Vidya, in her post has raised a question of advantage, the Indian employees enjoy over the employees from China, or Korea or Japan, because of the English education, we get (or got) in India.  She says that it gives a better communication skill to the Indians.  She is worried and feels bad that by derecognising some of the schools for teaching in English is a retrograde step.  As pointed out by GVK, the derecognising is not because of teaching in English, but for violation of certain norms.  These days education has become a lucrative business.  People form a society or a trust and apply for opening a school, to be run as a Kannada medium School.  Right from the first year, the schools start teaching in English medium, with four to eight section of English medium and an eyewash section of Kannada medium.  How long can they fool the Government?  They can take an approval for English medium and run accordingly.  It may be a bit difficult to get such approval.  But it is the right royal way, which they avoid due to heavy expenditure involved in getting such approval.

 

As regards the opinion that better communication skills are acquired by studying in English medium is a false notion.  I have studied in Kannada medium.  When I entered engineering education after PUC, it certainly posed some problems for some time.  But as it turned out at the later stage, English was not a hurdle at all.  (Ultimately, I became an English columnist and had a stint of editing an English daily, only with my education, while serving as an Engineer).  It is an inherent quality of ALL Kannadiga students.  They have a penchant for learning new language.  They try to communicate in that language, as skillfully as possible.  (See Bengaluru, we can find Kannadigas talking as fluently as a Tamilian.  So is English. I personally is comfortable in about 8 languages).  Therefore, we do not certainly loose any advantage in communicating in English, by the derecognising act of the Government.

 

Vidya need not have any apprehensions in this regard.  We can still fare well in spite of being educated in Kannada medium.

In my experience with a background of secondary education in English medium, I have very often discovered that expertise in communicating in international languages besides English has its advantages. Many of my colleagues in Europe an universities speak several languages and it shames me to realise that I do not have their skill of handling languages. Authorities and public in USA and England have belatedly recognised this, and in England recently when there was a move to get rid of teaching of a second language (besides English and French/German are favourites) that pupils in secondary schools have had to take for decades, there ensued intense discussion within parent and education communities, and importance of learning additional languages was recognised even by die-hard Englishmen!

In the second half of this century, it is predicted that Spanish would be the spoken language of majority in America and Chinese would displace English as the language of international business. Mandarin, the Chinese language dialect spoken in mainland China, is fast becoming the second language of choice in secondary schools in Europe. More and more European universities are interested in scientific journals published in Chinese in China

It is not unthinkable that any one interested in migrating to USA in 2050 say may have to pass a TOSFL ( test of Spanish as a foreign language) as a requirement!

This is what I wrote to Star of Mysore. It is an amalgamation of thoughts of many people. Fortunately, SOM published the entire letter almost unedited. I quote,

1. Apropos the editorial in the SOM dated 21 Sep 2006 & the comments by Dr H A B Parpia in the SOM dated 28 Sep 06.

2. There is no disagreement about the fact that several thousand innocent children will be put into great hardship due to the action of the government. But the fact remains, as the education minister has rightly stated, that the wrong things can not be allowed to go on for ever but have to be set right at some time or the other. Allowing the schools to continue functioning is not the answer. These are the schools that were permitted to impart education in Kannada up to class V but the greedy management got busy in hiding the facts from the hapless parents who were only too eager to put their wards in English Medium schools. Rules were framed to be followed by one and all. It is said that the school managements regularly bribed the officials of the education department who looked the other way all these years. They not only want to have the cake and eat it too, but also want to distribute and waste it! It is true that the children will be put into great hardship, but it will only be a temporary affair. Allowing the schools to run is like regularizing mass copying pleading that it will hamper the future of thousands of children who have written the exams!

3. This is a typical example of how an issue is dragged and never understood the way it is! Issue in Karnataka is, Banning of the Schools who have got the license in the name of Medium of Instruction as Kannada (Native Language) so as to avail the benefits from the Govt but not sticking to it demanding Hefty Donations from the hapless parents. Instead, why don't we understand the root cause of the issue and then discuss on that! Schools like Bishop Cotton are not in the List since they are licensed to teach in English as Medium of Instruction, but Schools like Royal English School are. The School Management had been cheating the Public and parents behind the screen and no-one noticed. If the kids want to learn English/Kannada/any other language, there will be no restrictions.

4. Government did the right thing closing schools to punish administrations and business people for not complying and teaching Kannada all these years when in fact they got the permission to open the schools to teach Kannada as a medium of instruction. Lot of tax payer's money and Kannada people’s public money goes into funding some of the schools. Moral of this episode is that there is law, board regulations and government rules that you need to obey no matter what otherwise there will be consequences. Government repeatedly warned so many times but none corrected the problem. They violated all of them. They have to pay for it. In addition punish all the officials responsible for the perpetuation of the crime.

5. Please try going to Tamil Nadu, Andra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, or Maharastra for getting permission to open schools in their local languages, take government funding and then teach not only English but teach other state languages for 12 years lying and deceiving the government. This action of the government may hurt students for this academic year but they will learn a lesson and a moral that their parents and schools did wrong to them and not the government. They will get over it. Let adults grow up and let the government punish the wrong doers first. Survival of Karnataka and Kannada is more important than IT and learning English. If children taught in English from grade 6 onwards, they will succeed in life just like any other student. Most of us did well.

6. In the present situation, both the parties can work out a via media. The government may allow the schools to complete the academic year before closing them down, after they give an undertaking that they would seek fresh sanction well in time and that the government may close the schools anytime if they violate the rules. Further impose stiff penalties on those schools that were willing to continue the present term. Merely flexing the muscles or going to court (by the management) to gain public sympathy will be unproductive. Quoting examples of poor infrastructure in the government schools, globalisation and progress achieved by China and West Bengal, will hold no water. After all the school managements were given adequate time to effect changes by giving show cause notices as long back as March this year. If they did not care, then do not blame the government.

I unquote.

I studied in Kannada Medium up to Class VIII. Within 3 months of starting to learn ABCD in Cl V, many of us were appointed by our class teacher to coach the weaker children. Basically all the children have the capacity to learn. It is for us to bring them up in a proper way. Teaching only English and ignoring Kannada is not the answer. Rather, it is a crime we perpetuate on our children robbing them of the pleasure of learning their own mother tongue.

In the end I am glad that the government has granted permission to the schools to complete the term and close the schools after 11 Apr 07.

I understand filtering out the verbose arguments here, that the issue is
" about violation of norms by some 2100 school managements that obtained government recognition under a G O (1994 vintage) that stipulated the medium of instruction be Kannada. Having got the official sanction for Kannada medium these schools adopted English". Many who are hurling platitudes and arguing about grave deception perpetrated, crime against Kannada etc.. are precisely the wrong people to provide comments. Perhaps they have had their best innings in life played, and can now sit back and pontificate. Perhaps their sons or daughters are well settled in West . Why not get a comment or two from the parents of the children who are benefitting from this 'so called deception'? I wish good luck to these managments. Afterall they are not wasting the government funds on horse race betting but educating children.