KONKANI SHOULD BE THE PRIMARY SCHOOL MEDIUM by Fr. Mousinho de Ataide

Primary education ought to be in the mother tongue. This is a proven principle of pedagogical science; about it there is no dispute. Konkani is the mother tongue of Goa. This is also admitted by all. It is based on this that Konkani was made the official language of Goa and included in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution, and Goa was raised to the level of a state.

Therefore, primary education in Goa has to be in Konkani. It is as simple as 1 + 1 = 2.

However, ignorance, prejudices and other extraneous factors have clouded the judgement of many Goans who, while admitting the validity of the above two premises, deny the resulting conclusion. This is seen in the mushrooming private English primary schools, their growing numbers of students, and the depleting number for Konkani.

The attitude of the government does not help either. If Konkani is the official language, then the administration has to be in Konkani. But our governments have been largely indifferent. If the administration is to be conducted in Konkani, there should be personnel conversant with the language, spoken and written. This means those in service must be trained, and those to come in future should be equipped with the knowledge of Konkani acquired as a medium of instruction, at least at the primary level. The government should go all out to have primary schools only in Konkani, and promote Konkani in private primary schools.

But if one goes by the statistics for 2007-08, against 893 government Marathi medium primary schools with 32,939 students, there were only 68 government Konkani medium primary schools with 1,960 students!

Among private primary schools, Konkani as a medium of instruction fares better than Marathi and even English. While there are 54 schools in Marathi (with 7,534 students) and 119 in English (with 20,888 students), there are 137 in Konkani (with 27,750 students). But this is not a matter of rejoicing. The trend in terms of students is in favour of English, and against both Konkani and Marathi.

Of the Konkani medium primary schools, 126 are of the Archdiocesan Board of Education. This is due to the wise and bold decision taken by then Archbishop Raul Gonsalves in 1990 after wide consultation, open debates and deep studies by experts who took all issues, including practical ones, into consideration. He stood by this decision with rock-like determination despite protests and attempts to sabotage it even from within.

It is true that the then Archbishop’s decision was occasioned by the policy framed by the then government to give grants to primary schools in regional language medium. This came after the High Court ordered that private primary teachers should be paid on par with teachers in government primary schools. But Archbishop Raul said that his decision would stand, even if the government at any time chose to extend grants to private primary schools in English. I salute him for this.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be that much commitment now. If the Archdiocesan Board of Education opens English sections in its primary schools and/or the government gives grants to private English primary schools, it will sound a death knell for Konkani as a medium of primary education. May God avert it!

The Konkani Bhasha Mandal (KBM) runs a Konkani pre-primary and primary school in Margao since 1979. It is an excellent school. Its statistics, however, are falling. From 157 students in 2005-06, 141 (06-07), 131 (07-08), 110 (08-09), the number in 2009-10 has dipped to 85, of whom 62 are ethnic Goans and 23 non-Goans; 62 are Hindus, 14 Catholics and 9 Muslims. The need of the hour is to arrest this downhill graph. The KBM’s high-profile programmes have no meaning if it cannot keep alive its one primary school.

One excuse for parents not to send their children to Konkani primary schools, where education is free and lots of facilities are offered, and instead send them to English primary schools where they have to pay heavily, is the alleged difficulty to switch over to English at the secondary level. This is only an excuse. Goa has had a long history of switchovers.

During the Portuguese era, Christians did primary education in Portuguese and switched over to English in Std V. Hindus did primary studies in Marathi, switched over to Portuguese and then to English. Neither Christians nor Hindus suffered in the switch-over: both acquired proficiency in English after the switch-over.

Parents’ apprehensions in this regard are without any basis. Rather, they seem hangovers from colonial times – when Christians considered Konkani as a language of servants, and Hindus deemed it a dialect of Marathi – so for both it was not fit to be a medium of education.

But from Liberation till today, Konkani’s fortunes have changed for the better. Now, no one in his senses calls it a dialect of Marathi. In the Church, Konkani is the language of services, and is bound to stay. It has entered talukas that were earlier considered citadels of Marathi. Literature of high value in Konkani, meriting translation into foreign languages, and tools of study like text books, grammars, dictionaries, vocabularies, have been brought out. Konkani as an optional third language in high schools and higher secondaries surpasses all other languages. The same case is at graduate and post-graduate levels. We have PhDs in Konkani.

So I find no reason why Konkani cannot be an efficient medium of primary education and why parents, if they have a spark of love for Indian culture, for the Konkani language, for Goa’s identity, and for the welfare of their own children, should not send their wards to Konkani primary schools. I would invite parents to reflect for a moment and search for any real harm that could be caused to their children if they send them to Konkani primary schools.

On the contrary, if they are sincere, they will realise the irreparable harm they are causing to Goa, to Konkani and to their own children by educating them at the primary level in English. Instead, they should educate them in Konkani. But for this to happen, the example should come from the elites in both communities, who should make a conscious effort to converse in Konkani and to educate their wards in Konkani primary schools.

As a tailpiece, I would like to refer to the results of Goan students in the ‘National Talent Search – 2009’ conducted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). These exams aim to spot and nurture (through scholarships up to the PhD level) the best talent. The exams are for Std VIII students and the syllabus is the same as for the class. The test, however, is not mainly of memory but of thinking power, performing ability and grasping capacity. The exams are in English.

The statistics are revealing. Among the 25 students successful at the state level (Goa’s quota is 25 students) only two spoke English at home, 22 spoke Konkani and one was ethnically a non-Goan. The next step is the written exam at the national level. Only seven passed this exam. Of these seven, not even one spoke English at home; six were Goans and spoke Konkani at home and one was non-Goan. The final step is the national oral exam: five Goans and one non-Goan made it through. None of them were English-speaking. Of the five Goans, two had done primary school in Konkani, two in Marathi and two in English!

The statistics bust the myth that for academic excellence, speaking English at home and doing primary school in English are required. The community which makes it a point to speak English at home and insists on sending its children to English primary schools was nowhere in sight in these exams, where the actual intellectual prowess of students is tested.