​English dreams: on language debate and English medium education

English medium education is an aspiration for many Indians, but state policy regarding the medium of instruction has been uneven across time and regions. The ongoing language debate in India, which stems from the renewed efforts of the Bharatiya Janata Party to enforce a three-language policy, has many components, the medium of instruction being one. Educationists generally argue that instruction in the mother tongue helps children achieve better learning goals in their early stages of development. This view is supported by pedagogical research, but it cannot, and does not, operate in isolation from other factors such as constitutional rights and ground realities. India’s linguistic diversity and distribution is such that even the question of what is a child’s mother tongue can often be a contested one. There is also the constitutional question of freedom of expression and choice. In 2014, after a protracted legal tussle, the Supreme Court of India held that a Karnataka government order of 1994 that made instruction in Kannada mandatory until Class four was not valid under the Constitution. For, children have a right to choose, and the state cannot enforce its view on what is good for them. The rights of private educational institutions to offer education as per market demand is another related issue.

The National Education Policy that is being aggressively pushed by the Centre has a particularly anti-English edge, which is not in line with popular aspiration. Many States that want to promote their local language and culture also want to promote English education and English as a medium of instruction. In Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, there are aided English medium schools. The demand for English medium education is growing — this includes the Hindi-speaking regions — which is met largely by substandard and expensive private institutions. English skills help individuals and the country in gaining a place in the global services sector. India’s subaltern caste groups in particular seek to empower themselves through English education, which remains a currency for upward mobility. If state schools do not offer English medium instruction, relatively richer families could still access it through private schools. In this context, education becomes a continuing reproduction and even aggravation of social inequalities, which is the exact opposite of its purpose. The fact is that knowledge of English is empowering and convertible for other outcomes. There can be a debate on whether it should be the medium of instruction at the primary level, but a basic test of any policy is in how it advances the ambitions of the most disadvantaged sections.