Education in mother tongue a prerequisite
The government needs to accelerate its mother tongue-based education system by incorporating more ethnic communities into the system, said speakers yesterday.
Education in mother tongue is a prerequisite for children's skills development while sufficient learning materials, trained and quality teachers are required for this, they said at a views-exchange meeting.
Research and Development Collective (RDC) and Campaign for Mass Education (Campe) jointly arranged the programme on “Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education: Expectation and Success” at The Daily Star Centre in the capital.
For the first time, the government in January this year distributed pre-primary textbooks in five ethnic languages -- Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Sadri and Garo.
Delivering the welcome speech, Campe Deputy Director Tapan Kumar Das said the government's mother tongue-based multilingual education programme was incorporated in its Education Policy-2010. However, the government could be able to distribute pre-primary textbooks in the above mentioned ethnic languages this year, he said.
Alongside the five ethnic languages, this year the government was supposed to distribute books for the Santal community children, he said. But the initiative remains pending due to "some problems", he added.
Concern remains if the government will take initiative for children who speak in other languages, he said, hoping that the government would extend the multilingual programme up to grade-II.
Prof Mesbah Kamal, RDC chairperson and a teacher of history department of Dhaka University, said alongside Bangla language spoken by the majority of the people, the country has 43 more languages mostly used by ethnic community people.
Poverty and a lack of opportunity are the reasons behind dropout and this phenomenon is higher among indigenous children, he said.
Chairing the meeting, Prof Emeritus Manzoor Ahmed of Brac University said the government should ensure education in mother language as it is the best way for the development of children's learning skill.
He also said the International Mother Language Institute should conduct research and find out the present state of diverse languages in the country.
RAM Obaidul Muktadir Chowdhury, chief of the parliamentary standing committee on Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs, said the parliamentary watchdog has sent a proposal to the government for giving priority on local people while recruiting teachers. Muktadir, also a ruling Awami League MP, said, “Hopefully, it will be implemented.”
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