As curriculum not yet prepared
Though in July, 2012, the State Government had taken a decision for implementation of mother tongue- based multilingual childhood education in the tribal districts, yet it has failed to meet its mark thanks to its failure to prepare the curriculum, alleged Bernard Van leer Foundation country representative Dharitri Patnaik, during her visit to Sundargarh district.
According to Patnaik, during working in the various tribal districts of the country since 2007 on mother tongue-based childhood education, her organisation found that the tribal children between 0 and 6 years are scared of education imparted in Anganwadi Centres or primary schools.
In Odisha, she said out of eight million tribal people, more than one million are children in the age group of 0-6 years. Among the tribal population, the literacy rate is 37 per cent, compared to overall 63 per cent literacy rate in the State and 65 per cent in the country.
Odisha is home to more than 62 tribes including 13 particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTG) who speak their own dialects which is different from mainstream Odia. Due to different geographical, demographic and socio cultural factors, they are unable to adapt with the mainstream languages. Thus, when children from these tribal groups come into conventional schooling, learning becomes a challenge, as they do not understand the language of instruction in the school, she said.
Patnaik informed that her organisation has been working in Odisha on this fundamental issue since 2007 and interestingly 2,700 tribal villages have made a resolution in Palli Sabhas in favour of mother tongue base childhood education and more than 60,000 post cards have been sent by the tribals to the Government demanding education in their mother tongue.
Odisha is the first State in the country which had a Government directive to facilitate education of its tribal children in their mother tongue in Anganwadi centres on July 31, 2012. After this directive ‘Arunima’ was developed by the Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA) in ten tribal languages first and later it was enhanced to nineteen languages.
Initially, her organisation prepared curriculum in four languages i.e. Munda, Juang, Saura and Kui to help the Government agency as a handy reference. But, surprisingly so far the curriculum has not reached the centres. Adding on to the woes is that the Anganwadi centres do not have their own buildings in tribal areas. For successful implementation of the project, it is also important that Anganwadi teachers are to be recruited from the community and trained, while culture relevant teaching learning materials (TlM) are made available in all centres, said Patnaik.
She further said her organisation supports demonstration projects in different tribal districts. In Panposh sub-division (lathikata, Bisra, Kuarmunda and Nuagaon), 40 Anganwadi centres are run successfully by a leading NGO DISHA on behalf of her organization, Patnaik maintained.