It is shocking to peer that the draft of the National Education Policy through the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India became allowed to create misgivings and public outcry for some days before the government determined to douse a probable (or almost sure) flame through insisting that it was genuinely a “Draft” and with the aid of re-writing P4.5.9 within the draft to cast off the implied compulsion of non-Hindi speakme states to encompass Hindi within the faculty curriculum.
Our language policy becomes taken as ‘settled’ because of the Nineteen Sixties. In 1959, in addition to in 1963, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru gave a solemn project on behalf of the Government of India that the government becomes devoted to a comfortable Three-Language Formula underneath which Hindi will be the reliable language with English continuing in parallel with it till the non-Hindi talking people agree to the abolition of the latter. The Constitution had already saved the window open for the indefinite continuation of English (Article 343-3)). Accordingly, the Official Languages Act was passed in 1963, permitting English past the primary 15 years of the Constitution.
I use the word ‘comfy’ as it became nearly clear that, come what may additionally, neither Tamil Nadu nor the north Indian states might do a whole lot to put into effect a 3-language formulation. The most they would do was teach English in a few forms similar to their native language and leave the relaxation for people to decide. Our sincere revel in during the last nearly sixty years has confirmed this kind of perception.
Dr. Kasturirangan has, in this new Draft, broadly accompanied the spirit in which the problem became earlier resolved. The closing paragraph of the Preamble to the Draft says: The National Education Policy 2019 gives a framework for the transformation and re-invigoration of the education gadget so that you can respond to the requirements of fast-converting, information-based societies while contemplating the diversity of the Indian humans, their traditions, cultures, and languages. Nothing in this doesn’t sound very kind.
While discussing the language query in education, the document says (Section 4.Five): The Policy, in addition, recognizes the massive numbers of students going to high school to lessons which can be being carried out in a language that they do not recognize, causing them to fall in the back of earlier than they even start learning. Thus there may be a robust want for lessons in the early years to be carried out in college students’ nearby languages. In the following subsection, the file reminds us that minority students having different languages aside from the universal nearby language must also have the same facility to learn in their personal local language. It speaks of a “bendy language technique in the classroom.”
On the particular difficulty of coaching 3 languages in faculties (4.5.3), the Draft says: To leverage the improved language-mastering skills of young youngsters, all college students from pre-faculty and Grade 1 onwards might be exposed to a few or greater languages to develop talking talent and interplay, and the capacity to realize scripts and read primary text, in all 3 languages through Grade 3.
This, in fact, is a notable concept furnished we preserve the curriculum at this stage confined simplest to languages and primary math with the aid of protecting all other subjects for later years thru the manner of restructuring the syllabus. Otherwise, we will overburden the mind and wondering about the ability of the younger. Here of route, the thoughts of Aristotle, Rousseau, Montessori, and Tagore — all of whom had specific perspectives on education in the course of the first seven years of a child’s life, would be very applicable. But we need now not go into it at this moment.
On the 3-language components, the Draft without query rests at the coverage observed because 1968 which, it recommends, “maybe endured, keeping in mind the Constitutional provisions and aspirations of the human beings, areas, and the Union.” But it also admits (four.5.6)that it desires to be applied “in spirit,” implying that it has now not been so carried out until now for which it courteously reminds the Hindi speakme states in their bigger obligation: However, it ought to be higher applied in positive States, mainly Hindi-talking States; for functions of countrywide integration, faculties in Hindi-speakme areas need to additionally provide and train Indian languages from other components of India.
The hassle is if the Draft finds the Hindi speaking states no longer without a doubt implementing the 3-language method, because the above paragraph shows, it needs not to have imposed the obligation of coaching Hindi for non-Hindi speaking states in the following subparagraph (which has been eliminated within the revised draft). There is likewise the need to be more specific than merely asking Hindi-talking states for coaching “Indian languages from other parts of India.”
