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AtulNagrale
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The general welcome accorded by educationists to the Maharashtra Government long range education policy, announced on Sunday, testifies to the essential soundness of the objectives the Government has in view. The proposals for improving the quality and content of pre-university education are well conceived. Education up to the middle school stage is to be free and universal. For this purpose more schools will have to be started in the rural areas. To raise the quality of teaching in primary schools, it is proposed to recruit only those who have completed their secondary school education. Only trained teachers are to be appointed in future. In the reorganisation of courses at the secondary stage, greater emphasis will be placed on mathematics and the sciences. The real problem will be to get qualified teachers for those subjects, as those who are proficient in them generally option for careers other than teaching.
The most controversial part of the Maharashtra Government policy relates to the question of the language to be taught at school. While it is universally agreed that at the primary stage the medium of instruction should be the mother tongue, the Government has said that Marathi, Hindi, and English would be compulsory from standard V to X in Marathi-medium schools and the mother-tongue, Marathi and Hindi or English in non-marathi-medium schools. It will be seen that in the case of children whose mother-tongue is not Marathi the learning of four languages will become virtually obligatory. In view of the importance of a knowledge for pursuing higher studies and the increasing needs to learn Hindi as the principal union official language, it will be difficult for the non-marathi medium students to give up it one of the two languages. The difficulty will be most pronounced in the case of the children of persons belonging to the all India Services.
It must be considered whether the overloading of the curriculum with the study of so many languages will not be at the cost of the time available for other subjects. The State Education Minister would do well to consider whether Marathi could not be made an optional language for non Marathi-speaking pupils in Standard VIII to X, Hindi being optional in standard V to VII. The scheme makes no provision for Sanskrit, but one hopes that there will be provision for the study.