Number of words: 263

In India a school is a veritable tower of Babel, with teachers and pupils speaking different languages. The language problem, perhaps more than any other, has been responsible for the confusion and lack of direction and conflict that characterizes the school system. Part of this problem is the question of what to do with English. Should it be taught as a second language? In India, primary and secondary school students spend an inordinate time, which otherwise would be devoted to science or vocational subjects, in trying to become familiar with English. Till the quest for regional language is achieved, the schools are in quandary. Often, the education begins with the vernacular, a process that under a different system, beautifully flowers into a full-fledged acquaintance with the idioms and nuances of the language. But in India, after a few years, the student is told to abandon formal use of the vernacular and is required to learn a new language, English. At the upper reaches of the educational ladder he is asked to work in a language that is essentially alien to him, but that is a universal – English. The result is that those who pass out are often misfits and later join the swelling ranks of the educated unemployed and unemployable. In effect, schools are implementing the inputs of another society and the fact that they were allowed to do so for long, so serious doubts on the workings of a system in which the elements are supposed to be mutually dependent.

Excerpted from pages 118-119 of ‘Examinations: An Informative Update’ by M Mascarenhas.