The Language Debate in Education: NEP 2020 vs. State Policies
UPSC Relevance
Prelims: Indian Polity & Governance (Constitutional Provisions related to Language - Eighth Schedule, Official Language; Federalism - Concurrent List), Education policies (National Education Policy - NEP 2020).
Mains:
GS Paper 1: Salient features of Indian Society, Diversity of India.
GS Paper 2: Issues and challenges pertaining to the federal structure; Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation (Education).
Essay: Topics related to diversity, federalism, language politics, or education.
Key Highlights from the News
Centre-State Dispute: States like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are preparing to implement a two-language formula as an alternative to the three-language formula of the Centre's National Education Policy (NEP 2020).
States' Stance:
Formulating their own State Education Policies (SEPs).
Their goal is a two-language formula prioritizing the regional language (Tamil/Kannada) and English.
Karnataka also proposes creating its own curriculum instead of NCERT textbooks.
Centre's Policy (NEP 2020): NEP suggests teaching a third language. Many Southern states view this as an attempt to impose Hindi.
Article's Criticism: The article argues that this language dispute is unnecessary and distracts from the true goal of education: providing uniform high quality public education.
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