Paving the way...

The North east India Multilingual Education Symposium was held at Don Bosco Reach out at Ulubari, Guwahati from October 23rd to November 1st, 2010. This symposium was a joint venture of the Department of Linguistics, Gauhati University and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, International to promote and advocate the cause of Multilingual Education for the linguistically disadvantaged communities in the Northeast India. The symposium was participated by a wide range of participants ranging from global literacy experts from different countries all over the world to university students who are presently working with different tribal communities, along with the members of some of the those communities. Participation of members of government agency like SCERT helped bringing practical issues regarding implementing such Mother Tongue based Multilingual (MTB-MLE)Education Programme through government system in this region. A number of interesting presentations of case studies of MTB-MLE in communities like Singpho, Amri-karbi, Bodo, Rabha etc added a new dimension to the overall success of the symposium. This symposium focussed at presenting a big picture on the necessity of Multilingual Education for the linguistically disadvantaged group of children. Participants from different background went through some theoretical understanding along with some interesting practical sessions. This symposium was really a dream come true for the MLE activists in NE India.

Helping hand from Vancouver

In an unique instance of noble venture, some of the school going kids in Vancouver Island in Canada decided to use some of the money they saved to send some gifts in the form of schools supplies to their brothers and sisters at the Singpho Pre-Primary School which is being run at Ketetong at Margherita subdivision of Tinsukia District of Assam, India. Moreover the church congregation of St. Andrews Anglican church provided a financial assitance towards the renovation of a building to be used as the school building for the Singpho school. Members of an internaitonal NGO Fertile Ground Mr. Kel Kelly and Mrs. Peggy Cartswell along with their local facilitator for Assam Ms. Pompy Ghosh recently visited the school and delivered the gifts to the students and the donation to the community. The students of the school also staged a nice show by singing Singpho songs and dancing Singpho traditional dance.I really appreciate this noble endeavour by the small children from the Vancouver Island to support their counterparts in the Northeast India. I hope this venture paves the way for a lovely bond between the children of two different countries.

Working towards Education for All

In an effort to promote the Mother tongue based Multilingual Education Programme for the linguistically disadvantaged tribal minority children, a Singpho Pre-primary school has been set up in Ketetong, of Margherita subdivision under Tinsukia district in Assam in September 2009. The school aims at basic literacy skills to the Singpho children in their own mother tongue. Later it will help them to transit to the mainstream education through a transitional programme. This is the result of five years of hard work in the form of conducting baseline surveys on the community,conducting awareness raising about the necessity of MT education, training the community members to write small attractive story books in their own language which are being used at the school, preparing a culturally appropriate curriculum for the children, mobilizing resource for setting up of the school etc. This school is being run collaboratively by the Singpho Multilingual Education Programme Committee along with Department of Linguistics, Gauhati University, Summer Institute of Linguistics International.

Fact file

"There are about 6000 languages spoken in the world today. However, the languages are not evenly divided among the population. Over 90 percent of the world’s 6 billion people speak only about 300 of the languages (Hindi, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and English are examples of these majority languages). Less than 10 percent of the total population speak the remaining 5,700 or so minority languages. Of these 5,700 minority languages, 3,485 (61 percent) are found in the Asia-Pacific region—the world’s treasure house of languages and cultures."

"Manual for developing Literacy and Adult Education Programmes in Minority Language Communities"
Prepared by Dr. Susan Malone
Published by UNESCO Bangkok

The Big Picture

It is generally agreed that there are about 6000 to 6500 languages spoken across the world today and half of them are under the threat of extinction. The main reason behind this is that speakers of the most of the indigenous tribal languages are switching over to the major languages and also because the speakers are not passing their heritage tongue to their children. This has resulted in the continuous decrease in the number of speakers of these languages. Eventually every year a good number of these languages die silently. With the ever increasing influence of globalisation, such languages are disappearing at a much accelerated pace, making the human kind poorer than ever before in terms of linguistic cultural and social diversity.
Therefore it is much important that steps should be taken at all levels to minimize this global erosion of linguistic, traditional and cultural knowledge from the world. Its a challenge but lets take it up.