Learning in the mother tongue is the best start to education
Parents and teachers together help to build the foundation for the child as they start their journey in this world.
Parenting is a joyful experience. Cuddling, kissing, hugging, playing, and nourishing the young ones is a special feeling. And that feeling became magical for me when both the little ones started to utter those first few words in their life.
Baba itaaaa (Dad, I am here) Baba Zooov (Dad, I am your life) ... broken words struggling and stumbling to form a sentence as they tried to put meaning and names to the strange world around them.
A beautiful process that became even more adorable when little ones conversed in their mother language with people around them. Colloquial words that we as parents had heard from our grandparents sounded so special when coming from these little ones.
Parenthood at every stage is beautiful, but at that stage becomes much more special. Especially, when little children start to learn and converse in their mother tongue.
The parents and teachers together help to build the foundation for the child as they start their journey in this world. Evidence suggests teaching and learning in the mother tongue builds strong foundations for a child’s cognitive development, improves communication skills, and helps a child to create an emotional connection between the child and their learning environment.
More importantly, children taught in their mother language tend to perform better academically in the long run. Learning and teaching in their own language also help to preserve and promote the cultural identity of a community. Besides, supporting mastery of the first language also promotes the cognitive development needed to learn a second language more easily. This means learning one language well actually aids the learning of a second language—be it English or any other language.
However, about 37 per cent of students in low- and middle-income countries in the world are not being taught in the language they speak and understand best. In India, the estimate is around 35 per cent including many children studying in English medium schools.
India is a multilingual country and children need to learn other languages of wider communication (regional or state languages) as well as English. The Right to Education Act and the Constitution of India – Article 350A mandates “medium of instructions shall, as far as practicable, be in child's mother tongue.”
Fortunately, the government is aware of the magnitude of the problem and has prioritized it in the policy framework. The government sets an ambitious goal to attain universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary schools.
The roadmap to lay a solid foundation for our children’s education will need the coordination and cooperation of all players in the education ecosystem—government, civil society, schools, parents, teachers, community members and others. It needs innovative context-specific solutions rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach. I believe, in the long term, it’ll foster a deep respect for all languages and equip our children to grow with full potential. And learning can be fun and exciting, not a difficult journey for any child.
