What are the advantages and disadvantages of having one's mother tongue as the medium of instruction during primary education in India?

Its often seen that those who had study in english medium they dnt ...

Advantages of a Mother tongue based education: Expand the reach of education. Many rural kids would have their parents and relatives with no knowledge of English. Forcing an English medium education can put them at a significant disadvantage. Improved learning outcomes during primary school. A few researchers have shown that having a mother tongue education enable the kids to easily grasp the course content as they are used to the vocabulary. http://www.rti.org/brochures/eddata_ii_mother_tongue_instruction.pdf Protecting and preserving local languages. Disadvantages of a mother tongue based education: Painful shift in higher education: The students will have a painful shift at highschool or college when they are required to learn engineering, medical or accounting concepts in English. Couple of my roomates at college had Tamil based education and had to suffer a lot during the first two years at college. Although they were very smart, they had to keep translating all the concepts from Tamil to English. Connecting with the rest of the world: Mother tongue based education promotes the mother tongue at the cost of the bridge languages (in India it is Hindi and English) that would enable the students to connect with the rest of the world. If the school doesn't expose them to English, they will find it very hard in mastering the language (as their parents and surroundings don't). Getting greater opportunities. In the highly fluid world we are in, people need to be conversant with English. The Europeans and Japanese are at a disadvantage in this aspect. Ideally, we should have a blend of English and mother tongue, where the parents teach the kids in mother tongue and schools teach in English with some sort of a bridge facilitated by both of them.

The advantage of studying in the mother tongue is that the student can focus on studying geography, history, mathematics and biology instead of struggling to decipher a foreign language.

The cognitive ability to learn a new language is higher in formative years of a person. Most polyglots are people who had been influenced by multiple language at a young age. If one's entire childhood, one is exposed to a single language, it creates a bad environment to learn new language. I have experienced 3 languages from a young age, Malayalam (my mother tongue), Hindi and Marathi; each of which I can speak and understand with considerable proficiency. [http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/earlychild.html]

Because at primary age it is easy to learn without overburden due to different language as a medium for study. But as higher education is not available in mother tongue so there comes a barrier which one has to cross while going from primary to higher education. For example I remember all planets name in ascending order with their distance to sun in my mother tongue. But this was never taught to me in higher education and thus it gave me problem while solving a simple question when it was in English language.

Recent research has shown that students who are taught in the same language spoken at home and the community for the first 8 years of their lives, develop better language abilities in other languages and even do better in other areas of study, leading some scientists to hypothesise that it might have to do with overall brain development. Further advantages include: Children are more likely to enroll and succeed in school: If the language of instruction is the same as the child's mother tongue, there is a better chance for the child to 'fit in' and continue with education. (Kosonen, K. (2005). Education in local languages: Policy and practice in Southeast Asia http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001402/140280e.pdf) Parents are more likely to participate in their children’s learning: Parents will feel they can actually make a difference in their child's education if they are freely able to communicate this teachers and be able to help at home. (Benson, C. (2002). Real and potential benefits of bilingual progammes in developing countries. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 5 (6), 303-317.) Children tend to develop better thinking skills: Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. King, K., & Mackey, A. (2007). The bilingual edge: Why, when, and how to teach your child a second language. New York: Collins Language affects ThoughtApart from the above, there are important cultural and linguistic reason's why regardless of how good one knows a second language, education in ones mother tongue can significantly improve the mental ability of students. Let me start a brief introduction to the Sapir-Whorf Principle here and I sincerely urge Quorans to read about this further (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity). The Sapir-Whorf principle holds that an individual's language has a profound impact on his cognitive processes. Basically, not only does thought affect language, but language affects thought. If our children are not educated in their mother tongue, thousands of years of thought processes might end abruptly. There are certain concepts, cultural constructs and even philosophical beliefs that can only be expressed in a child's mother tongue. How do you expect to explain the meaning of जूठा in English? If a child is familiar with the word from childhood, he will be familiar with the concept. His language skills would affect his thoughts, perceptions and actions. When I was growing up, I hardly ever heard the word आम. I only heard दशहरी, चौसा, लंगड़ा, हेमसागर, मिश्री, चोखिया, सरौली, फाज़ली, ग़ुलाब-खास, केसरिया, or किशनभोग. The language of the Sami people who live in the the arctic regions of Scandinavia, have over 300 words for 'snow'. Is it not likely that culture is deeply affected by language? In conclusion, if you want your children to think Indian and to grow in their identity, you must educate then in their mother tongue.

