Krishna Kumar is a former Director of NCERT and author of The Child’s Language and the Teacher. His latest book is Thank You, Gandhi

Go to any school, and you will sense the problem: most teachers don’t treat language as a means to think and express. Reading and writing are taught as mechanical skills

After independence a formula was invented to resolve the so-called language problem in education. From the beginning, it met with tricks and trouble. Tricks were played in the Hindi states of the north, and trouble erupted in the south.

The Hindi states claimed ‘full’ implementation of the three-language formula, but they used Sanskrit as the third language instead of a contemporary language spoken in a non-Hindi state. In the south, Tamil Nadu (TN) maintained its two-language stand mandating Tamil and English to be taught in government schools.

Fast forward to the present. The Centre is telling TN to implement the three-language formula and rest of the provisions of the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. To ensure compliance, the ministry of education at the Centre has withheld a substantial amount due to TN under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (primary-secondary education development programme). Unfazed, TN’s chief minister M.K. Stalin has responded by saying that even if the amount paid were five times more, TN will not change its opposition on NEP 2020 and the three-language formula. Compliance with such demands will take state backward, he says. It is important to remember that TN is among the country’s leading states on all parameters of progress in school education.

Such Centre-state conflict is not new. In earlier times, national policies and major education decisions were announced after they were approved by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE). This forum is an old British invention that has worked since its inception in 1920. Setting it up was one of the major recommendations of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms report. Its goal was to improve governance in British India by creating better coordination between Delhi and the provinces. As it turned out, CABE proved a reliable instrument for maintaining good relations between the Centre and the states after independence. Its annual meetings gave state ministers an opportunity to present their views on Central government proposals. CABE was not a statutory body, and its approval of a decision did not make it binding. But it smoothed Centre-state relations on a large number of matters, especially related to curriculum and exams.

Its long history seems to have ended. NEP 2020 does not have CABE’s approval, nor was it discussed in Parliament. It is unsurprising that several states don’t feel comfortable with it. And it’s no coincidence that they are all opposition-ruled states. But in some BJP ruled states too, officials lack clarity about what they are supposed to do about several new measures introduced by the Centre.

The long historical background given above does not explain why TN is so unhappy with the three-language formula and why it is back in the news after more than half a century. TN feels, as it did in the 1960s, that the Centre wants to impose Hindi on its children. This time, the Centre has tried to argue that the third language does not have to be Hindi, but this technical clarification has not softened TN’s position.

The historical fact is that the framing of the formula was designed to ensure that non-Hindi states introduce Hindi, thereby serving the formula’s goal of strengthening national integration. It was a major issue in the early decades of independence. The ethos has changed now, but suspicion of the Centre’s intentions remains. It has also been fed by a new political plan. It has to do with delimitation of seats in Parliament on the basis of new population data. This data doesn’t exist yet — the Census due in 2021 has been delayed — but when it is conducted, its statistics will be used to reallocate seats in the Lok Sabha. The language question has resurfaced in this climate — with a sharper edge.

The real issues were forgotten long ago. The focus remained on language as a medium of instruction. Both words in that popular phrase remind us how little our basic perspective has changed since colonial times. Language is seen merely as a medium, and teaching is viewed as instruction. The evolution of linguistic theory had established by mid-20th century that children learn a language best when they are relaxed and feel encouraged to use it with freedom and imagination. In our classrooms, language has remained a domain of tight instruction for correct usage and success in examinations. English medium private schools promise mastery through this route. The best of them neglect the child’s home language as if it does not matter. You can find brilliant students in, for instance, Bangalore’s private elite schools who can’t speak Kannada comfortably. Nor are they familiar with its literature.

Meanwhile, English teaching in government schools continues to be poor. The number of teachers who can’t speak English has increased exponentially. And the teaching of the child’s own language has also remained underdeveloped.

These pedagogic failures can be attributed to poor teacher training and badly designed language curriculums and textbooks. Teacher training has recently taken a turn towards further decline. Go to any school, and you will sense the problem: most teachers don’t treat language as a means to think and express. Reading and writing are taught as mechanical skills. And tragically, listening and speech aren’t given much attention.