The other day I had been to attend a talk-cum-discussion on ways of bringing about changes in English Language Teaching(ELT) in God’s Own Country, Kerala by several experts in ELT. The college in which the event was organized had nearly four thousand girls on the rolls. While most of the talk centred around peripheral aspects of language instruction, none of the participants made any significant reference to the very venue and the need for giving instruction to girls in particular.
Later that day during lunch-break, I had a very casual chat with a participant. The question he asked me was a real eye opener. He asked : “Don’t you think that if we gave all these four thousand girls in the college a through grounding in the English Language, we would be giving them the language of empowerment? Won’t we be helping four thousand families… for after all these girls will be getting married soon and will be raising children!” Those words kept ringing in my ears for days.
During the following days I was particularly reminded of the high brow sessions on Higher Education organized by the Kerala State Higher Education Council which I had the opportunity to attend. Most of the speeches for that seminar, centered around the Professional Courses in the country and not on courses on Arts and Science where the dregs, the hopelessly incompetent segment of the student community come to study.
Don’t you think that it is high time we did something significant to raise the standard of instruction in the Arts and Science colleges? How conveniently we forget the fact that these unfortunate students who form a significant size of the student population, will be the future citizens of the country who is likely to take the country into the 2020 dream, which the former President of India once spoke about!
Any comments dear reader?
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