LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 17:8 August 2017
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
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         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
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Three Language Formula and the First and Second Language:
A Case of North East India

Ch. Sarajubala Devi

Abstract

Today, the role to be played by school in the life of a child is crucial. It is because in the name of right to education, a child has to learn almost all the skills and knowledge from school as he / she has to attain school at the earliest. Along with the recognition of education as the fundamental right of every child, providing access to educational facilities to every child from the age of 6 year to 14 years is an important task of every state. School should provide a space where children enjoy every right of learning that is ‘right to learn in one’s mother tongue’, ‘right to learn in one’s habitat’, ‘right to learn in one’s own culture’, etc. However, it is observed that schools in many cases became an isolated space where children always find a gap between what they do at home and what they are asked to do at school. One of the important reasons for this gap is that schools fail to recognize the habitat and languages specially that belong to the children of minority groups. To respond to the multilingual character India has adopted Three Language Formula (TLF), National Curriculum Framework 2005(NCF-05) suggests implementation of TLF in letter and spirit. TLF is implemented in North East India, but there is confusion in the designation of first language and the second language. The paper is an attempt to address this issue.

Keywords: Three Language Formula, Minority language, First language, Second language

Introduction

North East (NE) India is a multilingual region where the nature of linguistic diversity is rather complex, different tribes has different languages and different villages within tribes are having different dialects . More than 98% of the languages spoken in this region are minor tribal languages which are either unscripted or poorly scripted. And they are far excluded from the educational process in terms of medium of instruction as well as in the development of Teaching Learning materials. Adding to this problem is the trend of negligence observed in the developmental process of these languages. Despite India’s stand to promote minority languages with all the policies and constitutional mandate the Seventh All India School Educational Survey(7 AISES ,NCERT, 2006) shows that in India only 47 languages are currently used either as the subject of instruction or as the medium of instruction, though the figure has a mere improvement from the Sixth Survey which has 41 the figure has declined from 81 in 1970 to 67 in 1976(Chaturvedi and Mohale, 1976), 58 in 1978, 44 in 1990 and 41 in 1998, showing a clear picture of non- preference to mother tongue in the Education (cited in Mohanty A.K.2006). Though we say that the number of schools using Mother tongue has increased at the same time the number of schools using English as medium of instruction has also increased. The percentage of English medium schools have increased from 4.99 (6 AISES, ncert,1999) to 12.98 (7 AISES, NCERT 2006) at the primary level with our continuous desire to allow children to learn in their mother tongue at least in the early stage of education. The case remains almost the same in the higher classes also, the corresponding figure in these two surveys being 18.25 against 15.91; 25.84 against 18.37 and 33.59 against 28.09 in the upper primary, secondary and higher secondary classes in the two surveys. This has shown a clear non preference of mother tongue education in the country as a whole. Interestingly India’s North East shows consciousness in this issue by giving a place to the minority languages in the school curriculum, following is the status of languages of North East in the school education:

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Ch. Sarajubala Devi
Assistant Professor
North East Regional Institute of Education (NERIE), NCERT
Umiam, Barapani
Shillong - 793103
Meghalaya
India
sarajubala@yahoo.com

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