All the schools in the area normally use Odia as the medium of language. This is not our language, why should we learn in Odia? At home we speak Ho, how can our children understand what the teachers say?” the villagers from Kaptipada block of Mayurbhanj district, in Odisha, tell me. “This is how it used to be. Now, finally, our children like to go to school, because of the Siksha Sathi”. Siksha Sathi (in Odia, the official language of the state of Odisha, Siksha means ‘education’ and Sathi means ‘friend’) are community volunteers paid a nominal amount as honorarium who speak the local tribal language and work as language teachers.
The ‘Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009’ (RTE Act) is a landmark legislation that ensures quality education for all children in the age group of 6-14 years. The right to education is enshrined also in the Indian Constitution, in Article 29: “Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same.” The special attention to minorities, including tribals, is highlighted once more in Article 30: “All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.”
However, in many cases, this remains only on paper. It is not unusual to see children roaming around during school times; in one of my visits to a project area, I bumped into Juria (8 years), Pandityu (6 years) and Lambatyu (5 years). Instead of being in school and studying, they go every day to the jungle to collect firewood, guard cattle, or take care of their siblings. The three boys are from the Kolh tribal village Mahulpankha, 30 km away from Kaptipada block headquarter. They are part of a group of eight brothers and sisters: none of them has ever gone to school. Juria tells me he knows he is registered in school, but he doesn’t know in which class. “I don’t go to school,” he explains, “because the teachers speak Odia, and I don’t understand what they say”. He rather spends his time helping his parents, instead of learning how to read and write and getting an education.
Like him, many other children in the area are deprived – because of the language barrier – of a proper education, with nobody paying attention to or taking responsibility for this issue. Even though the right to education is specifically mentioned in the Constitution, between 2014 and 2015, India reported 17.3 million children being out of school, clearly demonstrating the failure of the Right to Education Act.
Adivasi are often culturally alienated as they have their own languages, traditions, rituals, ways of living, holidays, history etc. On one side, Adivasi’s cultural heritage and tribal customs face the dangers of extinction, feared by many traditional communities in India. On the other, these communities remain often excluded from opportunities for development and socio-economic advancement, as they cannot compete with the mainstream language. Children from the Kolh community face the burden of the language barrier in Anganwadi (ICDS) centres and primary schools. Many young and enthusiastic children are quitting school already at an early age, as they are not able to follow the lessons given in, for them, a ‘foreign’ language. The language spoken by the Kohl tribe (called ‘Ho’) is unique and different from the mainstream and official languages of the state. Ho is one among other nine tribal languages in Odisha that have been recognized by the State Government is a medium of instruction. Mother tongue based teaching is imperative as it acts as a connector between a child’s mother tongue and the regional language, as well as any further one. However, implementation is a big challenge due to the lack of any system or procedure in place to deliver Multi-Lingual Education at school.
A teacher from Chhatrambu Primary school, in the area, shares with me how indifferent the school administration is towards these tribal children and how many talented pupils fail to get a proper education. “I do not speak Ho so I am not able to teach these children, as hard as I try,” he confesses to me, very frustrated. “Even the most motivated kids, who try hard to overcome these difficulties, end up being discouraged by the constant inability to understand the content of the lessons. In most cases, they simply stop coming to school”. His frustration is corroborated by numbers: the dropout rate for Scheduled Tribes children in the district is 62.9%, compared to the national dropout of which is 48.8%.
Things started to change, for some of the schools, when our partner Sikshasandhan (in Odia this means ‘In Search of Education’), started advocating for mother tongue based teaching, believing that this helps the child to learn all other languages. As a result of their intense advocacy, the District Collector intervened and replicated the two-pronged approach that was developed by the NGO: on one side offering a total mother tongue based interaction by the language teachers appointed by Sikshasandhan, and on the other side the capacity building of government school teachers on teaching children on multi-grade and multi-lingual situations. This resulted in the appointment of Siksha Sathi in 26 tribal dominated Gram Panchayat’s (GPs) of the District.
In addition, in 2014 the government of Odisha announced the appointment of 5000 language teachers in other schools where the tribal population is predominant. These young educated volunteers from the Kolh tribe mobilise families and encourage the children to go to school. They work with parents, to convince them of the importance of the education for their children – in a context where normally families do not give much priority to education, in favour of the children helping at home. At the same time, the Siksha Sathi sit with the children of class 1 and 2 (5 and 6 years) during school hours, and help them to understand what the teachers says. Once the children start interacting on their own in Odia, it is easier for them to continue independently in higher classes. The approach have been successful, and teachers from the local government primary school told me: “After the appointment of the Siksha Sathi, students’ attendance has gone up a lot in comparison to the previous months”.
Saheb, one of the language teachers at the Kalamagadia Panchayat school in the area, tells me how he could identify with the struggles faced by tribal students as he watched his own siblings suffer from the same experience. In his school, he witnesses every day the difficulties that students face in an educational system that is not interested in meeting their needs He believes that education is a path towards a better future and a window to see the world. ”Even a little,” he says, “such as appointing language teachers to support both teachers and students can make a big difference”. I hope that Juria, Pandityu and Lambatyu’s school will soon appoint Siksha Sathi too, and next time I will visit them, I will find them in their classroom and not alongside the road.
