You often hear a saying “my child reads in Cambrradge school”. Others would declare “my son studied in Engleeskool”. Indeed there are people who would stick to the notion that a private school means a Cambridge school and nothing else at all. If you have patience there is no harm explaining them what Cambridge or Oxford is. Our present clime bears the testimony that every poor and rich makes it clear that his child must learn good English. Valuation of English language is evinced from the nose-language of a less-privileged father when he declares that his son or daughter reads in a private school. Even his two cheeks peek to convey the hope, confidence and a pinch of pride when he had secured his child a seat in a private school.
Honestly, we are not English-maniac, but it is a known fact that English is a must-have commodity both in terms of quality and quantity. Its enabling power is immense that who possesses the most of it undoubtedly has an edge over others.
There is this indelible impression that good English means private school. That speaks that government school is a guillotine of English language. It does imply that our government schools are graveyards of their unemployable products. That could be the FM (fact of myth). In fact there are qualified and excellent teachers in government schools, and they indeed have produced successful bureaucrats, teachers, doctors, engineers and politicians. Therefore, why should we risk the wrath of the good teachers by ending in unjust generalization?
Our main concern is development of language in our students in the right manner at the right time. As a college teacher, my experiences in the academic transaction of college course have always been difficult. There is a general helplessness among most of the college students. The major hindrance to progress and quality pursuit of education lies with pathetically poor language capacity of our students. It is not the problem in my college alone, but there is an academic prevalence of poor English among our present students and the so-called educated people in our society. Language difficulty of students poses academic problems like slow progress of the course, snail’s pace dictation, frustrating spelling errors, misconception of the content etc. There is no doubt that college education has much to offer in language development, but the proper stage to build the foundation is the school age. Proper grounding in Grammar and Composition should invariably be provided in upper primary and secondary stage of schooling.
I would venture to suggest that Grammar and Composition (backbone of the language) be assigned the status of a separate subject for 100 marks for upper primary stage to secondary level. I don’s see the need to have several textbooks to form English subject to learn the language. Why? All the school course, except Hindi and MIL, are written, taught and evaluated in English. Good English can always be imparted even with a reduced school bag. I may even argue that language must receive greater attention at the expense, if necessary of computer, scripture and some major subjects. Develop the language at the right time and the rest will be taken care of. Why are our students fare poorly in Science and Mathematics? It is closely related to language. When a child does not comprehend the concept of the subject that comes through the medium of a language, everything he memorized and reproduced in the examination is robotic. You may leave some other subjects to the later. Elementary stage, but gift the child at tender age the language he will use to learn and write his whole life. After all why should a child hump his back from the weight of the school bag if he can’t express what he learned from its content.
Some factors are surely responsible for the result of ill-schooling:
1. Teacher Factor: Most of the teachers themselves are ill-equipped in the language. Language teacher in the real sense of the term does not exist in our primary and high schools. Just anybody takes up the subject. Majority of primary school teachers abandon their assigned schools and make a bee-line to urban schools, leaving rural schools with one teacher. Single-teacher-schools are plenty in rural areas, whereas in some urban primary schools teachers outnumber students’ enrolment. Yours truly heard some of them had their back broken fighting for space in the teachers common room. Even their shoes never keep clean, they complained. One of them happened to be MLA’s friend’s sister’s nephew’s known friend.
2. Political factor: Efficient and most able candidates are hardly drawn into teaching profession because of nepotism and biasness in the selection and appointment. In this matter, least said the better.
3. Training factor: School teachers are, compulsorily, to be pre-service trained. That is the national policy to ensure quality teaching. One of the courses consists of Teaching English in school. But that policy is in reverse in our state, where untrained teachers are appointed and then deputed for training with salary thereby involving huge financial losses.
K.N. Nekha
Wangkhao College, Mon
