In my travels as a teacher educator I have often found many children in the classrooms away from others, baffled, quiet and isolated. Look at the case of Jamru.   

Jamru is from the Tharu community she enters a school for the first time in a village in Uttarakhand. She speaks Tharu at home. She has heard Punjabi spoken in the street. She is baffled when the teacher speaks to her in Hindi. She does not understand anything the teacher says and amongst the forty children in the class, some of whom speak Tharu, some Bengali and some Punjabi while some speak a little Hindi she is completely lost. She becomes more and more withdrawn day by day. The teacher thinks she is dull. Soon she drops out of school and helps her mother take care of her new born brother.

Jamru is not alone. Mini Srinivasan in her research entitled Confronting Stereotypes talks of the Lamani tribal girls near Pune.

The laman tanda (community) lives on the outskirts of Pune. They are a migrant community, but they have been living on the outskirts of Pune for the last thirty years. They speak Lamani and in this generation at least one parent is educated. They are eager to send their children to school. However the only school which will accept them and which they can afford is the municipal school where Marathi – the regional language of Pune is the medium of instruction. The children have picked up a little Marathi in the streets but this is not the standard Marathi of the school. The teachers consider the Laman’s language to be vulgar and uncivilized. The children do not understand the teacher’s instruction yet they are very supportive of each other and manage to escape punishment by helping each other. Are these children really learning anything? (Based on Confronting Stereotypes by Mini Shrinivasan)

I have had several conversations with teachers who genuinely believe that it is not their duty to teach in the child’s language as the medium of instruction is one of the ‘standard’ languages. Naturally children who are acquainted with the standard languages do well in classrooms, and those who begin schooling with the burden of incomprehension are marked by the threat of becoming push outs of the system.

As you know, most of the States have implemented the three language formula by making the standard regional language of the State or English as the first language, the second or third language is usually Hindi. A child whose home languages are different from the regional language finds himself in an alien world in school. A teacher has to think about this and take steps to bridge the gap by building bridges between the home language and school language.

There are two types of linguistic minorities: 

• Speakers of minor languages, like some tribal languages
• Speakers of modern Indian languages living in a state where official language is different from the regional language.

Most children acquire many languages in the first three years of their life at home surrounded by neighbours, friends and markets where many languages are spoken and heard. They acquire language from the media. In school they encounter the regional language which may or may not be their home language or street language. So some children benefit from their multilingual surroundings and others do not. Moreover by itself school language is a standardized version of the regional language. This makes it almost a different variety of language. E.g. In a text book water is called jal, while children might be used to the word pani. Even stories in text books use a standard vocabulary and syntax which is alien to children. The school does not always build bridges between children’s home languages and the standard language spoken in school. Teachers often do not recognize the multilingual abilities of the child. Our education policies have stressed that the home language of the child should be the language of instruction but we know that in most schools the medium of instruction is the regional language or English. Due to the huge industry that English language spans across the world it has been valourised as the language of economic growth and represents the aspiration of the people. This has resulted in a vicious circle of marginalized languages being further marginalized.

The home languages of migrant, marginalized minority language speaking children are not represented as medium of instruction in school, not even in the early years. Some of these languages are very different from street or school languages.  Most of these languages do not have a written form.  This causes a double divide between those who attend school with a literate traditions already in place, who have some acquaintance with school languages and those who come with rich oral traditions and languages which are further denied in school. This double divide pushes back those very children who need just a little support in school. The future of our country lies threatened due to this divisive politics.

How can a teacher take steps to make classrooms multilingual?

Ideally, psychologists, linguists, educationists and researchers recommend that the medium of instruction in the first three years of schooling should be the mother tongue.

However this is not practically possible due to compliance to curriculum, syllabi and text books. What is it then that a teacher can do alongside teaching of the standard language?

Step 1: Create a language profile of the children in the class. This profile is a constant help for the teacher to reach out to every child in the class. The information in this profile is as follows: home language of the child, other languages the child is acquainted with. Languages the child is comfortable in. Whether the home languages have a script. What is the child’s acquaintance with written language in the home.

Step2: Learn basic phrases in the children’s languages. Use them in conversation with children. Encourage children to talk, to tell stories, to sing songs and name things in their languages along with school languages.

Step 3: Bring in the parents and community to teach children folk songs, poems and tell stories in their languages. When parents talk to children in their language in school, the community feels accepted in school, the children’s identity and language is maintained while parents themselves build the confidence in the children to learn school languages.

Step 4: Introduce concepts through examples from the children’s homes. For example while talking about trees or festivals refer to local names of trees or festivals along with text book names. Reproduce the text book page with the local name and text book name.

Step 5: Understanding concepts through multilingual articulation For example A teacher wants to introduce basic hygiene and talk about washing hands before meals. The children are taken to the tap where they wash their hands. Then the teacher introduces the word water and asks the children to draw. Children will usually draw different things: taps, streams, puddles, rain, bottles etc. Ask the children the names of the things they have drawn in their languages. Write the names down in school and children’s languages on the sheets.

Human beings are learning individuals, children are naturally inclined to acquire the languages they are exposed to. However they need a supportive environment to do so. This support comes to respect of their identity and previous knowledge which is couched in their home languages. If we recognize this we will save many a small child from becoming a push out of the system.

Ideally, as mother tongue is the foundation child’s first cognition schools should make provisions for the mother tongue as the medium of instruction at least for the first three years to build bridges between the home and school, the mother tongue and school languages. This would result in long term advantages for Indian multiligualism and economic growth. More human resource would become critically literate and more languages would be maintained and developed.

To understand more about teaching strategies in a multilingual classroom, one can further consult the paper Fostering multiliteracy in a linguistically diverse classroom.