Course: Academic Writing

Marks: 30
Duration of the Examination: 3 hours
Mode of the examination: Open book examination (students can carry only the copy of the essay
given below as material. Students will not be allowed to write notes or highlight on their copy of
the question paper)

Danyal, Shoaib. 2020. “Why is India obsessed with English-medium education – when it goes against
scientific consensus?” Scroll, https://scroll.in/article/969356/why-is-india-obsessed-with-english-
medium-education-when-it-goes-against-scientific-consensus?
fbclid=IwAR0_7fxMvKucJi8Ch4yMFCfgZyPm_W8un_QTRsP2VQVWHD9oWb4FqZFoiPU,
Accessed on 27.08.2023

As the world’s largest multilingual federation, debates about language are common in India. The
Union government’s New Education Policy, released on July 29, resurrects one of the country’s
most common policy conundrums: in which language should Indian children be taught?

The NEP’s recommendation that “wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least
Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/mother-tongue/local
language/regional language” has been furiously opposed in the English-language media.
One columnist pushed the line that education in Indian languages “is responsible for keeping
India a poor, backward country”. Another argued that teaching Punjabis, Bengalis, Tamils,
Marathis, and so on in their native language will “ruin India’s economic prospects”. Yet another
English-language journalist called the move “regressive” and “thick-headed”.

Language is key to human identity in the modern world so it is hardly surprising that linguistic
policy engenders strong reactions. However, what is lost in this furious identity debate is that
there is a rock-solid scientific consensus that teaching a child in her language is the best
pedagogical method.

Academic consensus
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has argued since 1953 that
“every effort should be made to provide education in the mother tongue”. “Mother tongue-based
bilingual schooling is seldom disputed based on its pedagogical reasoning,” explained Carole
Benson, a researcher at the Centre for Research on Bilingualism Stockholm University, in
a paper half a century later.

In 2016, UNESCO reiterated the message as part of its Global Education Monitoring Report:
“To be taught in a language other than one’s own hurts learning.”

1
UNESCO’s recommendation: “At least six years of mother tongue education should be provided
in ethnically diverse communities to ensure those speaking a different language from the
medium of instruction do not fall behind.”

Krishna Kumar, former Director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training,
points out a bit wearily just how water-tight the academic consensus is on the matter. “This is a
heavily researched area for decades now,” he said. “It’s so obvious a point that it really can’t be
debated. Mother tongue is the best place to start a child’s education.”

Better learning outcomes

It was in the 1970s that a spate of empirical studies started appearing that scientifically backed
up what the present NEP is proposing: bilingual education with mother tongue being the medium
of education early on and English being introduced later, as the child is older.

In 1970, pioneering Nigerian educationist Aliu Fafunwa began a project where experimental
groups of students were taught in their native Yoruba language for their first six school years.
Like India, Nigeria was multilingual with a history of British colonialism, which meant that
English dominated the education system. The study results were unequivocal: children taught in
their mother tongue simply did better than those taught in English.

Since then, Fafunwa’s findings have been replicated across time and space. Research by Nancy
Modiano on native Americans in Mexico in 1973 found that children who were taught in their
native language early on and later transitioned to Spanish outperformed children taught only in
Spanish. More recent studies carried out across places as diverse as Honduras, Iran, and Togo
found that test scores shoot up when a child is taught in the language she speaks at home.

2
When home and school languages differ, there is an adverse impact on test scores. Score refers to the
percentage of children taking part in an assessment who achieved an international minimum learning
standard in reading. Source: Global Education Monitoring Report, 2016, UNESCO. Note: PASEC
assesses student abilities in mathematics and reading French for 10 countries in Francophone West
Africa (Cameroon, Burundi, Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Chad, Togo, Benin, Burkina
Faso, and Niger). PIRLS is an international study of reading (comprehension) achievement for children
in class four.

Self-esteem boost
It is not difficult to see why students taught in their mother tongue would outperform students
taught in a second language. For one, teaching a child in a language she doesn’t know leads to
“lecture and rote response”, explains Carole Benson. On the other hand, starting a child’s
education in the mother tongue “allows teachers and students to interact naturally and negotiate
meanings together, creating participatory learning environments that are conducive to cognitive
as well as linguistic development”.

