Three-day ‘Sarthak EduVision — a Fulfilling Experience’, being held at the RCVP Noronha Academy of Administration and Management started on March 15. The inaugural session of this mega-event, comprising an exhibition and conferences for Atmanirbhar Bharat, took place at 6 pm on March 14. In this conference, eminent personalities will deliberate on the educational scenario of Bharat and vision for the next 50 years.
The conference is being organised by Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal in collaboration with the University Grants Commission (UGC), All-India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), Rajiv Gandhi Praudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya and MM Activ Sci-Tech Communication.
During his address, the Vice-Chancellor of the Central University of Kerala Prof H Venkateshwarlu said that India’s languages are among the richest, most scientific, most beautiful, and most expressive in the world, with a huge body of ancient as well as modern literature (both prose and poetry), along with films, and music that help form India’s national identity and wealth.
He pointed out that for the purposes of cultural enrichment as well as national integration, all young Indians should be aware of the rich and vast array of languages of their country, and the treasures that they and their literatures contain.
Regarding the newly implemented National Education Policy, Prof Venkateshwarlu said, “NEP give high priority to the role language in meaningful education. Drawing from linguistic sciences and other latest researches in the related areas NEP suggest education in local language as a priority. NEP suggests 3 language formula mainly because children learn languages most quickly between 2-8 years. Multilingualism at this stage has great cognitive benefits for students. If introduced properly, Children will be immersed in three languages early on, from the Foundational Stage onwards.”
Prof H Venkateshwarlu also pointed out certain impediments regarding NEP. He said, “despite the rich, expressive and scientific nature of Indian languages, there has been an unfortunate trend in schools and society towards English as a medium of instruction and as a medium of conversation. only about 15% of the country speaks English, and this population almost entirely coincides with the economic elite.”
To overcome the language problem, the speaker asked the union government to contiune with the three language formula in schools. He also demanded for the recruitment of teachers for language teaching.
“Learning science bilingually will enable students to think about scientific concepts in more than one way, and enable future scientists to talk about their work and about science to their families and to local news channels, write about their work for regional newspapers, and speak to children about their work in their home States and towns to help inspire the next generation,” Prof H Venkateshwarlu said.
“Flexibility in choice of languages shall be introduced. A choice of foreign language(s) (e.g. French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese) would be offered and available to interested students to choose as elective(s) during secondary school. Such an elective would indeed be an elective and not in lieu of the three-language formula,” he added.
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