L28: Medium of Instructions

Good morning, everyone! Come in and take your seats. I hope you brought your personal essays on Goan identity — if you are comfortable sharing, we will hear one or two of them at the end. They will connect beautifully with everything we discuss today. Quick recap. In Lecture 27, we explored the four dimensions of Goan identity: historical, cultural, communal, and diasporic. We talked about susegad, the festival culture, the braided heritage, and the contemporary pressures of tourism and migration. Today — Lecture 28 — we come down from the philosophical to the very practical. The medium of instruction in Goa's schools. This is where the language debates we have been having in the abstract hit the reality of classrooms, teachers, children, and families. [0–10 minutes: Introduction] Let me give you the core question right at the start. When a child in Goa sits down in school, what language should the teacher use to teach mathematics? To teach science? To teach history? Should it be Konkani? Marathi? English? Or some combination? This question might sound technical and administrative. In Goa, it has been one of the most politically explosive questions of the last fifty years. It has caused agitations, strikes, hunger fasts, court cases, changes of government, and intense family-level debates about children's futures. Why? Because education is the mechanism through which culture is transmitted. The language in which a child learns to think is the language in which they will be most fully themselves. And in Goa — where the question of which language is 'ours' has been contested since 1961 — the question of which language children are taught in is nothing less than a question about who those children will be. [10–40 minutes: Core Content] Let me trace the history of the medium of instruction issue from liberation to the present. Before liberation — under Portuguese rule — the medium of instruction in Goa's schools was Portuguese. This was universally applied. Whether you were a Hindu child in Ponda or a Catholic child in Margao, you were taught in Portuguese. This had a paradoxical effect: it created a shared educational experience across religious communities — everyone who went to school learned Portuguese — but it also meant that Portuguese was the language of literacy and advancement while Konkani and Marathi remained languages of home and folk culture. After liberation in 1961, Portuguese was removed from schools almost immediately. But what to replace it with? The initial solution — partly by default — was to use the regional languages available: Marathi in many schools in the New Conquests areas, and English in many Catholic schools in the Old Conquests. The political pressure from the MGP under Bandodkar pushed for Marathi-medium education. The MGP's education policy in the 1960s and early 1970s promoted Marathi as the medium of instruction. This was part of their broader agenda of cultural integration with Maharashtra. But many Catholic schools — the primary school system in the Old Conquests had been largely run by the Catholic Church under the Portuguese and continued to function in that form — resisted the switch to Marathi. They preferred English. The English-medium Catholic school tradition was strong and had cultural prestige. Parents — both Catholic and increasingly Hindu as well — preferred English-medium education because it gave their children access to national and international opportunities. This created the basic fault line of the medium of instruction debate: Marathi-medium (favoured by MGP and pro-Maharashtra groups, affordable, community-rooted) versus English-medium (favoured by middle-class and Catholic families, expensive, career-oriented) versus the emerging Konkani-medium demand (favoured by Konkani activists, advocating for the mother tongue as medium of instruction). The Konkani-medium education movement argued — drawing on educational psychology and the UNESCO principle of mother-tongue-medium education — that children learn best in their mother tongue. Teaching a child in a language that is not their mother tongue creates cognitive barriers in the early years when foundational literacy and numeracy are being established. The child learns to parrot the language of instruction without fully understanding it. The mother tongue, on the other hand, is the language of deep comprehension. This argument was educationally sound and is supported by research globally. But it faced a practical objection: which Konkani? The Devanagari-script Konkani favoured by Hindu Goan intellectuals? The Roman-script Konkani favoured by Catholic Goan intellectuals? And would Konkani-medium educated children be at a disadvantage in competitive examinations conducted in English or Hindi? The medium of instruction debate intensified in the 1980s and 1990s as Goa's statehood was established and the language question became more politically charged. The government made periodic attempts to impose Marathi as the medium of instruction in government-aided schools, which led to agitations, strikes, and massive political resistance from communities who wanted English or Konkani. A key flashpoint was the controversy over government grants to schools. In Goa, many schools — particularly Catholic-run schools — receive government financial aid. The government used the condition of that aid to push for specific medium of instruction policies. This created confrontations between the Church, which ran many of the best schools, and the