A student primary focus would be to grasp the concepts rather on the translation. It is where he builds his own ideas, there is high probability that students may tend to evade translations, which is necessary to understand, and mug up. This will have irreversible repercussions, in their later part of education. Communicating in any language, one needs his own ideas to convey his point, and medium is to help the other understand. If one does not have a point to convey, an idea, there is no point in learning a official language or any other.

First I would like to tell that I am kind of psychologist by nature, and very minutely obverse the mind how it behaves, looking to myself, people around, and world level perspective regarding any subject, and come to conclude the bigger picture. So why I am telling you this is because, the opinions expressed below is purely my thoughts still to be examined and verified by reliable methods. So below is my very own observation. So first, Advantages of mother tongue as the medium of education: 1. I think education in mother tongue instantly, or even without noticing any difficulty, understood and bring about the thought process, which develops the mind through understanding of concepts behind what is being taught. 2. It is easy to memorize information in the language we are naturalized by our surroundings, and I believe it remains in our mind for a long time, and develops the greater pattern of understanding of information so gathered, and brings about the personal and individual's thinking about the subjects, rather than just believing and holding whatever is being taught and memorized, as perfect, which is what exactly happen in education in unknown, unfamiliar language. It is actually absurd to get education in unknown language. To be frank, it is actually WTF. 3. I think it is actually more beneficial to get informed about science and scientific theories in our own mother tongue, in which case people are more likely to be scientifically, and most importantly for society, logically develop the individual, which eventually result in more scietific progress as well as betterment of society, unlike what is going on today, like corruption in educated class, immorality, asoacial behavior i.e. carelessness towards society. I think education in unknown and unfamiliar language creates enslaved mentality. 4. It can help in preservation of our own mother tongue, and can develop the more vocabulary and terminology to denote many many things that the language do not have any word for. Terminological advancement of a language can enhance the thinking ability of the people, and it is possible that these terminology will be used by general populace in the long run, which I think will increase the quality of thinking of the people, even if they are not very educated. 5. It looks more dignified, self-respecting, intelligent and justified to have instruction or education in our own mother tongue, which is quite opposite if we another language as medium of instruction. It is undignified, self-disrespecting, foolish, and unjustified, not only for us, but also for our mother tongue. Disadvantage of using mother tongue as medium of instructions: Actually there is no disadvantage of using mother tongue as medium of instruction or education. Whatever disadvantage we see or think is our own construct because of our own intellectual shortcomings. For Example, The thinking that we need an English for higher education is because we give higher education in English. That is our own construct because we failed to develop terminology and vocabulary of our own mother tongue, which can suit our mother tongue, because of which we fail to provide higher education in our mother tongue. I don't say do not learn English, and not from very beginning, but I would say to learn English for the sake of learning English only, not for learning history, geography, science, morals etc. Know the English words and its meaning first, then know the grammar, and then go on to learn the whole sentence and paragraphs, and then speak English. It should not be like learn sentences first, then learn grammar, and then meaning of the words. It destroy the brain's capacity. I mean teach the language, so that it will be more meaningful and easy, without destroying intelligence. I would also like to say that why only learn English, why not Chinese, why not Japanese, and why not Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, and why not those languages of India which are on the brink of extinction. There are many languages in India, even in your state, which are not used as medium of instruction, which have few speakers left, and will not survive until the end of this century, and any of Indian languages will not survive 200 years from now, if the illussion of English being high level language continue. I think if we want to preserve the diversity and culture of India, first we need to respect other languages of India, and try to preserve each and every language of India.

i also think ,mother tongue at an early age is important. It brings about easy reflection of what is being taught in class since it is within the learners context and vocabulary.