Hyderabad:
There is an ongoing debate about whether children should learn in Telugu or English at the primary school level. The National Education Policy-2020 (NEP-2020) recommends that, wherever possible, children should be taught in their home language, mother tongue, or local language at least until Class V, and preferably until Class VII and beyond.
After this stage, students should still have the option to continue learning their home language as a subject, where possible.
However, the Telangana State government has decided to take a different approach. It has announced that it will create its own education policy. As part of this new policy, the state plans to introduce English as the medium of instruction from Class IV to Class XII in Integrated Residential Schools (IRS).
This difference between the NEP-2020 and Telangana’s new policy raises an important question: What should the medium of instruction be? And why does NEP-2020 emphasize the importance of teaching in the mother tongue or local language?
Experts explain that language learning begins early in life and involves multiple factors. For instance, a baby learns to recognize sounds from their mother, father, and other family members.
Research in cognitive science shows that infants can distinguish between different voices, such as male and female, and understand the relationship between sounds and the people speaking them. This is an example of how cause and effect help a child learn.
For example, if an infant is surrounded by people speaking Telugu, they will naturally start picking up the sounds of that language. This process is like learning through many different “mediums” all at once.
The infant learns the sounds and words from their mother and others in the family. Phonics, which is the method of teaching language through sound, plays a crucial role in this early learning process.
Speaking to The Hans India, Professor Narayanan Srinivasan from the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, said that this natural process of learning through the mother tongue is what the NEP-2020 aims to formalize into policy.
