Reshaping language policy in our schools

English, due to its ‘ lingua franca ’ status, is an aspiration language for most Indians — for learning English is viewed as a ticket to economic prosperity and social status.

Thus almost all private schools in India are English medium. Many public schools, due to political compulsions, have the State’s official languages as the primary school language and English is introduced as a second language from grade 5 onwards. Some States also mandate learning of a non-native third language from grade 6.

This lack of priority to the lingua franca in public schools is one of the major reasons for high enrolment ratios in private schools.

Proficiency in English is often correlated with higher educational and social standing. Given the parent’s preference for English, many private schools aggressively focus on building English-speaking skills among children right from nursery grades. Many of these schools adopt a ‘total English pedagogy’ in which all of formal and informal school interaction is in English right from nursery grades. Many schools also discourage the use of native language by completely banning any conversation in native language.

Many urban schools encourage parents to converse in English even at homes, as a result children have a negative attribute towards their native languages. On the other hand, government-run public schools, where English is introduced as a second language from grade 5, put their students at a clear competitive disadvantage.

The current practices at the private or public schools are largely driven by economic compulsions, market demands or political compulsions but not based on scientific research.

This policy of focus on only one language may not be in the best interest of the child, especially in light of recent research on bilingualism.

We are born with an innate capacity to learn any language and more than one language.

Behavioural studies have also indicated that if children are exposed to two languages by age 7, then they gain proficiency in both the languages.

There is scientific evidence beyond economic or socio-political reasons to support learning of more than one language. Bilingual has tremendous cognitive benefits across life spans. Several studies have indicated that bilingual children have better cognitive benefits over monolingual children especially on non-verbal tasks, conflict resolution, cognitive flexibility and other cognitive control tasks. Interestingly, the cognitive and attention advantage of bilinguals over monolinguals actually increases with age. Older bilinguals have superior cognitive control than older monolinguals.

There is also a linguistic cost bilinguals pay for their mastery of more than one language. Bilinguals across life spans tend to divide their linguistic competence across two languages and hence have a marginally compromised lexical strength and lexical recall. But there is no variation among mono and bilingual speakers on the school vocabulary. The variation is only for the home vocabulary. Since vocabulary size is a strong predictor of academic success, bilinguals do not have an academic or literacy disadvantage.

Thus, despite some linguistic costs paid by bilinguals, they have far greater cognitive advantage over monolinguals. Thus, bilingualism should be encouraged in early childhood policy not just for economic reasons or political compulsions but for cognitive benefits.

What schools should do

Howard Gardner says that just like a GPS works with the coordination of three satellites, children should know at least three languages. Since language learning is effective when begun early, schools should encourage ‘everyday’ use of at least two languages right from kindergarten. The current practice of starting second language in primary school may not be the best strategy. Schools should strike a balance between phonology and ‘whole language’ immersion. They should keep in mind that development of a child’s brain happens in stages and many a times, a child’s brain may not be fully developed to perceive or produce language skills. Thus, children should be given freedom to express their language understanding in the way they want and not necessarily be restricted to writing and speaking.

Schools should actively encourage parents to speak English and their mother tongue right from the birth of the child. Given the extraordinary focus on English in the schooling system, parents would be well-advised to speak in their mother tongue extensively.

By the time students reach middle years, the school can have students converse more formally in English in corridors and classrooms. While parents would do well to develop mother tongues at home, middle schools must encourage communication in English to help students develop the skills of spoken and formal English.

The writer is CEO, Xperiential Learning Systems & Director, The Heritage Group of Schools.

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