Mumbai:The opposition to Hindi has continued in Maharashtra with the language consultation committee appointed by the state government raising its apprehensions to make Hindi a compulsory third language for students in Marathi and English medium primary schools in the state.Laxmikant Deshmukh, the chairperson of the Maharashtra government-appointed Language Consultation Committee has written a letter to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis urging the government to scrap the move.“The primary school students should be taught in their mother tongue and the three-language policy should be implemented from higher secondary level only. The forced decision on Hindi language is unnecessary,” said Deshmukh in the letter.“At present the quality of Marathi and English language in school education is poor as most of the schools have one or two teachers. Introducing a third language will increase the burden of the teachers and in the process the possibility of learning one language properly will decrease,” it added.On April 17, the BJP-led Maharashtra government announced plans to implement the National Education Policy 2020 from the academic year 2025-26. As part of the policy, Hindi will be made a compulsory third language from classes 1 to 5.In his letter, Deshmukh has said that if Hindi speaking teachers are selected based on their speaking skills, employment of Marathi teachers may be taken away from them. “This will cause cognitive load on children’s brains. Since English language has been made compulsory in Maharashtra since 2001 and is required for parental approval and higher education, the State government has adopted a policy of “better English with better Marathi” as per the report of the Language Advisory Committee,” he said.The 2020 National Education Policy proposes major changes to the curricular structure for school education. It claims to promote flexibility in choosing academic streams and emphasises on using the mother tongue as a key medium of instruction in primary schools, among other measures.The three-language formula refers to teaching students English, Hindi and the native language of a state. It was introduced in the first National Education Policy in 1968 and was retained in the new policy introduced in 2020.
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