Language Shaming and the Avoidable Burden of the Three-Language Formula

While war at its borders is something India has often been drawn into without a choice, it has seen avoidable internal wars engulf it occasionally. One such is the language war that pits some states vis-a-vis the Union government.

Strife on this score first erupted in 1965 when the duration of the constitutional provision for using both English and Hindi in the communications of the Union government ended. The prospect of having to accept Hindi as the sole official language of India led to mass agitation in Madras city in particular. The intensity of the response, including self-immolation, shook the conscience of many in the country, and the Indian state abruptly announced that English will continue as an official language alongside Hindi.

The linguistic peace, as it were, held for half a century, but it has been disturbed by some developments recently. One of them is the insistence by the Union government that states adopt the New Education Policy proposed by a committee constituted by it. Predictably, there has been pushback, notably to the recommendation in it that schools across the country teach three languages.

The government of Tamil Nadu and social activists in Karnataka have opposed the three-language formula, requiring the learning of only two languages in their states’ public schools. The common thread in their stand is that imposing the three-language formula on the states of India goes against federalism. This is correct, as, going by the constitution, education is on the concurrent list.

By and large the people of these two states support their government’s stance. However, in an instance of internal discord in Maharashtra, the recent announcement by the state's BJP-led government that three languages, Hindi being one of them, will be taught from class 1 itself has met strong opposition from civil society. The latter view this as a case of imposing Hindi, resulting in  the erasure of Marathi.

Amit Shah's true intentions behind his remarks on English are no secret

Not to be outdone, the Union home minister has recently predicted that soon Indians who speak in English will be ashamed of themselves.

We cannot be certain of what Shah had in mind when he stated this at a book launch in Delhi. However, it is hardly surprising that it received wide coverage on many news sites including this one, for it is preposterous in the extreme.

If English is one of the official languages of the republic of India, why should the home minister caution Indians from speaking it? Is he not familiar with the spirit behind the retention of English by the state? At any rate, the statement would count as quite inappropriate for a senior cabinet minister to have made.

As a prediction it appears all set to fail. Anyone familiar with this country would know that the ability to communicate in English is an aspiration for many, including the subaltern. They are not going to be moved by ministerial shaming.

The minister’s stated intention is to encourage the use of Indian languages, but surely he must not have in mind that I should speak Malayalam to audiences across the length and breadth of the country when I travel on professional assignments.

It is no secret what the minister had in mind when he said that English should be junked when Indians communicate with people of other linguistic groups. Indeed, Shah had very early on in his tenure as home minister made clear his preference for Hindi as the common language of the country.

The chances that this will somehow come about are slim. Exactly as India’s economic rise has enhanced its autonomy in the wider world, so does the rise of the economy south of the Vindhya enhance its ability to resist various forms of imposition from Delhi. Quite simply, we are not in 1965 anymore.

The political argument against the three-language formula long put forth by the dissenting states would be sufficient ground to reject it.  However, there is a case to be made against it on another and equally relevant ground. This has to do with learning, something that the  section of the political class driven by linguistic chauvinism seems to be ignorant about or, worse still for the health of the country, is willing to ignore in order to achieve cultural hegemony.

Unlike informal learning, teaching an extra language in school will burden children

The efficacy of schooling must be gauged by the extent of learning that takes place. It is widely believed that learning is potentially very high in early childhood, including during primary school, as the brain is most receptive then. It is also found that children grasp languages easily at that stage of their lives.

We see this among children of migrants in India, where it is not uncommon for them to speak up to three languages, the usual mix being of the mother tongue, the local language and the English taught in school.

This is undoubtedly a good thing, for no one has been made worse-off by knowing several languages. However, insisting that children formally study three languages in school is altogether a different thing.

Teaching a language as an additional subject invariably subjects the process to the protocols of schooling, namely syllabi, formal instruction and the evaluation of learning through written examination. It is this that introduces an additional load on the child, something which proponents of the three-language formula tend to overlook.

Several subjects are part of a school curriculum, and language is only one among them. It is unreasonable to expect schoolchildren to learn more than two languages at a time when they also have to learn other subjects, all requiring considerable effort and attention to grasp.

Two lessons from the rest of the world

If we were to study the international experience we would take away two learnings.

First, not many countries insist that schoolchildren learn more than the medium of instruction, even if they may encourage the learning of several languages informally.

Indian children who are required to learn three languages in school could be left at a relative disadvantage globally when it comes to knowledge of mathematics, natural and social science and the humanities. To this list we should add ‘technological fluency’, which today is the ability to work with the tools of artificial intelligence.

Children have only so much mindspace and time for their development, including play, and educationists, unlike politicians, would take a very considered view as to how to occupy it. Humans are not chatbots. They are prone to limitation of the attention span, deploy effort based on motivation and are prone to  stress from information overload.

The writer Perumal Murugan has recounted his experience as a teacher in a government school in rural India. He speaks of children who clear all their subject papers but are held back on account of not clearing the exam in the language other than the medium of instruction.

Implementing a three-language formula in India has involved examinations at an early stage of schooling in three languages, none of which is spoken at the child’s home.

A second learning that we get from an international comparison is that we do a very poor job of teaching in India as it is.

The Program for International Scholastic Aptitude survey of learning in schools shows India faring poorly among the countries that participate in the programme. Having come second-last out of 73 countries in the survey of 2009, India chose to opt out. Surely it shows that students are very poorly instructed in most of India’s schools.

The disingenuous explanation that the low ranking is due to cultural bias in international testing is debunked by the evidence of poor learning outcomes in India’s rural schools reported by the Indian agency Pratham. Pratham’s annual reports reveal that children in India are often not proficient in arithmetic, reading and writing, even when the tests are conducted in their mother tongue.

As other countries reward technological expertise, Indian policy gets its priorities wrong

For a country, the international implication of the quality of its schools is inescapable. Particularly after the emergence of artificial intelligence, if the population of a country is not adept at working with it, it will not be able to compete globally, including holding its own when defending its territory.

This recognition has spread like wildfire across the world, leading to the offer of semi-permanent residence status to  highly qualified individuals from abroad by countries in Europe and west Asia.

On the other hand, a proposed public policy in India entails its children having to learn multiple languages, what really matters: the contents and quality of school education.

The insistence on the three-language formula, with Hindi part of the package across the country, is a political project that burdens India’s schoolchildren. Ideally, they must learn their mother-tongue and one of the official languages of India.

Back to the home minister’s prophecy. English is a foreign language for sure, but recognising research that brings together population genetics and the pattern of global migrations well before the common era would leave us far from certain that Sanskrit, the mother of many wonderful languages spoken in India today, is not.

Pulapre Balakrishnan is honorary visiting professor, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.

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