Using Tamil to explain English-medium syllabus subjects has created a generation of schoolchildren with Specific Learning Disability

The board exams have come and gone, taking with them, the brief thundershower of praise and attention directed towards schools that have produced a ‘100 per cent pass’ class of senior-level students year after year.

Little is known about the under-performing children who have had to drop out or change schools because their academic weakness could hurt the glowing result rate of the institution.

A policy of not failing any child until Standard 8 means that the number of these square pegs being stuffed into round holes in the name of enrolment is growing in Indian private and government-run schools. India is one of the 164 signatories of the Dakar Framework of Education for All, promulgated by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 2000. A monitoring report in April lauded the country for progress towards the goal of 80% pre-primary school enrolment in 2015.

In Tamil Nadu, there is an obvious shift towards English-medium schooling, but more needs to be done regarding the tutorial and curricular infrastructure to accommodate slow learners.

Sticking to the syllabus has created a generation of students who are able to copy out words, but lack skills in comprehension, reading and comprehensive writing in English or Tamil.

According to the Annual Status of Education Report 2014, issued by the non-governmental organisation Pratham, only 63.6 per cent of Standard 8 students in the State’s rural schools knew the meaning of the English words in a sample text.

“Teachers don’t know how to teach English using English language, because they themselves may have studied in Tamil-medium schools. Most teachers, even in some of the bigger educational institutions in cities, are teaching English by translating concepts into Tamil, because they want the child to understand, not to learn a new language,” says Dr. S. Prabakar Immanuel, director, Holy Cross Service Society (HCSS).

Making misfits fit

Over the past two decades, the Tiruchi-based non-governmental organisation involved in special needs education and advocacy, has been trying to limit the damage of this faulty methodology by offering assessment tests and remedial classes to thousands of children who have been labelled as misfits in the mainstream school system.

“Some 98% of children get used to Tamil up to 3 years of age, at home. When a child gets admitted in English-medium lower kindergarten (LKG), he or she has nearly one year level in English language, or rather, knowing the sound of the language. So the child already has a two-year delay to start with,” says Dr. Immanuel.

“Up to one year, children all over the world have similar language skills – that is they can make out only sounds. After this, due to some internal development, one language skill overtakes the others. Nobody has found the reason,” he adds.

The left hemisphere of the brain controls our ability to process language, which in turn affects our understanding of other subjects like arithmetic. The confusion over the medium of instruction is making more children develop Specific Language Disability (SLD), such as an inability to process language (dyslexia), to calculate (dyscalculia) and so on.

“Dyslexia as understood in the Western context has a neurological basis, because English is the first and only language for most children in those countries. In India, however, our multilingual culture creates a situation where the child learns in English, and understands it in his or her mother tongue,” says Dr. Immanuel.

English vs. Tamil

Nearly every inch of Dr. Immanuel’s office in Puthur is filled with stacks of files, containing assessment reports of children from across the State. “Those files there prove that nearly 1,500 Standard 5 students in Ariyalur district don’t have the skills of even a Standard 1 student,” says Dr. Immanuel, pointing out to plastic bags filled with paperwork.

HCSS sees only two students per day in a 2-3 hour process using the Wechsler tests that assess 12 domains of the brain, and a personalised remedial programme can take up to two years to show any result.

“It depends completely on the child, and the support he or she gets at home. Many parents would prefer to send their children for extra tuitions with the aim of making them pass exams, rather than look at the true picture,” says Dr. Immanuel.

The prestige associated with English-medium education has percolated down to lower-income families too, as it is often seen as a key to good job prospects in adulthood.

“Parents who cannot afford the fees take out hefty loans because they believe that English will save their child. Seeing this demand, even the government schools are shifting over to English-medium, at the cost of Tamil-medium education,” says Dr. Immanuel.

What is IQ?

Intelligence is not measured through the brain, but through the activity of the brain, which is language. “Intelligence quotient (IQ) is misunderstood in India, because it is not a number, but a combination of several measurements of activities of the brain,” says Dr. Immanuel. “Ideally, we must test every child in the first grade, to prevent learning problems in the next levels.”

For now, the slow learner is usually spotted by an alert physician or a parent. “Early intervention can turn a potential slow learner into a gifted child,” says Dr. Immanuel. In extreme situations, slow learners often lean towards disruptive behaviour.

Ms. Kayalvizhi, who has assessed around 4,500 children since she joined HCSS in 1992, and is also a qualified special educator, says that the toughest part of the process is getting parents to accept the situation.

“We never tell the parents that there is a problem with the child. Parents themselves realise it when they compare the development markers of their other children,” she says.

Says the mother of a third-grade student at the HCSS remedial school, “I had come here to admit my younger son, who has Down syndrome. My elder son was becoming very naughty and uncontrollable in the English-medium school that he was attending near our home. When an assessment by Ms. Kayalvizhi indicated that he had a learning problem, we shifted him to Tamil-medium, and started remedial classes here. Now there’s a big improvement in his behaviour, and also in his academic performance.”

Yet another mother talks proudly of how early intervention has helped her son to reach the third year as a student of Dentistry, and also excel as a gymnast and saxophone player. Her younger son is in Standard 10. Both of them attended weekend remedial classes at HCSS. “More than the children, we as parents learned how to change our attitude towards success in school. We decided to keep our sons in the same private school, but ensured that the remedial classes went hand-in-hand with the regular education,” she says.

The Holy Cross Service Society has a simple screening form for parents and educators that can be downloaded from its website www.hcsstrichy.com