The Hindu : `Popularise mother tongue-based early education'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 09, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai

`Popularise mother tongue-based early education'

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI June 8. Tamil scholars, including those involved in propagating globally the new concept of `scientific Tamil', highlighted here today the need for dispelling wrong notions, especially among parents, of English language-based early education.

The scholars and educational administrators, addressing a meet on `scientific Tamil', said contrary to the public perception, English-medium education need not be an assurance to prosperity or lucrative jobs in the West. Rather, Indians, and generally, Asians had a better ability to master basic concepts in any subject. This helped them excel in jobs in the West or gain international recognition. Subject experts and language teachers had a duty to drill this idea among the people so that mother tongue-based early education was popularised. It was sad that people shunned Tamil medium in Tamil Nadu, they said.

A noted linguist and former Vice-Chancellor, S. Agathialingam, the Tamil Development and Culture secretary, P.A Ramaiah, and the Director of Tamil Virtual University, M. Ponnavaikko, said Tamil should be touted not merely as an ancient and classical language but as an evergreen language, versatile enough to adapt to the growing and changing needs of science and technology education. Tamil was well suited for use in computing and the Internet. Already, Tamil had a significant presence on the Internet among Indian languages, but this too was the result of experts from outside India.

The Minister for Information Technology, Electricity and Law, D. Jayakumar, said the State Government was keen on promoting `Scientific Tamil' — a fourth dimension of Tamil in addition to use in prose, poetry and drama — so that globally people realised the richness, pre-eminence and versatility of the language. Tamil scholars should stop the present trend of cultural degradation of the language, most prominently in Tamil cinema and television. "There was a time, people like MGR popularised a moral lifestyle for youngsters. Today, songs are only vulgar and demeaning for women," he said.

At the meeting which was organised by the All-India Scientific Tamil Forum, along with the Anna University and the Tamil Virtual University, three publications of the Forum were released: `Growing Tamil', `Versatile Tamil in different spheres', `Internet Tamil'. These publications contained articles on the modern applications of Tamil in different modern areas, including technology and engineering education.

Among those who spoke were the Forum's secretary, Rama Sundaram, the Director of the International Institute of Tamil Studies, S. Krishnamoorthy, the member-secretary of the TN State Council for Higher Education, S. Muthukumaran, the Tamil University's Vice-Chancellor, E. Sundaramoorthy, and the Director of Tamil Development, M. Rajendran.

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