CBSE's turn to the mother tongue requires more than intent — it demands structural shifts and classroom autonomy

Indian Express

28-06-2025

The decision taken by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to switch the focus of early primary years to the mother tongue is, to say the least, momentous. With a circular, the board plans to upend the history of education in its prestigious schools. If the circular succeeds, the outcome will be nothing less than a revolution. Future historians will struggle to explain this accomplishment. Some will surely ask: 'If it was so simple, why couldn't the board do it many years ago?' The CBSE is a relatively small board compared to the state boards, but it enjoys higher status and influence. Barring exceptions, CBSE schools use English as a medium from the earliest grades. Several state boards have conceded the centrality of English relatively recently, apparently to align themselves with the CBSE. Now that the latter has announced its resolve to displace English in the early years of schooling, will these state boards follow? If that happens, it will doubtless be a beautiful dawn of systemic sanity.
No philosopher or policymaker has ever endorsed the centrality of English over the child's mother tongue. Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, M K Gandhi — they all advocated the primacy of the mother tongue. J P Naik — the designer of educational policies in the early years of Independence — saw the dominant position of English in leading schools as a terrible contradiction. As the member-secretary of the Kothari Commission (1964-66), he pleaded for a sincere implementation of the three-language formula. Under this hallowed mantra, the child's mother tongue ought to be treated as the first and most important language at school. In his book published soon after his death in 1981, Naik lamented the fact that the three-language formula had been implemented piecemeal or sidelined entirely.
He once told me a story that rings like an allegory today. Following the Kothari Commission report's approval, Naik said the Maharashtra government issued a circular. It referred to the commission's recommendation of 'child-centred education'. The Maharashtra circular directed all schools to ensure that child-centred education was practised with immediate effect. In fact, the circular threatened official action against defaulting school heads. The point of this story was that circulars don't necessarily work, especially when they intend to soften an entrenched practice. Wider effort, involving social collaboration, is required.
It is now a popular, socially accepted fact that English is the language of upward mobility. The parallel view that English is a colonial legacy and should therefore be displaced may have political utility, but it has little traction, particularly among the traditionally deprived social groups. They recognise that the children of the dominant classes and their leaders benefit from their ease with English. This view goes along with the notion that command of English requires early induction. By sticking to the use of English as a medium of teaching in every subject, elite schools — as most CBSE schools are — have consolidated these popular perceptions of English. Indeed, this perception is a key factor driving the growth of private schools, especially in the northern belt where the state system is weak and poorly managed.
The CBSE's move blinks at this wider reality. Instead of explaining what is problematic about early induction into English, the CBSE wants to sound innocent in its sudden advocacy of the mother tongue or the regional language. Laudable though this new mission is, it calls for sustained preparation and considerable investment. Apart from private schools, Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) will require more than nudging if they are to pay greater attention to children's home language. As a privileged segment of the CBSE family, KVs have been silently copying the practices of English-medium private ('public') schools. Many years have passed since the day I noticed that Grade I children in a KV in Delhi could not name all the days of the week in Hindi. It was nobody's wish to make children monolingual English speakers so early in life; KVs were merely following a social trend. Being evasive about the omnipresence of English-medium education is probably a policy compulsion, but it amounts to a preference for snoozing in a make-believe world.
If the child's own language is to find some appreciative space at school, countless euphemisms will have to be sacrificed. Some of these serve as a political shorthand; others are related to frozen pedagogies. Experienced teachers know that language is not merely literacy, however foundational it may be. Sounds, rhymes and words contain intimate, imagined meanings for small children. Sensible teaching lets these meanings develop new forms; misconceived schooling throttles them, imposing dictionary meanings through tests and competition. In our system, the child's language is the first casualty. Prematurely acquired capacities to recite and spell run parallel to rote numeracy. These practices run counter to the basic principles of child-centred teaching.
If the CBSE wants to improve language learning at early stages, it will have to look beyond publicised priorities. As an examination board, its focus is naturally on tests and outcomes. Currently, this focus has intensified. New technologies have exacerbated this tendency. Language learning during childhood is an aspect of intellectual growth that demands a generous teacher and diversity of resources. Music, drama and other means of aesthetic expression also enhance children's linguistic strength. A multilingual classroom is best suited to achieving these aims.
The education system is accustomed to treating language like a subject. It is taught with the purpose of ensuring success in tests. In recent years, this systemic tendency has worsened. Distrust of the teacher has led to a general, undeclared policy of denial of autonomy. In KVs, teachers must abide by a nationwide convergence of weekly completion schedules. This practice compels every teacher to complete each segment of the syllabus or textbook at the same pace as others. Practices in private schools are not very different from this norm. There is little room in such a system to permit teachers to pursue curricular goals at their own pace. The transformation of such a system cannot be achieved with a circular and a brief re-orientation.
The writer is former NCERT director and the author of The Child's Language and the Teacher and Padhna, zara sochna