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The writer is the author of The Tyranny of Language in Education: The Problem and its Solution.
LANGUAGE continues to be an enigma in Pakistan. For the umpteenth time education is being ‘reformed’ in this country. Federal Minister of Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal has now announced that ‘Urdish’ will be used as the medium of education in the country.
This is the first time Urdish (not Urlish) is being introduced officially. According to the minister, this initiative will rid the country of the “English medium-Urdu medium controversy that has damaged education standards and adversely affected the growth of young minds.”
Explaining the connotations of Urdish as a medium, the minister said that English terminologies of science and technology would be blended with the Urdu narratives rather than adopting Urdu translations. No one has really quarrelled with that; many English words have become so integrated into Urdu that they are generally familiar and it would create problems to introduce newly coined convoluted Urdu terms. I always use the word television when I speak of the idiot box in Urdu as I don’t know of an Urdu equivalent. But I do protest when the Urdu word ‘awam’ is substituted by the word ‘commoners’.
When children are denied their own language, they never learn to think.
However, if the minister believes such gimmickry will satisfy those who clamour for English, he is wrong. Moreover, the introduction of Urdish will not boost students’ academic achievements or teach them civic responsibility and respect for diversity and tolerance, as the minister seems to believe.
That said, the three other initiatives Mr Iqbal promised simultaneously could change the education scene if implemented honestly and in earnest. They are: altering the curricula, reforming the examination system while making it transparent, and training the teachers. These as well as the language issue lie at the crux of the education crisis in Pakistan today.
It is shocking that even very intelligent and highly educated educationists fail to understand the direct relevance of language to academic standards.
Primary education is the base of all education. If it is flawed it will be difficult for it to sustain the weightier structure of higher education. Since ours is not a child-centric society we tend to ignore the needs of children when they start school. We also tend to confuse the use of a language as a medium of instruction and the teaching of one as a second language.
Our ignorance and politicisation of language issues has led to mass confusion and also resulted in the unnecessary controversy that the minister referred to. Young children instructed in their mother tongue have a better understanding of what they are taught which facilitates their cognitive development. Moreover language is the vehicle for thought and when children are denied their own language, they never learn to think.
It is time we re-thought our aspiration to use English as the medium in school, something that the minister has tried to gloss over with his idea of Urdish. We need to shed the myth that by using English as the medium we can kill two birds with one stone: teach children English as well as the subject being taught. In reality they learn neither.
If these arguments make no sense, the basic facts should be more convincing. There is empirical evidence that a preponderant majority of teachers in Pakistan are not proficient in English. When the Punjab government tried to introduce English as the medium of instruction in 2013, it had to rescind its orders a few months later. The teachers actually pleaded with the authorities to spare them this torture as English was not their forte.
As it is, teachers also need to be trained in pedagogy and the subjects they are teaching. Burdening them with English as well is a recipe for disaster. Why not make a beginning in our own languages?
That doesn’t mean that children don’t need to learn the basics of English as a second language. That can be taken care of by training only the required number of teachers as English language teachers who should know the modern methods of language teaching.
Language also has a social dimension that impinges on the employment sector. We are made to believe that English is good, Urdu/indigenous languages are bad. This is not true. The quality of education depends on the quality of teaching, textbooks and, above all, how much a child is motivated. The argument that we do not have books in our own languages smacks of ignorance. Textbooks are developed in response to demands. If this approach is adopted, by the time children complete their schooling, the small percentage of children who opt for higher/technical education could build on their basic knowledge of English to become bilingual. The others would still find productive jobs that do not require expertise in English. We must shed our bias against our own languages.
The writer is the author of The Tyranny of Language in Education: The Problem and its Solution.
Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2015
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Comments (24) Closed
Rubbish. Urdu is not the mother-tongue of most kids in Pakistan so we're back to square one. Why not just let them speak and learn English in school and speak whatever they want at home. A shortage of qualified teachers is a real problem but it should not be conflated with the optimum medium-of-instruction.
Why do we need to keep inventing our own wheel for every simple or difficult, old or new problems? Can't we learn or copy the experience from across the border to our east. I don't see them having problems in IT industry, communication industry or natural sciences across the globe. Urdish is going to raise its hands in surrender on the first sight of complex long scientific terminologies.
Children are remarkably adaptable, with minds like sponges, soaking up whatever surrounds them. They can learn to think in any language, and indeed, in multiple languages.
Along with subject of learning English as a language, I like the idea of Urdu medium with English terminologies for Science and Technology subjects at least for those who are already studying in Urdu medium schools. This is where we can take benefit of both sides. Probably the author didn't understand the rhetoric of minister Ahsan Iqbal.
urdu is not the only mother tongue language there are many.By imposing urdu on those who do not speak it is also a tyranny.
