The recent decision by some state governments in India to impart professional education through mother tongue. The government of Maharashtra recently has translated some academic books of engineering in regional languages and making it available to aspirant students. Though the decision is welcome it has to be critically analysed. India is a diverse country with many regional languages.
The globalisation and urbanisation of India has led to internal and external migration to economically richer states and countries. This would put certain section of the migrating population in adverse situation. It is imperative to understand the consequences of teaching-learning process in regional languages in all aspect of human life and progress of a society. Language and communication are interconnected with each other. Language is a medium of communication. It is one of most efficient tool to learn and create knowledge. In today’s scenario mobility of the global citizens across the world is based on their language and communication skills.
We need to understand that language is a medium of communication that helps in expressing and conveying thoughts, feelings and emotions. Basically it is a tool for effective conversation and relationship building. Communication is a more complex process as compared to language.
Communication is the most important factor in professional education especially in medical education. Medical practitioners have to communicate with patients in local language. At the same time they have to communicate with their peers in the globally accepted communication language.
Therefore to impart education through regional language, there are specific factors to be considered by the policy makers.
In the last few decades we have seen that India’s economic development has been purely based on the growth of Information Technology (IT) and IT Enabled Services (ITES) industry. This has been possible since, most of the educated Indian can not only speak the international language of English but also have learned through medium of English.
The language as a medium of instruction has to be rightful balance between culture, identity and survival in globalised world. This is the case with all professional education. Internationally, research publications are moving towards to English as a medium of communication. The number of Medical/Medicine journals has grown from 25% to 89% in last 130 years. In the same time period, the number of journals in medicine published in German language has decreased form 25% to 1.9%. In today’s world, most of the scientific communication are through the language of English.
Many of the developed countries and developing countries are offering medical programmes in English. This is not just limited to internationalisation of education. It is happening in OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries like Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Finland, Sweden and many other Nordic countries wherein the complete higher education has been rapidly shifting towards English being the medium of instruction.
Internalisation of education and migration has made English the official language for business and science. Secondly, it is also must to give thought about culture and identity through mother tongue. It enables efficient communication. And the same time people educated only through mother tongue or regional language may face difficulty to be a global citizen.
In the context of medical and engineering education mobility and availability of teachers and teaching resources in regional or mother tongue especially research journals in specific fields or specialisations may hamper the quality of education.
The bilingual pedagogic methods that combine the use of the regional language in main text and provide medical terms in both mother tongue and English could be suitable medical and engineering strategy for non-English speaking countries.
As this is very important decision which is going to impact the life of students and development of nation through them, It is necessary for the government to produce a white paper on the implication of regional language-based education on jobs and careers, economic development, migration and resettlement, research outcomes and intellectual growth of an individual being.
(Dr Rajan Welukar is former Vice-Chancellor,University of Mumbai)
