SCHOOLING IN A 'FOREIGN' LANGUAGE

Kerala designed a series of textbooks and learning materials exclusively for the Muthuvans, a tribal community residing deep in the forests of the Western Ghats, who don't speak Malayalam and don't have a script.

- Atul Krishna

As part of a workshop, education officials from Samagra Shiksha Kerala (SSK) gave students in Idukki district sheets of paper to draw small circles on. When a Class 1 student attempted this, his circle was so clumsy it had spilled out of the sheet.

The student belonged to the Muthuvan community, an isolated tribal community residing deep in the forests of the Western Ghats. Here, they only speak the Muthuvan language, unintelligible to the rest of Kerala. This language has no script.

This is part of the reason why the student could not draw the circle unused to writing, he lacked the motor skills and coordination required. Facing another major barrier, Muthuvan children rarely finish school.

All classes in the lower primary school at Edamalakudy, set up for Muthuvan children, are taught in a foreign tongue - Malayalam.

"A student coming to school will speak Muthuvan only. A small kid coming to Class I will feel lost because the classes are taught in Malayalam. That is where the learning gap starts," said CA Shameer, a school teacher at the Government Tribal Lower Primary School at Edamalakudy.

The Right to Education Act (RTE) and more recently, the National Education Policy (NEP), mandate teaching in the mother tongue in the lower classes. In most cases, this has meant schooling in the dominant language of the state Malayalam in Kerala. But given India's great diversity, this approach often excludes hundreds of small communities that don't speak the state's main language. This historical exclusion also means there are few - if any-- teachers who speak their languages or can teach in them.

In 2018, textbooks in the Muthuvan language written in Malayalam script were produced and distributed at the Edamalakudy school. However, officials soon discovered the language in the textbook was different from what the Muthuvan community in Edamalakudy spoke and the project was abandoned.