I fully support the arguments made. Language shaming has become common in our society and left our children in a lurch. It is an integral part of national identity and pride and uninformed sections of our middle class as well as leaders pride themselves on being on-proficient in the national language. Talk to any child in Pakistan studying in "good" schools - cannot conduct an entire coherent conversation in either Urdu or English. Teaching techniques differ for languages. We would achieve much better learning outcomes if primary school children were properly taught English as a second language.
First despite good intentions of the author, emphasis is wrong. Children will learn as many languages and subjects if they are exposed. I have seen many children in south india well versed in mother tongue, hindi and only converse in english between them. They learn mother tongue at home, hindi by films/Tv, and english in the society. I see even the students from bad schools expressing themselves in english. Yesterday while travelling in train, how beaming and proud the labourer parents were when their child answered me in english. English gives that little extra confidence. I would give as much importance of societal role in education as teachers. As regarding education one of the brilliant idea is to make all scripts in roman. This makes using keyboard easy.
for all Urdu haters.. If we cannot have a lingua franca on the naional level why do we die for English to remain as the international lingua fanca ?
A common denominator is always necessary
we must be taught in English language syllabus in our all education system levels to compete with world. Our Minister knows very well English is an official administrative language of our all government departments and institutions and all Ministries as well. as we know that English is a foreign language to get connected with the world people for a better understanding and communication . we will have to train competent professional English teachers in our all education levels to develop the confidence of our future generations. The English language Medium and Urdu medium controversy has damaged the our education standards which has been badly effected the growth of our youth minds. THE CLASH OF BOTH EDUCATION SYSTEMS has been developing an inferiority and superiority complex in our society . The government will have to restructure and formulate his education policies and standards in an appropriate manners.
How many languages do we want our kids to learn? Urdu, English, Arabic and some local language or vernacular. And sooner rather than later, we might start teaching them Chinese as well. In Sindh recently the government has been trying to teach Urdu, English, Sindhi, and Chinese and children learn Arabic for religious reasons. What time there is left for Science, Mathematics, History, and other such subjects.
There is also another trend recently. Urdu text books have pronounced religious leanings as to teach kids "Urdu" they are told religious stories, which probably they have already learned in Islamiat. That also compromises the quality of Urdu that they learn, as rather than learning to read, write and express things and events around them they are more concerned about explaining religious events and the life in the hereafter.
Ahsan Iqbal should first of all announce that civil service exam will be held in Urdu from next year.Language problem is not that simple in Pakistan that idoits of N League can fix.Being a teacher in a remote village I find that Persian and Arabic filled Urdu is as Greek to students as English is.Our maddarassas are following Urdu as medium of instruction but their students are not creative.We need to change our mindset about teachers and education.Our sixty per cent primary and secondary male school teachers when find that the meagre salary they are getting cannot make their ends meet they start a part time business this hampers and hinders their professional development and dedication .Our policy makers oblivious of these bitter realities keep on beating about the bush.
I would like to appreciate the writer logical thoughts regarding language as medium of instruction in our society . it has been articulated comprehensively in broad perspective. i am agreed her view that the English medium and Urdu medium conspiracy has damaged our standards of education. our teachers need to be trained for language subject understanding well. she must knows How does a language leaning schools going children could be motivated easily by modern teaching methodology How can they learn more and more by her or his keen interest ..
Attempt of author was very well.But there is problem the problem is that Urdu is also language of imperialism. It was imposed by foreigner assualters and prose of Urdu is very complicated. Many people who think that without Urdu we can't achieve or goals of prosperity and give the precedent of Chinese but we should know chiese are leading nation to learn English in the world .Secondly,many research papers are published in English language. It is not possible to translate those research papers into urdu. Prose of urdu is not able to fulfil the need of scientific research.We have to learn English for the stupendous future of our country.
Why this importance to Urdu? Don't we have other languages in Pakistan? Making Urdu the national language in the early days of Pakistan ultimately led to the dismemberment of the country. Urdu is the mother tongue of only 7% of the population. We should go all out to make as many children learn English as possible. As the Chinese admitted, it was proficiency in English that gave Indians the advantage of getting so far ahead in Information Technology.
Well lets take personal examples, While I grew up in a reasonably well to do family, my education was mostly in Grammar School of Karachi. Here we could only converse in English at school. At home we all spoke URDU. I did not find my mind maimed or paralyzed and was thus able to get an IT education in USA and being extremely successful in that field as well as my businesses. At home I still speak fluent URDU and in the business and some social circles I speak fluent English( I prefer to call it American). This is a small world in this age of Boeing, we must have a universal communication medium and I think English is the most common of that medium. India is a great example. With many dialects there, English is their success. Don't hurt our kids future by going to URDU.
