Education in mother tongue not a Myth: learning from private sector and mainstreamed in Bangladesh

• In Event: Poster session 2

Proposal

Education in mother tongue is not a Myth: learning from private sector and mainstreamed in Bangladesh

SIG: Indigenous Knowledge and the Academy


Background:
Language is a distinctively human system of communication based on oral and written symbols. It is the vehicle. Through which people’s culture is transmitted. It is an extremely important aspect of a community. It is an index of Identity which serves as a repository of a people’s culture, industry and exploits. It is language that differentiates the homo sapiens from other animals. The most effective engine of a people’s culture is their mother tongue. Indigenous languages are treasures of our culture and self-identity. In other words, it is the indicator of history and self-identification.

(Solanke, 2006).Mother tongue is an indispensable cultural legacy with which all forms of human interactions are carried out. According to Nwadike (2004) it is the key to the heart of the people. If we lose the key, we lose the people. If we treasure the key and keep it safe, it will unlock the door to wealth or affluence.

In Bangladesh, there are 2.5 million indigenous people in the country, classified in 41 distinct indigenous communities and most of them have their own culture and language. The indigenous communities of Bangladesh are often vulnerable and deprived of fundamental human rights.
These indigenous people are living in very remote locations and facing multifarious challenges as their culture and language are different from mainstream population. The indigenous community has not been able to develop in the same pace as other parts of the country and education is one of the development indicators where they lag behind.
The Chittagong Hill Tract comprises of Khagrachari, Rangamati and Bandarban districts with a total population of about 1.5 million people, of which 50% belong to different indigenous groups speaking 11 local languages including Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Tanchangya, Khyang, Mro, Bawm, Lushai, Chak, Pangko, Khumi. In Bangladesh over 55.5% of indigenous children aged 6-10 years in Chittagong hill tracts remain out of school, and the majority of those who do enrol drop out before completing primary school. One of the most critical barriers to education for these children is that they do not understand official language Bangla, the language used in school, when they first enrol, and the curriculum does not relate to their culture or communities. There is also inadequate coverage of primary and pre-primary services in the hill tracts, and children have to travel long distances to reach the schools in a very difficult hilly landscape. Unfriendly teaching approach and poor learning environment is also assumed to be one of the reasons for the high dropout rate of children from ethnic minority groups.

Initiative of Save the Children to address this issue:
Concerning this issue Save the children as a child focus organization first initiated mother tongue based education in Chittagong hill tracts in 2006 and established 200 community based pre-primary schools in Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Mro, and Rakhaine languages in Khagrachari, Rangamati, Bandarban and Cox’sbazar. When Save the children started its intervention, that time there were no actor in the field, mother tongue based education was only myth to the indigenous people. But after Save the children intervention indigenous people of Chittagong hill tracts started talking about mother tongue based education and children became interested to enrol in community based mother tongue based school. Gradually other local NGO’s became interested to start mother language based education in Chittagong hill tracts as well as other part of Bangladesh.

MLE under Govt. system
After nine years of intervention, evidence and strong advocacy of Save the children and other NGO’s Bangladesh govt. has taken decision to start mother tongue based education as mainstream but challenge But at times education in mother tongue appeared as difficult task. How is that possible? How to prepare educational materials in all the languages? Where to get specialists on these? Who will write the books? But, ‘Education in mother tongue’ programs run by different organizations have proven the successful evidence. Then Govt. started talking with service providing NGO’s, formed a committee to take support.
Before mainstreaming of MLE govt. has taken below steps:

1. MOE, MOPME, DPE and NCTB initially decided to officially initiate pre-primary education in 6 languages based on some criteria from the 45 languages through the workshops conducted by different organizations, language experts and MLE forum. Languages are Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Garo, Sadri and Santal. But, as there is disagreement on the scripts of Santal language (whether these Roman or Bangla), and then the final decision was to start the academic year with 5 languages in 2012.
2. Government formed a national steering committee, curriculum committee and a teachers training related committee in 2012.
3. A meeting has been organized at National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) premises in February 2014 with the participation of different organizations, networks, representatives from different language groups in hilly and plain land areas and language experts. This meeting was to share and approve bridging plan. Basically this bridging plan is a plan how children will start learning in mother tongue and gradually transit to Bangla which is intertwined with the terminal competencies of the curriculum from pre-primary to primary level.
4. ‘Writers committee’ was formed combining writers and researchers from 5 indigenous linguistic groups Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Sadri and Garo in 2014 where minimum five eminent indigenous persons were selected from each language group. Three hill district councils and the Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs were integrated in the process.
5. Series of materials development workshop has been conducted for pre-primary materials, published and distributed among the 5 language group children.
6. Grade -1 teaching learning materials development is also almost complete and will be distributed by 2018 January.


Nevertheless, the MLE project of Save the children has made a historical change in Bangladesh Education system. The Government of Bangladesh has declared Multilingual education as mainstreaming and in January’ 2017 the government distributed 52000 books among 25000 children.

From 2017 MLE is inbuilt system of national primary education and the indigenous children of primary age cohort has received their dream textbooks along with other learning materials in their mother tongue.


Meherun Nahar Shapna
Project Director –MLE
Education Sector

Author

• Meherun Nahar, Save the Children - Bangladesh