I came across this news in the regional news paper this morning.
For those who don't understand Telugu, the intent of the article is children have been punished severely for speaking in their mother tongue. This is one of the most disturbing trends in the current day schooling/education. Parents has to take lot of responsibility for this trend along with Government. People take pride if their children call them dad, mummy. I have seen many people teaching their kids to address direct relatives (attayya, mavayya, chinnanna, chinnamma etc.) as uncle, aunty.
Whatever the teachers did is very shameful on their part. I think the teacher is an educated illiterate. This incident is a proof of their poor education, education in it's true sense. It also gives an idea of how poor their general awareness and culture values are. If this kind of teachers continue to educate our future generations then we will be left with no cultural or regional values once we have. We will soon loose the real unity in diversity, for what once India is famous for, and end up with the idiotic western culture. It might be sheer stupidity on part of the teachers, but even parents are here to blame for. They feel proud when their kids talk good in English. But now the pressure is on the kids. The people conquered most in India are those who are good in their mother tongue. Future is Dark with this Attitude.
eenadu might have taken the news out of context. If you go to an English medium school you are supposed to talk in English - else you get punished (in the way teachers see fit) otherwise - whats wrong with that ?
ReplyDeleteI am sorry, but I think we over-rate our "mother tongue" and diversity way too much. If the language itself doesn't have the pull, for various reasons (elegance, cultural, economic etc), then there is no point in artificial saving it. Evolution demands that some things go away and some things stay and grow and it should be okay to let that happen.
ReplyDeleteIt may be due to the reason that parents observed generation in which "people who knew better english, irrespective of their command in mother tongue" succeeded in getting better jobs, bread and butter. They always think mother tongue any way will come because they talk which children in mother tongue. So the only task remaining is making children think directly in english instead of conversion phase, so these kind of schools grew up from that necessity. I am sure 50% of schools fine you some money. Although here there is extreme case of beating. After saying all these I feel it's narrow minded thinking of parents and teachers. There are better ways to teach english.
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