THIS is apropos Zubeida Mustafa’s article ‘Creeping changes’ (June 23). The writer has advocated a mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB & MLE) in which the child’s education in the early years will be imparted in his mother tongue and then Urdu and English will be introduced at a later stage. I feel this approach is going to add to the mess-up that the nation is already in.

The privileged class will earn distinction owing to their proficiency in English and the underdog will keep on suffering under this language rigmarole. Moreover, only one language is not spoken in every province and hence the ideal of providing education in child’s mother tongue would remain unachievable.

The decision to teach Sindhi in the schools of Sindh continues to be an enigma as it is not the mother tongue of many children.

The only way to get out of this language rigmarole is to teach English to all children alongside Urdu from the very beginning to enable the underprivileged children to compete with the children of the upper class. Let not English be the exclusive domain of the rich.

Air Commodore (r) Khayyam Durrani

Karachi

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2017