Category Archives: Multi-lingual education

The educational difficulties faced by tribals have been addressed through bilingual or multilingual programmes that start with education in the child’s mother tongue, then transit to the regional or state language, and finally progress to the study of English. This three-language formula, however, remains in an experimental stage, and its practice is limited to isolated pilot projects. […] There are 418 different tribes in India, with even more languages and dialects. Each group is also associated with a specific region through language, food habits, occupational characteristics and geography. To accommodate these diverse and culturally distinct communities with a single educational policy is a mammoth task, verging on the impossible. – Dr. Boro Baski (“Long-term success of non-formal Adivasi school in West Bengal” in: Development and Cooperation 7-8/2009)

If you map the parts of India where illiteracy is highest, you will find that it matches the parts where the mother tongues of children are different from the official language – Prof. Ganesh Devy (linguist, Unesco Linguapax laureate and founder of the Vadodara-based Bhasha Research and Publication Trust) in: “How Tribal Kids in MP Are Getting a Chance to Learn in Their Languages” (thebetterindia.com, 2 August 2017)