| The Bill passed by the Karnataka Assembly making Kannada learning mandatory in all schools is a positive step, but it will be of little use in promoting Indian languages as the medium of education, educationist Anil Sadgopal has said.
Inaugurating a seminar on the role of mother tongue in education here on Saturday, he said the Bill makes learning Kannada mandatory till high school. But the real struggle for promoting mother tongue as the medium of education starts in higher education. “Here the students have to depend on English, particularly to learn science. When there is no place for the mother tongue in higher education, why should parents prefer education in mother tongue? Successive governments have ignored this issue,” Mr. Sadagopal said.
The battle for establishing the mother tongue as the medium of education can be won only when we win other battles for implementing a common education system for all and stop privatisation and commercialisation of education being done at the behest of capitalists, he said.
In his keynote address, Kannada writer Devanur Mahadeva termed the Supreme Court verdict on the medium of instruction as the “misuse of wisdom”. “But Parliament needs to be blamed for its failure to protect the interests of Indian languages. There are no statesmen in Parliament today. The government of India has signed the UN declaration on mother tongues but did nothing to implement the intents of the declaration in letter and spirit. The time has come for the people tosensitise the government and Parliament,” he added. |