KARACHI: People losing respect for mother tongues: expert
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, July 15: At least three things have done immense harm to country’s public education system for a long time: first, ambivalence towards English as a medium of instruction; second, reservations about the importance of western knowledge for national development; and third, the unending debate about the place of religious education at various educational levels.
This was one of the many insightful observations made by the vice chancellor of the Government College University, Lahore, Dr Khalid Aftab, on Friday evening at the launch of well-known academic Dr Sabiha Mansoor’s new book titled “Language planning in higher education: a case study of Pakistan”. The book has been published by the Oxford University Press.
Dr Aftab said: “National identity and integration in Pakistan was perceived to be linked with adoption of Urdu as national language which, for strange reasons, was taken by many as rejection of the English language and all that is associated with it. The state failed to adopt pluralistic policies so as to provide support to mother tongues of students and regional languages at all levels. Similarly, the state did not set up bilingual education programmes that would have allowed all languages (Urdu, English and regional) to play their due role in higher education.”
The vice chancellor of the Government College University, Lahore, said he was confident that Dr Mansoor’s book would fill the knowledge-gap on many issues concerning language planning and sensitize people about the importance of what he described as “research-informed policy reforms.”
Dr Rama Kant Agnihotri, professor at the department of linguistics, Delhi University, India, was also full of praise for Dr Mansoor’s book.
He said: “Hindustani was split into two languages – Urdu in Pakistan and Hindi in India – following partition. In both countries, regional languages were neglected. Actually English was also neglected at first and it was supposed that it would have been consigned to oblivion 15 years after the creation of India and Pakistan. Ironically, English has become one of the most important languages in the subcontinent.”
Dr Agnihotri said that, located in a rich theoretical framework, Dr Mansoor’s book was based on an equally rich survey of over 2,300 respondents. “That’s a massive database – carefully collected and meticulously analyzed. This book should be taken seriously both by academics and policymakers,” he said.
The Delhi-based academic said one of the things that the book brought out very strongly was that in both India and Pakistan people were fast losing respect for their mother tongues, consistently rating English higher than their own languages. “This is a paradoxical and painful book,” he said.
Noted scholar Dr Tariq Rahman said Dr Mansoor was the pioneer of socio-linguistic research in Pakistan. “Actually it was her book which inspired me to study people’s different attitudes towards languages,” he conceded.
He said Dr Mansoor’s survey confirmed that English was viewed by all stakeholders as valuable for higher education. He added that her survey also found that the English language was no longer seen to be associated with colonialism in Pakistan. He stressed that students belonging to all social classes should be enabled to learn the English language. He argued that there should be greater emphasis on multilingualism.
The acting provost of the Aga Khan University, Dr David Taylor; Dr Ryhana Raheem, professor at the department of language studies, Open University, Sri Lanka; and the managing director of Oxford University Press, Ameena Saiyid OBE, also spoke. Dr Mansoor delivered an emotional vote of thanks.
