Teaching in Mother Tongue or Vernacular Language

Education in mother tongue or vernacular language should be made compulsory till a child reaches a certain age. Understanding the subject content is more important than memorizing the subject. If a student understands subject well it won’t be difficult for him to reproduce or write in the examination. But if it is forced memorization it lasts only till the end of examination, later if you ask anything child feels it difficult to reproduce it. One more tragedy of our education system is it just checks the memory power of the student not the creativity. Examination results are just the reflection of what a student was able to recall in three hours at the closed examination hall.

Education in mother tongue considerably increases the knowledge and confidence level in student. As a result of globalization and call center culture, parents tend to send their children to reputed schools where even what students should carry for lunch also will be instructed by the schools! In other words, parents and schools try to impose their rules, regulation and dreams on children which not only seems to be a burden subsequently it also reduces the student’s interest in learning with excitement.

Usually parents at home use mother tongue or vernacular language where as in schools they use English as a standard language and a few act as if speaking in English is a birth right and it gives status and dignity. But speaking in English at school and vernacular language at home creates a gap in communication, apart from the school time the children will be at home which is more compared to the time they spend in school. Considerably influence of mother tongue will be more. In this scenario if the students are taught in vernacular language they learn fast than they learn in any other language which is foreign to them. “Children are born extraordinary and schools make them ordinary confining them to a fixed boundary” said by a great scientist. Schools are just aiming at giving higher results but not bothered about creating a responsible society imbibing moral and ethics which is very much required.

It should be made compulsory to have education in mother tongue with English as a subject than the medium of instruction. The famous scientists and Engineers produced by the countries such as Germany, Japan and even United Kingdom impart education to children in their mother tongue. In UK if the education is given in English it doesn’t make much difference as the vernacular language there is English but in India, we should think seriously about adopting mother tongue as medium of instruction. We know that Vedas, Epics and Upanishads are written in Sanskrit which was a vernacular language in India during ancient times. Adopting vernacular language or mother tongue as the medium of instruction and having all subjects in vernacular language definitely give its fruits.