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Effective education
MAY 29 -
Sending a child to school is just one of the many prerequisites of good schooling. Going to school regularly does not necessarily mean that the child is learning well. There are many components of an enabling school environment. What and how one is being taught is central to effective management of scholastic investment. In addition, who is teaching determines the success of the whole process. Obviously, the teacher has to be conversant with the culture, tradition and language of the community from which the students originate. The capabilities and backgrounds of the students also have to be considered. Bringing children to school, especially in rural areas, and creating a child-friendly classroom atmosphere is only possible by breaking all the barriers of communication between the teacher and the student. The most effective means of this communication is the language. And this language has to be the child’s mother tongue.
According to Article 28 of the International Convention on the Rights of Child adopted on Nov. 20, 1989 and signed by all the UN Member States, “All children have the right to enjoy free and compulsory education; and to have access to secondary and higher education, in accordance with their capabilities.”
The word “capabilities” here stands for not only physical and material capacity but also mental. Children with lesser capabilities require a different learning atmosphere than the brighter ones. The choice of language on the part of the teachers has very much to do with the creation of a congenial or hostile atmosphere for students.
But there are certain Catch-22 situations when the efforts of the stakeholders run the risk of going futile. Recently, I had an opportunity to visit and study language problems being faced by school children along the Andhra Pradesh-Karnataka border in India. Almost 99 percent of these children hail from migrating tribal communities who shuttle between Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra in search of temporary employment. The length of their stay in any of these states does not exceed more than six months. They migrate to these places in search of daily wage earning opportunities to keep their body and soul together.
The most tragic part of this distress migration is that its victims are the school going children who have no alternative but to accompany their parents wherever they go. During this period, they enrol in nearby public schools. There is a definite lure for this enrolment: free midday meals provided by the respective state governments aimed at meeting one of the Millennium Development Goals of universalising primary education.
Beside the heartening midday meal saga is a deeply rooted language crisis. The teachers working in these border schools are mostly monolingual, either speaking Kannada or Telugu or Maratha or Hindi or English. Most often they show up at school for a couple of hours for lack of transportation facilities. The language spoken by the teacher is unintelligible to most of the students who hail from this migrating population. The only alternative to addressing this crisis is to produce or appoint teachers who can speak and teach in more than one language as per the need of the individual student.
It is incumbent upon the governments to cater to the needs of such nomadic children. Combined efforts of the adjoining states is the only solution to addressing the problem, which is not expected in the foreseeable future despite the federal government passing the bill on the Right to Education just two months back, according to the director of an NGO, which has been actively involved in education towards enhancing reading, writing and arithmetic among children in primary schools. It is funded by Aide et Action International-South Asia.
To come back to our context, it is fortunate that we do not have such unbridgeable communication or language caveats even in schools located in the remotest of areas. At least, there is a sizeable number of local teachers working in these schools. However, the extent to which they have been successful in inspiring the local students and preserving the languages spoken in the area is central to their effective teaching. They need to be trained in using the local languages and dialects to explain difficult concepts and subject matters. They need to understand that if they impose pressure on the children to speak a dominant (read national) language to exercise their so-called elitism and prove their “higher-up language” shift, this will disastrously contribute to bringing about a loss of traditional ways and culture.
Global research shows that children should learn reading and writing in their mother tongue first. Only after they can read fluently at a minimum of 45-60 words per minute can they absorb what they are reading. Such fluency is most easily achieved in the mother tongue. Once that is established, learning a second language becomes much easier. Premature teaching of any second language can prevent children from learning to read fast enough in their mother tongue. Early reading and writing is vital: children who cannot do so fluently by class two is unlikely to catch up with classmates in higher class.
Almost one year has elapsed since the much-hyped School Sector Reform Plan (2009-15) was introduced. This plan underscores the need to educate children in their mother tongue in initial schooling years. This is probably the best part of the document. Otherwise, it seems to emphasise administrative dimensions rather than educational ones. The clause “diversity and learning needs” does emphasis the use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction in the early grades. Unfortunately, it fails to address the needs of underachievers from marginalised and endangered sections of the population.
Reports have it that the pace of preparation of books in the mother tongues has not been so satisfactory. Furthermore, the concerned ministry and departments must train teachers to come out of the textbook box. Apart from inspiring children to learn more effectively and encouraging interaction between parents and wards, these books will also help preserve the endangered languages.
Here, it would be relevant to note that the worst part of the present education system is the divide between parents and children which is partly a fallout of bad educational policies and approaches practiced by the public and private sectors. Rampant Anglicisation of the medium of instruction promoted by private schools is at the heart
of this problem. The government should ensure that no child loses his or her mother tongue. Moreover, it has to play a proactive role in preserving and promoting the mother tongues of vulnerable and backward communities to put their children on the radar of literacy and further academic ambition and achievement.
baburamnyaupane@yahoo.com
Posted on: 2010-05-30 08:41
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