasp of English before moving on to pedagogical aspects. The emphasis was on listening and speaking skills, said Angela ffrench, director of operations, south and south east Asia, Cambridge English Language Assessment. “In the long run, the attempt was towards self-sufficiency where teachers could train their fellow teachers,” she said.
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