The Hindu

• It should not be taught at the cost of Kannada, says `Mukhyamantri' Chandru 

Mangalore, Mar 19: Any decision to introduce English as a subject from the first standard should be based on the collective wisdom of opinions given by a set of experts, MLC `Mukhyamantri' Chandru has said.

The Government should not make it an issue of prestige or take a decision on it bowing to extraneous reasons.

English should not be taught at the cost of Kannada, he said at the valedictory function of a two-day seminar on "Teaching of English at the primary school level" organised by Mangalore Taluk Retired Teachers' Association at Surathkal near here on Sunday.

`Easy to grasp'

Children found it easy to grasp any subject when it was taught to them in the mother tongue, he said.Asserting that he was not against English or teaching it as a subject in schools, Mr. Chandru said that blindly aping the language and its culture forgetting indigenous roots was detrimental to our own interests.

Children should be taught English only after they had a deep-seated knowledge of their own language and its culture, he said. Such a foundation would enable them to assimilate the salient points of a language in comparison with its culture, Mr. Chandru added.

Referring to the Government's decision to legalise schools that had violated the language norm, Mr. Chandru said such a move was fraught with inherent dangers. Government could legalise illegal buildings or encroached land by levying a penalty. But to take such a step in the language issue was not in the larger interests of society, he said.

K. Narahari, president, National Teachers' Federation, said the present ills plaguing society was due to the system of education introduced by the British.

Stressing on the need to "Indianise" the education system, he said that English should be taught to students based on the strengths of Indian cultural and value systems and not based on a Western model.

Effort should be made by teachers to write Indian text books in English, he added.

The seminar encompassed detailed deliberations on the issue from the point of view of teachers, managements, parents and educationists. Scholars and experts presented papers on the issue.

K. Balakrishna Bhat, former MLC, welcomed the gathering. I. Balakrishna Rao, working president, presided over the function.