Posted on 09/04/2001 5:56:33 PM PDT by dighton
KOLKATA: ‘‘If you want to learn English, think in English, speak in English, dream in English’’ – went the old saying. But not any more. Let alone dreaming in the language, the new credo here is “learn English... through Bengali”. Or so it seems, if the new book that has been introduced for children in Class II of government schools is taken into account.
Far from the tried and tested formulae of ‘‘A is for apple, B is for ball’’ and nursery rhymes from Mother Goose, children today are being taught to rhyme M-N-O-P with ‘‘Sheet kaale khaai khoob bandhakopee (we eat lots of cauliflower during the winter)’’ or I-J-K-L with ‘‘Ghanta shunnchhi, porlo ki bell? (we hear the tolls, is it the bell?)’’.
Welcome to the world of Chharha O Chhobitey Ingreji Shekha (Learn English through rhymes and pictures) – a textbook introduced to students of Class II in government schools.
The book does not start with the alphabet. Instead, children are made to read Bengali poems that merely include English words in them.
No wonder even the teachers are finding this hard to digest. After all, they too, had been brought up on the staple of “Baa, Baa black sheep’’ and “Little Bo-Peep.’’
But the authorities have their reasons. ‘‘The mother-tongue of these children is Bengali, so naturally, when a new language is being introduced, it has to be through the mother-tongue,’’ opines educationist Pabitra Sarkar, who chaired the Sarkar Commission, which had recommended introduction of English from primary stages. The heads of prestigious schools of the city and the Bengal Primary Teachers’ Association, however, chooses to differ.
The teachers affiliated to the BPTA questions the standard of the book and have refused to use it.
‘‘We use the conventional books that are also used in English-medium schools,’’ says Kartik Saha, secretary of BPTA and headmaster of Sarat Shikshayatan.
‘‘Why are these words in Bengali and not in English? Why doesn’t the book teach the alphabet first? Why should the name of the book be written in Bengali on the cover?’’ demands Saha, who was already critical of the policy.
Even the tiny-tots cannot take the book seriously. ‘‘Children of Class II already know the alphabets and the popular nursery rhymes, even if we do not teach these in school, because their parents do so at home or send them to a montessori school earlier. I hope the government is aware of such a feeling among the young students,’’ says headmaster of Hare School, D P Chakravarty.
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Wonder if we could get some of those "Bengali first" folks together with the "Aztlan" people so they could threash out which is better to know in the modern world - Bengali or Spanish.
bump
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