AMU faculty delivers a lecture on mother tongue, multilingualism and NEP 2020

ALIGARH  : Prof M J Warsi, Chairman, Department of Linguistics, Aligarh Muslim University, delivered a thematic talk on “Mother Tongue, Multilingualism and National Education Policy-2020” during the national conference on “Linguistic Equity, Inclusivity, and Directions for National Education Policy-2020” organized by the Centre for Linguistics and Culture Studies, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Gautam Buddha University, Greater Noida.

He said mother tongue plays a critical role in the cognitive and intellectual development of a child and studies have shown that individuals fluent in their mother tongue tend to have higher educational success rates than those who aren’t. Mother-tongue education needs to be prioritized in policy development to ensure more responsive and nuanced approaches that take into account the unique linguistic and cultural needs of learners.

He said the dominance of English as a global language of education has derecognized the linguistic, cultural and epistemic identities of multilingual people. The key to human resources development is education and the ‘English-only’ policy fails to appreciate the mother tongue as a cognitive and pedagogic resource.

Prof Warsi pointed out that the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 focuses on mother tongue education as it says that wherever possible the medium of instruction in schools until Grade V; preferably until Grade VIII, should be the mother tongue or the local or regional language.

“The renewed resource allocation and clearer policy objectives in the direction of revalorization of local languages will achieve the ultimate end of an effective mother tongue-based education system in India,” he added.