Language Policy and Status of English as a Medium of Instruction A Contextual Analysis

Written by: BENUDHAR CHINARA Department of Education North Eastern Hill University Mizoram Campus, Aizawl (Taken from http://ncert.nic.in/sites/publication/j1jr_ed_4.htm)

In a mulltilingual country like India, the medium of instruction from primary to higher education has always been an issue. The magnitude of the problem is evident at different stages of education. Out of a total of 1652 languages and dialects only are used as media of instruction in schools. English as a medium of instruction continues to dominate over vernacular media in colleges and universities. It continues to be an exclusive medium in medical, agricultural and engineering courses. And this has often been the subject of discussion among academicians in spite of certain policy-decisions undertaken at the national level. What decisions have exactly been taken by the policy-makers? To what extent have the decisions taken so far been successfully implemented? How far are they to the ground reality? The paper strives to seek answers to these questions through an analysis of the language policy and the status of English as a medium of instruction at both the levels of school education (primary and secondary) and higher education (college and university).


School Education

INDIA CONSTITUTIONALLY (Article 350 and 350-A) guarantees primary education to every child in the mother tongue of the child. This provision has been duly recognized by different commissions and committees appointed by the Government of India from time to time (Education Commission 1964-66, Education Policy 1968, National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986, NPE Review Committee 1990 and Central Advisory Board of education (CABE) Committee 1992). Deviating from the normal course and hitting upon reality the National Advisory Committee 1993 argued that the question of the medium of instruction in early life would not be fully resolved as long as the dominant sections of our society continued to give importance to elementary graces in a foreign language rather than to the vernacular knowledge which our children gained during every week of their growing up before they went to school. Accordingly, the committee restrained itself from repeating the recommendation that the mother tongue alone should be the medium of instruction at the primary stage. At the secondary stage, the States Reorganization Commission commended that the mother tongue be the medium of educational interaction. But the Chief Ministers’ Conference 1961 suggested that the media only be restricted to the modern languages mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution and that English as the medium of instruction at this stage enabled students to choose a vocation and prepared them for university education (Ram Gopal, 1966).

However, the Education Commission 1964-66 was strongly in favour of reorganization of media at the secondary and polytechnic stages. Supporting the then existing status as it was, the NPE Review Committee 1990 recommended that education be imparted in the minority language at the secondary stage in conformity the 15:60 formula. The review of the media of primary and secondary school education indicates that the first four decades after Independence, India mostly witnessed a national policy consensus over the mother tongue medium at both the stages. But the early 1990s showed a policy drift which was flexible in respect of the mother tongue as a compulsory instructional medium at the primary stage.

At present, the overall policy consensus with regard to the educational medium has been implemented more in the breach than in the observance at both primary and secondary stages as is seen from the following.

1. English dominates over the mother tongue medium in different schools and of various groups.

• English continues to be the medium in almost all the private elitist schools.
• English or Hindi remains as the medium for most of the majority groups.
• English and Hindi are used as the media of instruction in the Central Schools and the Navodaya Vidyalayas for the children of highly mobile sectors of society and for rural talents respectively.

2. English as a subject of study

• English happens to be the first language and is taught as a subject from Class I in the States of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Sikkim.
• Indian States, namely Assam, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh & Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Meghalaya, Manipur, Pondichery, Rajasthan, and Tripura, etc. accept English as the only second language.

Higher Education

The Education Comn-iission 1964-66 had proposed English to remain the principal medium of education and called for a change over to the regional languages media over a ten-year time-frame at the university stage. As the regional languages were already in use as media at the primary and secondary stages, the Education Policy 1968 recommended that urgent steps be taken for progressive adoption of these languages as the media at the university stage. Both NPE 1986 and the Programme of Action 1986 reaffirmed the same. Besides, English as a means to learn non-language subjects was never under-mined. According to the Education Commission 1964-66, “Even if the regional languages become media of higher education, a working knowledge of English with reasonable proficiency will be a valuable asset for those who proceed to the university”. Similarly, the Education Policy 1968 particularly suggested that the study of English be strengthened in order to keep up with the tremendous growth rate of world knowledge and to make sufficient contribution to it. Sharing the same lines of thought, the NPE Review Committee 1990 recommended that “Pending ultimate switchover to the media of regional languages and Hindi for the purpose of higher education, English will continue to be the vital medium for the universities and colleges”. A review of the language Policy reveals the importance of regionalization of medium besides non-abolition of English medium at the higher education level. It had resulted in change from English to regional medium in almost 50 per cent of the universities, but certainly not in all, by the middle of the 1980s (Pattanayak, 1986).

Apart from the above stated foresight of the language policy-makers, English continues to dominate higher education as is evident from the following.

1. English as a medium of instructing teaching and examination: Out of a total of 120 Indian Universities listed in the University handbook (AIU, 1992) English continues as the medium of instruction in many universities.

