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Re: Language is the main barrier for the tiny tots in the tribal dominated district of Sundargarh.

> Language is the main barrier for the tiny tots in the
> tribal dominated district of Sundargarh.

Absolutely. And not just in Sundargarh. Mahendra Mishra's "The Magic
of the Mother Tongue: Lessons with Koya Children" (
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dcw2h2ph_412gj3r3mfg ) is another
(wonderful and moving!) report on the same "barrier".

Meanwhile, UNDP's Human Development Report (HDR) 2004 informs us that
in Sub-Saharan Africa, "only 13% of the children who receive primary
education do so in their mother tongue" (p. 33). Amongst the
indigenous peoples in Andhra Pradesh this figure is zero.

This is because the 31% of Andhra Pradesh's STs who are literate, are
literate in the state's medium of instruction, Telugu, and not in
their mother tongues. (Only now is there a DFID-funded
state-government 'pilot' project to develop primary school reading
materials in eight indigenous languages.)

The HDR goes on to ask, "Does a lack of education in one's mother
tongue stall development? Research suggests that the answer might be
yes."

Indeed, the evidence is all there.

See, for instance, these excerpts from the "Mother tongue first" issue
of the magazine _id21 insights_ ( Sep 2006,
http://www.id21.org/insights/insights-ed05/index.html ):

1. "It is now well established that when a child begins learning in
his or her first language that child is more likely to succeed
academically and is better able to learn additional languages."

2. "The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, states
that all children have the right to education (Article 28), and the
right to learn and use the language of their family (Article 30)."
(The 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples further
supports this.)

3. "A recent review of cost-benefit analyses for the 2006 African
Education Ministers' Meeting shows that education programmes starting
with the mother tongue and gradually moving into other languages lead
to cost savings compared to monolingual programmes. If they are more
expensive at the beginning, costs decrease over time and savings (not
paying for children to repeat years, for example) far exceed initial
investment."

Thus, educational theory, a rights-based approach, and returns on
investment all indicate the desirability of a mother-tongue medium
based multilingual education.

A Giridhar RAO ( bolii.blogspot.com )
Universala Esperanto-Asocio ( www.uea.org )

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