@AdHawk And how many children have English as their mother tongue? Why do the Chinese, the Turks, the Russians, the French, the Spaniards, the Arabs, the Japanese not use English as their medium of instructions? The fundamentally illiterates such as this commentator are in a perpetual inferiority complex viz-z-viz their former colonial masters even after six decades and simply have not learnt how free and independent people live. Urdu is the lingua-franca of Pakistan, is deeply related to every language that is spoke in Pakistan and is widely understood an spoken all over Pakistan except in these pockets of colonialism otherwise known as English medium schools.
@Shakir Lakhani Really? And where do India and China stand in the field of technology and progress? Chinese, Japanese, Russian, French, Turks, Iranians and all self respecting people of the world use thier own languages for teaching their children and that does not hinder their technological progress even an iota. People who talk about technological progress more often than do not have any background in technology and do not really know what they are talking about. All of Einstein's fundamental works on relativity were not done in English. Our own Abdul Salaam was the product of an Urdu medium school and yet it did not stop him from becoming a noble laureate. Thousands of Pakistanis educated in Urdu medium schools are working all over the world in high technology areas in science, medicine and engineering and have no problem what so ever.
@tariq And there are hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis who were educated in Urdu medium schools and doing excellent work in high technology areas all over the world. English should be learnt as a language in the same way that the Chinese, Japanese, Russians and others learn it but do not adopt is as medium of instruction in our own schools. What exactly have the produce of the English medium schools given to Pakistan any way?
There's a very simple solution. Make English the official language, while teaching the provincial language as a second-language. Karachi will have Urdu, Punjab will have Punjabi, Pakhtunkhwa will have Pashto and Balochistan will have Balochi. Genocide of cultures = deterred, new provinces = inevitable, production = on the rise, prosperity = yes.
If we could just start thinking like adults for a second, these decisions are not that difficult. But we don't care about logic, we want ideologies to appease our egos for temporary periods of time... then all of that backfires and we sit in our living rooms, look at each other with disbelief and utter the words, 'What ever happened to this beautiful country?'
@shahid :how about the Quaid-e-Azam? he spoke English for the most part. Please here his speeches. While URDU is a good medium for poetry etc, Almost All the science and math books are still in English. Here in the universities of the USA, there is a waiting line as the Chinese youth are waiting in droves to learn todays science etc. We have to stop kidding ourselves. There is just not enough material in those fields in URDU yet. Develop that (and that wont be quick) then change. Now is not the time.
A large number of educationists and experts suggest that children better learn in thier own languages. Thier minds grow properly and perfectly when indoctrinated in thier mother languages.So, English should only be taught as a language instead of medium of instruction. Besides, because of english as medium of instruction, there has been created a gulg between public and private educational sectors. The former is lagging behind. As a result the poor are now denied the socially accepted standered education.
I discern a thin line between Can't be and Wouldn't be. You have to teach whatever you expect students to learn. To teach well is the question.
Having family members who speak Pashto, Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, and English, we all understand each other when we speak a common language. When together for various family events like weddings or Eid, we speak in Urdu and the teens speak in English.
In the end, when it comes to linguistical learning for children- the idea of a mismash language tool like "Urdish" can be a hinderance when some basic Urdu words are wrongly substituted for English ones as in this example by the writer, " I do protest when the Urdu word ‘awam’ is substituted by the word ‘commoners’. "
It's ironic while some so called educators in Pakistan are trying to dumb down Urdu, in India Urdu is no longer a written or a spoken language which it was for almost 300 years. It's being replaced by a "purist" Sanskrit based Hindi which many Pakistanis including myself can't decipher. While Indians are moving back to strictly Hindi and Sanskrit, educated Pakistan is moving away from its cultural roots.
In Sweden all immigrants are taught their native tongues in primary and secondary schools along with Swedish. The Swedes understand that cognitive development is facilitated when an immigrant receives instruction in their native tongue before they can master a second language.
I have met Pakistani Pashtuns in the US who were not proficient in Urdu and their Pashto was pedestrian because of the inferior quality of education and instruction they received as children in Pakistan and they admitted that the medium of instruction was Urdu but then they would go home and speak inferior Pashto because they were deprived of learning their native tongue.
They mastered neither their native tongue nor the lingua franca, which is not close to Urdu by any stretch of the imagination save for common loan words from Persian and Arabic in both languages.