• Eighty-four universities have English as a medium of teaching and examination at the B.A. level.
• English is the only medium of teaching and examination in 19 universities at the B.A. level.
• Eighty-nine universities have provision of teaching and examination through English medium.
• English remains the only medium of instruction and examination in 45 universities at the M.A. level.

2. English as a means of scientific communication: Indian languages are deficient in scientific and technical literature. It was perhaps due to this that the Education Commission 1964-66 had viewed the continuous requirement of a good knowledge of English for the students going in for study and research in engineering. In fact the problem is not with the acceptability and usability of the scientific and technical terms coined in regional languages, but with their viability and familiarity. Deenamma’s study (1979) reports the same which showed that misunderstanding in meaning was more with Malayalam words than with their English equivalents. According to the University Handbook (AIU, 1992) the position of English as a means of scientific communication is as follows.

• Out of a total of 93 universities offering M.Sc. courses, 67 have English as the only medium of instruction.
• All the 28 agricultural universities have the provision of teaching and examination in English. It is the only medium at the undergraduate level in 21 universities and at the postgraduate level in 26 universities.
• English continues to be the only mediumof teaching and examination in all the IITs and all the university faculties of engineering.

3. English as a Subject of Study: Language as a subject of study supplements the language as a medium of instruction as the competence in learning a language enables the individuals to use it effectively as a vehicle for the transmission of ideas. It is true in the case of English. As a subject of study, English has a unique distinction compared to its status as a medium of instruction. There is not a single universities or an under-graduate college in India which does not offer a course in English. Such a distinctioncannot be claimed by any other language in the country, not even Hindi (Mehrotra, 1994).

4. English as a Print Medium: As a print medium it predominates the Indian Distance Open Learning system which is growing at a relatively faster pace than the classroom system. Its importance may be realized from the fact that the production of university level books in modern Indian languages by the Government of India came to a standstill as in many States the books produced in regional languages were not sold.

It is in fact that the demand for teaching of non-language subjects through English medium is rising at an increasing pace at both school and higher education levels irrespective of official recognition. But early English education in English at the cost of the mother tongue which comes spontaneously from exposure to the environment creates a chasm between the child and his environment. This linguistic gulf, in turn, limits the child’s natural growth as is seen from the following.

• It curbs the creativity and innovativeness of the child.
• It weakens the child’s attitude towards his studies and generates hostility towards school leading to illiteracy and drop-outs.
• It creates imbalance between the child and the immediate environment in which he grows up leading to social deprivation.
• It distorts self identity resulting in an identity crisis for the child.

On the contrary, an adequate command over the mother tongue at the earliest stage when the basic conceptualizing processes are being formed leads to cognitive fulfilment. Thus competence in the mother tongue and learning through it should be a prerequisite before learning a foreign language like English. It is, therefore, suggested that urgent steps be taken for implementing the mother tongue as the medium of instruction in the primary and secondary schools uniformly across the country. At the same time, English as a subject of study should not be neglected during schooling. Because of its status as a library language in the field of higher education (Education Commission, 1964-66) or as a link language (viewed by two prominent members of CABE Committee, 1992) it cannot be overloaded at any point of time. Even of late, the importance of English has been felt in Japan which privately offers English classes to Japanese and in Russia where English seems to be the most popular subject after the collapse of Soviet Russia.

Learning of non-language subjects (science, mathematics, etc.) through the English medium in Instructions of higher learning should not be restricted in any form once it has been successfully replaced by regional media during schooling. Teaching through English at this stage leads to cognitive enhancement and thus becomes a strength as by this time the student normally has a competent knowledge of the mother tongue and his processes of concept formation normally reach a considerable degree of maturity.

REFERENCES

• ASSOCIATION OF INDIAN UNIVERSITIES, 1992. University Handbook, New Delhi, AIU.
• DEENAMMA, K.V. 1979. Verbal Barriers in Classroom Communication. Unpublished doctoral thesis in education, Kerela University.
• GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 1968. Education Policy 1968. GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 1986. National Policy on Education 1986. Ministry of Human Resource Development.
• GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 1986. Programme of Action 1986. Ministry of Human Resource Development.
• GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 1990. Report of the National Policy on Education Review Committee.
• GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 1992. Report of the CABE Committee on Policy.
• GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 1993. Report of the National Advisory Committee.
• GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. Report of the Education Commission (1964-66). Ministry of Education, New Delhi.
• PATTANAYAK, D.P. 1986. Language Education-A Trend Report. In M.B. Buch (ed.), Third Survey of Research in Education. New Delhi, NCERT, p. 579.
• RAM GOPAL. 1966. Lingustic Affairs of India. New Delhi, Asia Publishing House, p. 132.

The 15:60 formula seeks to provide faciliteies for teaching through the medium of the mother tongue at the secondary stage where there is a minimum of 15 students in a class or 60 in a school as a whole.