Advocacy for Mother tongue education

Today I gave an interview for a video documentary on Multilingual Education sponsored by PAJHRA an NGO working for the upliftment of the Adivasiya commuinty in Assam. I stammered a lot in front of the video camera. I did not feel that I said everything I wanted to say about the necessity of mother tongue education for the children of linguistic minority communities. But the positive of the day was the interview of Dr. J.B. Ekka who is an IAS officer currently posted at the Income tax department on the same topic. He said that learning through vernacular medium or the mother tongue is not at all a handicap for a child of linguistic minority group in terms of excelling in the long run academically. In fact, when such child is put into an English medium classroom he finds himself in an alien environment right from the medium of instruction which is English to the dress, companions etc. It prevents him to open up and think and express himself freely which affects this cognitive development adversely. He put forward his own example by saying that he himself is from a vernacular medium school. But it did not in anyway prevented him from being successful in life. Infact he feels that being educated through the language he spoke at home gave him the extra edge over other students to acquire educational concepts with better understanding.

It is really important that people like Dr. Ekka who are considered to be successful in life in terms of academic and professional excellence, express such views which can definitely open the eyes of a lot of parents and community members and other people in understanding the benefits of Mother tongue education for children.