state government, which was trying to enforce its language policy. The result today is a highly complex, plural schooling system. Government primary schools officially use Konkani or Marathi as medium of instruction, with English taught as a subject. Government-aided private schools — which include many Church-run schools — have historically used English as the primary medium of instruction. And there is a growing private English-medium school sector that operates entirely independently of government language policy. In practice, the majority of Goan families — regardless of religion — who have the economic means to choose, choose English-medium education for their children. This reflects the reality of contemporary India: English is the language of competitive examinations, of university education, of professional advancement, of the IT sector and the services economy. A child educated entirely in Konkani or Marathi will face structural disadvantages in the national economic competition. This creates a genuine dilemma for Goan cultural heritage. If Konkani-medium education remains a minority choice — available but not chosen by most families — then Konkani as a full literary language, with its own academic tradition and its own educated readership, will struggle to develop. The language survives as a spoken tongue at home, but its written and intellectual tradition weakens. The intangible heritage we explored in Lectures 15 and 16 — the idioms, the proverbs, the literary forms — risk becoming museum pieces rather than living culture. The government of Goa has tried various approaches: incentives for Konkani-medium schools, competitive examinations in Konkani, Konkani language compulsory in the curriculum at all levels. These measures are important but they have not fundamentally shifted the middle-class preference for English-medium education. There is also the issue of migrant children. Goa now has a significant population of children from non-Goan families — children of migrant workers from UP, Bihar, Karnataka. These children are often not served by Konkani-medium or Marathi-medium schools. The medium of instruction issue is now not just about Goan identity but about how Goa educates a multilingual and multiregional student population. I want to mention one positive development. In recent years, some private schools have introduced Konkani as a medium for specific subjects — particularly humanities — alongside English. There are also new Konkani-medium nurseries and primary schools being established by Konkani cultural organisations. These are small-scale initiatives but they represent an attempt to find a sustainable model for mother-tongue education in a competitive English-dominated environment. [40–55 minutes: Activity and Discussion] I want to pose a question that is directly relevant to your lives, because many of you will be parents yourselves within the next decade or two. If you were choosing a school for your child in Goa today, what medium of instruction would you choose — Konkani, Marathi, or English? And would heritage considerations — the desire to transmit Goan cultural identity through the mother tongue — influence your choice? Be honest. Take two minutes to think and write your answer before we discuss. [Allow thinking time] Let me hear from a few of you. Sushma, what would you choose? [Allow student response] And you are being honest — English, for practical reasons, but with Konkani at home. That is the pragmatic compromise that many families make. The question is whether that compromise is sufficient to maintain Konkani as a living literary language, or whether it produces a generation that speaks Konkani at home but cannot read, write, or think in it. Pascal, what about you? [Allow student response] Interesting — you would choose Konkani-medium. Can you say more about why? [Allow response] So let me ask you this: is the choice of English-medium education by Goan parents a betrayal of Goan cultural heritage, or is it a rational response to the economic realities of contemporary India? And is it fair to ask parents to sacrifice their children's competitive advantage in the name of cultural preservation? [Allow discussion — eight minutes] [55–60 minutes: Summary and Assignment] To close. The medium of instruction debate is the practical battleground of the language issue. Under the Portuguese, Portuguese was the sole medium. After liberation, the contest between Marathi, Konkani, and English has continued for over sixty years. Government schools officially use Konkani or Marathi. But middle-class families predominantly choose English-medium private schools for economic advancement reasons. This creates a structural threat to Konkani as a full literary and academic language. Various government and cultural organisation initiatives are trying to build viable Konkani-medium education, but they are swimming against a strong economic current. Your assignment: survey five adults in your neighbourhood or family about the medium of instruction they had in school and the medium they would choose for their children today. Note the reasons they give. Bring your findings as a brief oral report to next class. Next lecture — Lecture 29 — we have our Heritage Documentation Workshop. This is a hands-on, practical class where we are going to work on documenting a specific piece of Goan heritage together. Come ready to work with your phones, your notebooks, and your observations. This is not a theoretical lecture — it is a doing lecture. See you then!