English Medium

How will English affect your future?

- Kalpana M Naghnoor

There is no nation in the world, like India, which is inherently a non-English-speaking country, yet a vast majority of us communicate in English. While some struggle with it, others are eloquent like Mr. Shashi Tharoor. Recently Indian pop music too enjoys inclusion of snappy rhyming words from English paired with Indian ones, and punch phrases that bring the rhythm to life, the television series Bandish Bandits is a classic example.

These songs make me wonder where the public is with the language. Travelling through Tamil Nadu or even watching Tamil movies, it’s hard not to notice that sentences and dialogues are liberally speckled with English. Tamil is one of the oldest languages in the world yet English idioms like ‘cut and dried’ have commonly mutated to ‘cut and right’, of course with an altered inference. Clearly Indians like English.

NEP and Actuality

These are just nuances, but the bigger picture is the new National Education Policy. The schools were closed for the most of 2020 due to the pandemic and then online classes began. Connectivity and affordability came into play. New mobiles need to be purchased for 4G compatibility, against an economic downturn. The dilemmas of the lower income group grew as they grappled with changing times. They are ambitious to hear their children speak English fluently, but the pandemic, quandary in upgrading the mobile or the inability, burdened already by hefty tuition fee in private schools, it’s hard for that ambition to fructify. Their perception is that English will enable them with better job opportunities, which is a fact.

Goals of an Educational Program