A growing perception among West Bengals rural population that education in English is a passport to a successful urban career and material riches could compel the states Communist rulers to bring the language back to early school levels.
Soon after taking office in 1977, the Left Front in West Bengal wanted to break out of what they thought was an elitist, colonial system of education.
The ruling alliance came up with an alternative based on Bengali thinking the ordinary people would be more at home with it. But after trying it for nearly 20 years, it seems the masses themselves want their children to be educated in English.
Thus, 18 years after the government decided that English be taught from the sixth standard instead of the first, the Front is seriously considering reverting to the old system.
In 1993, the teaching of English was advanced to the fifth standard on the recommendation of an expert panel. A one-man committee has now been asked to advise whether children should be taught the English language even earlier.
The irony is that people are not interested in educating their children in their own language. Instead they want them to grow up with the old system that had English as centrepiece, says S Poddar, a Left party activist. They know that they cant have what the big schools offer, but for them even a cheap copy is more acceptable.
As the unlettered Charulata Mondal of Piyali village, who commutes some 25 km every day to work as a part-time housemaid in Calcutta, says, The babus (the middle class) have their own ways of teaching English to their children. What about us? She has enrolled her two children in one of the many schools where the medium of instruction is English. Such schools have mushroomed in big cities and towns of West Bengal.
These schools charge a much higher fee than the Bengali-medium schools. Most of them insist that their students wear school ties, another thing that impresses Charulata. It is another thing that most such schools lack properly trained teachers.
Political parties are also demanding a reversion to the old system of education. The Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) even called for a one-day strike in February in support of its demand for introduction of English from the primary classes.
The issue has become intensely politicised. Leading intellectuals have expressed horror at the downscaling of English and felt it would strike at Bengals tradition of being one of the first and foremost centres of English education in the country.
Some others felt that the policy was intended to play up the rural population, who have always been poor in English, and punish the urban regions because they did not vote for the Leftists. Some described it as some kind of a mini cultural revolution designed to brainwash young impressionable minds. But Partha Dey, who was state Education Minister in the first Left Front government (1977-82) when the change was effected, said, What was done with English was basically a part of an integrated policy drawn up to keep the load light on the students, particularly the first-generation literates.
But the demand for English language instruction has been growing even in the countryside where this is seen as the key to a good life in the urban areas. Opposition parties say the proposed changes have been timed to placate strong rural feelings on the eve of the panchayat elections due in May. According to Nirmalya Sinha, who teaches at one of the Calcutta schools, the declining standards of English instruction in the state are affecting the career prospects of the young people.
If Bengali boys and girls are not able to do well in these exams, thats because they are weak in written English and weaker still in spoken English, she explained.
