Mother tongue should be the medium of instruction in schools and colleges, felt a seminar on National Education Policy held by the Bharatiya Siksha Mandal late Thursday evening and which was attended by educationists from Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Puducherry.
“Whether it is engineering, technology, medicine, basic sciences or modern management, students should have the right and freedom to learn the same in their own mother tongue. But it should be the original writing and not the word by word translation which we see right now,” said Mukul Kanitkar, national secretary, BSM, who delivered the keynote address.
Kanitkar said that the Government or the agency which deals with the publication of text books should find out professional authors from all languages to write the text books.
“We have the English/Hindi copies of these books. But what we should do before the New Education Policy comes into practice is to find out authors who are capable to write books which would be loved by students and teachers alike,” he said.
Prof Prabha Raya, Central University, Puducherry, was of the view that the entire teaching community in the country should be taken into confidence before the NEP gets implemented. “The NEP would be a success only if we succeed in convincing the teachers about their role as change makers. The change should come from within and not from outside. If only there is an internal change, it could be extended to external changes,” said Prof Raya.
The participants pointed out that there were a lot of opportunities in the NEP which remain untapped and unexplored because of the complacency on the part of the end users of the new policy. “There are opposition and criticism against the NEP. But once these issues are resolved, the present opposition which we see against the NEP would wither away,” said B A Subramanya from Karnataka.
Prof Unnikrishnan from Kerala said it was time for authorities and universities to come out with “lively, loving and unputdownable” text books in all subjects which would be loved by students and teachers alike. “My generation had to bear with dull and drab textbooks but the new generation deserve the best books. That’s the only option to kindle the passion for learning,” he said.