An education programme for children from 62 tribal groups: Enabling “Bhasa Sikshak” language teachers to combine children’s mother tongue with Odia and English – Odisha

Books: India’s tribal cultural heritage & education >>

In the Similipal hills of Odisha, a young man teaches tribal children, using their mother tongue Ho to bridge their world and the world of mainstream education in Odia and English. | To read the full story, click here >>

[…] Shanti is wearing her school uniform, a comfortable blue frock that is a little too long for her. She is an 11-year-old Kolha tribal child, whose mother tongue is Ho.

Shanti’s soft singsong voice is the sound of change in this community. In her home on the outskirts of the Similipal National Park in Mayurbhanj district, education has a central place in family life. For a while, the child is wrapped in her own world, reading aloud from an Odia textbook, a language she has newly learnt to read and write in.

“Where do you see your daughter a few years from now?” I ask Shanti’s father, Manik Sing Boipoi. “She will complete school, she may go to Udala for high school and if she studies well, she will go to college,” he says. “I will send her to the University in Bhubaneshwar.”

Shanti’s mother has just returned from the fields after a day’s work. Her toddler peers at us from behind her sari pallu. We are joined by a young man who smiles with his entire face. His name is Kulai Sing Sundi and he is Shanti’s schoolteacher.

Both Kulai and Manik are Bhasa Sikshaks or language teachers, who work alongside primary school teachers in government schools in Odisha’s tribal areas. These language teachers drawn from the tribal community, and trained to teach children in their mother tongue first and later introduce Odia and English as they go to senior classes, helping make school a familiar, supportive space. They are key to the success of Odisha’s multi-lingual education programme that seeks to transition children from over 62 tribal groups into the mainstream education system. […]

“The introduction of language teachers has facilitated enrolment, retention as well as robust attendance,” says Jitendra Kumar Rath, who leads Oxfam India’s intervention to improve the quality of education and the functioning of government schools in Odisha’s tribal belt. “Teachers like Kulai and Manik hand-hold primary school children as they transition from speaking only Ho, their mother tongue, to learning to be fluent in Odia, which is the medium of instruction in schools. As a result, schools with language teachers have almost 100 per cent enrolment.”

Odisha is unique from many perspectives — 40 per cent of the tribal population of India lives in Odisha. Almost 23 per cent of its population consists of over 62 tribal communities who speak 29 different languages. The State has a robust lineage of many educationists who have documented their efforts to create an alternative educational framework that meets the needs of Odisha’s multi-lingual population. […]

The chance of a girl born into a poor Dalit or tribal family in a remote village ever achieving material equivalence with someone from a middle-income upper-caste family raised in a metro city is infinitely small. The multi-lingual education programme is the best way to create a bridge between communities and the school system.” […]

It is the collective stories of individuals like these that create the fabric of progress that we want to see.

Natasha Badhwar is a filmmaker, writer and media trainer.

Source: Bhasa Sikshaks who teach tribal children in Odisha innovatively by Natasha Badhwar, The Hindu (Magazine), 23 April 2016
Address: https://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/natasha-badhwar-on-bhasa-sikshaks-who-teach-tribal-children-in-odisha-innovatively/article8508587.ece
Date Visited: 9 August 2020

To be taught in a language other than one’s own has a negative effect on learning. [Starting a child’s education in the mother tongue] allows teachers and students to interact naturally and negotiate meanings together, creating participatory learning environments that are conducive to cognitive as well as linguistic development. […]

The fact that India is unable to work out even the answers to basic questions such as medium of education even seven decades after Independence means that Indian children have some of the worst learning outcomes in the world. As per World Bank metric used to measure schooling quality, for 2018 India chalked up a figure of 355 – the same as war-torn Afghanistan. Some of the countries which have better schooling quality than India include Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Iraq.

Source: “Why is India obsessed with English-medium education – when it goes against scientific consensus?” by Shoaib Daniyal
URL: https://scroll.in/article/969356/why-is-india-obsessed-with-english-medium-education-when-it-goes-against-scientific-consensus
Date visited: 27 March 2024

[Bold typeface added above for emphasis]

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