Mother Tongue-based Literacy Programmes: Case Studies of Good ...

fully. The constitutional commitment is only to create the scope, but it does not make it mandatory forthe state education system to make necessary arrangements. The issue has captured the attention ofsome of the state governments, which have begun to experiment with bilingual education programmesin languages other than the official state languages. Such efforts are far too few, however, to reach thevastly diverse minority linguistic groups whose number runs to more than a thousand. Consequently,large numbers of children belonging to linguistic minority groups are compelled to receive educationthrough a language different from their mother tongue. Further, quite often even facilities for learningtheir mother tongue are absent for most of these ethno-linguistic groups because they do not find aplace in the 3-language formula adopted as the national policy for language learning in schools.In terms of the official language policy, China presents a stark contrast to the Indian setting, though bothhave a huge population of more than one billion. The Chinese Constitution allows all nationalities thefreedom to use and develop their languages, including the freedom to use the nationality languagesas media of instruction where conditions permit. However, in many places, and for various reasons, themultilingual education implied in the Constitution has not been implemented. Though with demandfor mother tongue-based instruction rising, China too has come forward with bilingual programmes.Having adopted a mono-language policy across the whole country for a long period of time, thesituation poses serious challenges for policy makers in the country. The country has more than 200living languages spoken altogether by about 4 percent of the population; Chinese is the mother tongueof the remaining 96 percent. As a result, education is transacted across the country in an essentiallymono-lingual environment.The Constitution of Nepal (1990) provides the right for every group of people to promote and protecttheir own language and scripts and mother tongue education. Successive education plans have alsoemphasized mother tongue education. Keeping these policy commitments in view, education materialsfor primary education have been developed in recent years in seven minority languages, namely Newari,Maithali, Tharu, Abhadhi, Limbu, Tamang, and Bhojpuri under the Basic and Primary Education Project(BPEP) I and II from1991 to 2001. Studies have noticed positive changes among community members’attitude towards education of their children. Also they have been taking interest in literacy classesthrough non-formal education organized by local governmental and non-governmental agencies. Animportant aspect of this development is that most of the children and adults who are benefiting fromthe provision of mother tongue-based education belong to highly deprived ethno-linguistic groups.The Constitution of Thailand states with regard to the rights of traditional communities and theircultures as:“Persons so assembling as to be a traditional community shall havthe right to conserve orrestore their customs, local knowledge, arts or good culture of their community and of thenation and participate in the management, maintenance, preservation and exploitation ofnatural resources and the environment in a balanced fashion and persistently as providedby law.”(Government Gazette, 1997)[9 ]