Abdul Khaliq
Pakistan inherited its policy of language from British in its educational process. Today, state run schools have Urdu as Medium of Instruction (MOI) whereas elite and other private schools have English for this purpose. These two polarised MOIs lay the basis of much confusion in education sector that has caused an extensive gap in achieving our desired goals via the most affected toll, education.
MOI is the language that teachers and instructors use to deliver the lectures. It has much importance at early stage because it has all the powers to determine learning outcomes.
However, there is much debate on the issue of MOI. Substantially, we still lack ability to figure out difference between MOI and a compulsory subject i.e. English. The issue is often overlooked under the moniker ‘once being colonized by British’; thus emphasizing that we had better utilize English to compete the world and should not desire to use mother tongue as an MOI, like many countries do.
Our students have to put more efforts to even comprehend paragraph and content than understanding the theme of the paragraph. Baluchistan is one of the most affected provinces in this regard where even English, a compulsory subject since former president Pervez Musharaf’s era, is taught in Urdu. Students neither understand ‘English’ nor Urdu. MOI directly affects the performance of students and leads them to rote learning and unfair means to pass mere a test or exam. Such students never dare break their silence to ask questions in classes.
Finland has one of the world’s developed education systems and its MOIs are Finnish and Swedish. English is also taught as a language of international business community if only a child is at the age of 10. Some Chinese students excel students of Hong Kong in science subject tests because the former had their tests in their mother tongue while the latter in second language. Contrast in MOI and mother tongue creates much perplexity.
Noam Chomsky, a renowned politician, a veteran linguist, describes first language in his theory of behaviourism. He is of the view that every child has an innate capacity to acquire the first language and it plays a pivotal role at early stage. Negligence towards the first language distracts from the real goals. Dr, Anjum Altaf, dean faculty of Social Sciences and School of Humanities LUMS, writes in his latest column for daily Dawn that neglected MOI is misleading our generation and children’s ability to learn effectively.
If we follow Europe, we should also follow EU’s adopted policy for education on language: “mother tongue plus two”, where children’s schooling starts in mother tongue and they acquire two more languages before completing high school. The effectiveness of MOI is never addressed earnestly in Pakistan. English, being language of few (elite and policy makers), enjoys dominance whereas majority suffers. Despite losing targets, our policies are still to be consolidated. The negative attitude towards indigenous languages has caused high school-dropout rate and poor achievements in education sector.
Notwithstanding, negligence towards regional languages widens the vacuum and many Pakistani regional languages (out of 72) are at stake. To revive these languages, we should bring them in our education sector to avoid their extinction. Jennifer Jenkins testifies this fact that one or two languages, out of almost 6000-7000, die monthly.
“Lectures delivered in or in any familiar language are easy to grasp as well as easy for teacher to present in class. My classmates have issues in most basic components of English and they lag behind in presentations, questioning, attempting papers. Many students end up with “copy-paste” for the assignments which is an unhealthy trend”, a BS student from economics department of a local university says.
I have observed many flaws in teaching, learning and evaluation. Many students have problem in understanding terminologies and are always in search of an example in their mother tongue language to comprehend them. Many teachers are also found complaining that their lectures are in vain because not all students get what the teacher delivers. MS. Zubeida Mustafa, an authoress and a freelance journalist, expresses deep concerns and is of the view that language policy for schools should either be changed or revised for healthy outcomes. “Without the reforms of MOI policy, no radical change is possible in education”, she believes.
Similarly, the steps taken by KPK government to introduce mother tongue as MOI are a good initiative and it’s hoped that it will bring fruitful results. In spite of imposing Chinese and Mandarin or any other major language, our provincial governments should and must work on the promotion of regional languages. They should also adopt their own strategies to make these languages as MOI, though laborious efforts will be required.
There is no denying the fact that the knowledge of English is acknowledged and demanded widely especially in modern job market. Despite, we ought to give more importance to mother tongue at early education and then to English later. The obvious concerns are a sign of years of negligence and our children will be still sitting blank in the classes of science or mathematics without doing or asking anything. To cope with prevalent language dilemma, the policy makers should take assistance from renowned linguists to come out of this conundrum and teachers should break such myths that English proficiency is symbol of intelligence.
Writer is an academic and a graduate in English from University of Karachi.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are those of the author and Balochistan Voices not necessarily agrees with them.
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