The flawed third-language push

Evidence-Based Policymaking
• Policymaking should rely on data, research, and statistical analysis to address real needs and maximize effectiveness.
• The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020’s push for a third language in schools fails to meet this standard.

Surveys on Third Language Teaching
• The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and National Achievement Survey (NAS) highlight India’s struggle in teaching subjects effectively.
• NAS 2017 found that only 48% of Class 8 students could read a simple paragraph in their regional language or Hindi, and 47% could write an essay or letter.
• ASER 2018 found that 27% of Class 8 students couldn’t read even a Class 2-level text properly in their regional language or Hindi.

Language Proficiency
• The 2011 Census states that 43.63% of Indians speak Hindi, but this figure is inflated by including 53 other languages as “dialects” of Hindi.
• Many of India’s school students are struggling with even their mother tongue and barely managing English.

Recommendations
• Allocating resources towards strengthening core subjects like math and science, and emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be wiser.
• China is already piloting AI in 184 schools, including for six-year-olds.

Research Findings
• The Cambridge Handbook of Third Language Acquisition highlights that learning a third language increases cognitive load, leading to mental fatigue and diminished learning efficiency.
• Cross-linguistic interference can cause pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary mix-ups.
• Language similarity impacts learning ease, with Marathi, Punjabi, and Odia speakers experiencing facilitative transfer when learning Hindi as L3, while Tamil, Santali, and Mizo speakers face non-facilitative transfer, making L3 acquisition harder and creating an asymmetric learning burden.

Implementation Challenges and the Need for a New Policy

Challenges in Implementing Language Education
• Funding for teaching more than two languages in public schools is not cost-effective due to significant investments in teacher recruitment, training, textbooks, and technology.
• The National Education Policy (NEP 2020) claims no language will be forced on States, but this is illusory due to varied student preferences.
• The policy ignores the potential of AI-powered translation tools, which can instantly translate text, images, and audio across languages, reducing the necessity for multilingual education.

The Need for a Flexible Approach
• The policy fails to acknowledge the crucial role of English education in higher education, science and technology, and global job markets.
• The policy treats languages as cultural pursuits, ignoring their practical value in the job market.
• The policy reveals its ideological bias by dedicating more discussion to Sanskrit, a language with little practical use and limited career opportunities.

Lessons from Singapore
• Singapore adopted a bilingual education system, with students learning English as their first language and their mother tongue (Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil) as the second.
• This policy fostered social cohesion, prevented ethnic tensions, and ensured cultural preservation.
• English also drove Singapore’s economic rise, transforming it into a global hub for multinational corporations, finance, and innovation.

The Importance of Hindi as a Unifier
• The 2011 Census states that 43.63% of Indians speak Hindi, but this figure is inflated by including 53 other languages as “dialects” of Hindi.
• The push for Hindi as a national lingua franca is misguided as only 25% of Indians speak Hindi and 95% of Indians remain within their home States and use only their languages.

The Importance of Evidence over Ideology
• The mandatory three-language policy is a textbook example of ideology over evidence.
• Non-Hindi speaking southern States, particularly Tamil Nadu, outperform the Hindi heartland economically due to their greater embrace of English.
• India should adopt a pragmatic two-language policy, emphasizing English for global competitiveness and regional languages for cultural preservation.