Apart from the sheer barriers to learning a new concept in a new language, the existence of the
latter also produces negative psychological effects. “English is aspirational but is also feared by
children,” explained Shivali Tukdeo, Associate Professor at the National Institute of Advanced
Studies who has researched the sociology of education policy in India since the nineteenth
century. “In my research with Adivasi students in Maharashtra, English and mathematics are the
most feared subjects.”

Benson explains: “The affective domain, involving confidence, self-esteem, and identity, is
strengthened by the use of the L1 [mother tongue], increasing motivation and initiative as well as
creativity. L1 classrooms allow children to be themselves and develop their personalities as well

3
as their intellects, unlike submersion [not using mother tongue as a medium] classrooms where
they are forced to sit silently or repeat mechanically, leading to frustration and ultimately
repetition, failure, and dropout.”

The ease with which the mother tongue allows a child’s natural ability to push through means it
can also help students from disadvantaged classes. For example, multiple studies have shown
that mother tongue education helps girls do better on tests, makes them less likely to fail a class,
more likely to be identified as good students, and even increases enrollment rates.

Even results in better English

So powerful is schooling that uses the mother tongue at the initial level that it even helps in
better second-language acquisition. Research by Jim Cummins, a professor at the University of
Ontario in Canada, shows that when children acquire a second language later in life, they can
utilize the skills they learn while being taught in their mother tongue as younger children. An
eight-year study on Latin American-origin students in the United States found that there was an
“inverse relation between exposure to English instruction and English achievement”. This meant
students who were taught in primary school using Spanish did better at English than Latin
American-origin students who were taught in English from the beginning.

Carole Benson sums up the research in this area: “The more highly developed the first language
skills, the better the results in the second language because language and cognition in the second
build on the first.”

Rather than acknowledge this research, however, Krishna Kumar points out that the medium of
the education debate in India is often built on a strawman: those who want mother tongue
education don’t realize the value of English in the modern world, argue people who desire
English-medium education. “But who is saying we should not learn English?” he asked. “In fact,
by starting with mother tongue as the primary medium and introducing English later, research
shows learning English becomes easier.”

English bottleneck
The empirical research helps explain the paradox of why English-medium education occupies an
outsized size of the education pie in India – but data shows the country ranks far below other
countries that offer mother-tongue education when it comes to English proficiency.

As this data also shows, even if it were somehow desirable to teach small children in English,
there is a more practical consideration: it is simply not possible in India given there aren’t
enough English-speaking teachers. “Only a tiny minority of people are comfortable in English,”
argued Sabbah Haji who runs a private school in Breswana village of Doda district, Jammu and
Kashmir. “Most of my teachers have studied in Urdu medium schools themselves. They are not
comfortable in English. For most places in India, running an English-medium school is not
possible.”

4
Haji continued: “A small child spends only three-four hours at school. The rest of the time he is
in a non-English environment. If we only push learning in English, it will get reduced to rote
learning.”

Social prestige
Despite how clear-cut the pedagogical evidence is, why does this debate continue in India? Haji
thinks the issue is skewed by a small number of Indians who themselves have received education
in the English medium and would not want to change things. “The number of people who are
outraged about mother tongue education is very small,” she argued. “Till now, the whole system
has been suited for them, so naturally they would not want it to change.”

Krishna Kumar also blames social factors for skewing the debate. “Certain structures of power
have been created which override the scientific consensus on mother tongue education,” he
explained. “There is now a social perception that English is what makes a difference in learning.
And we in India are driven by these perceptions – not the science.”

Shivali Tukdeo points out that India’s state languages have seen a significant drop in prestige.
“Till the 1980s, you had several excellent Marathi-medium schools, including in Mumbai,” she
said. “However, things have now changed and state languages have taken a backseat.”

This prestige means parents are even ready to put up with poor learning outcomes – as long as
those outcomes are in English. “English is aspirational,” argued Sabah Haji. “That’s all people
are seeing. Nobody is seeing what kids are learning.”

The fact that India is unable to work out even the answers to basic questions such as the medium
of education even seven decades after Independence means that Indian children have some of the
worst learning outcomes in the world. As per the World Bank metric used to measure schooling
quality, for 2018 India chalked up a figure of 355 – the same as war-torn Afghanistan. Some
countries with better schooling quality than India include Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and
Iraq.