Working with the Laman Banjara children in Anandshala, we have been exploring various facets of the problem आपली मुलं शाळेत फुलत का नाहीत? [why don’t our children prosper in school]. A couple of years back we talked with the parents, children, and the teachers about language transition from home language to school language – their experiences, what they think works and does not work.
As educators, learning scientists, linguistic anthropologits, we think that it is important to support the home language. Use it in verbal exchange in formal and informal learning spaces; create learning material in the home language; encourage translanguaging. While parents want their children to quickly move on to Marathi and English. When asked “don’t you worry you will lose your language?” The answer was – “We talk in our language at home. It will not disappear. But the children need to learn English to get a job in the office and change their plight.”
An article on Kolami speaking community in PARI reminded me of this exchange. Kolami is named as an endangered language by UNESCO. But the speakers have more pressing issues than saving their language:
“There is no time to think about anything else [other than her farm],” she says about the status of Kolami as an endangered language. When Sunita and her community didn’t know fluent Marathi, “everyone would say ‘speak in Marathi! speak in Marathi!’” And now when the language is endangered, “everyone wants us to speak in Kolami,” she chuckles.
– The Kolami Speakers of Yavatmal.
“We speak our language. Our children too,” she asserts. “It’s only when we go out that we speak in Marathi. When we come back home, we speak our language.”
“ Aapli bhasha aaplich rahili pahije [Our language should remain ours]. Kolami should be Kolami and Marathi should be Marathi. That is what matters.”
It is the exact same discourse. When there is urgent need of improving dire living situation, saving home language or the identity formation of the child in the first five school years based on home language, and all the theories of learning are not a priority.
Working with the community as a participatory practice rather than an intervention, where do we stand when our beliefs about primacy of home language butt against the basic struggle to stay alive?
devayani tirthali 