“English Medium” in Indian schools is a mega joke. Most of the teachers who “teach” in English medium should ask themselves if they are REALLY competent enough to “teach” English as a language, let alone subjects like Science, Social studies and math in the English language. The answer will be a resounding NO but they will not tell you that. It is the money, my dear parents, not education that matters.
A look at the so-called English medium schools is a revelation. The teachers therein are all graduates, to be sure but do they know English? How could they? Haven’t they got their “degree” by memorizing the answers to the questions they expected to be asked in the examinations? Can they express themselves in English? Are they equipped to explain things they teach to the students in English? Can they deny they themselves burn the midnight oil poring through the various notes published by dubious authors?
Ask these teachers to hold a conversation wholly in English on the topic of their choice and you will hardly believe the doddering and dithering they go through before completing even five sentences.
What do you expect the boys and girls learn from these rookies who themselves need to be taught to teach?
In the event, what do the students in English medium schools do? They mug up everything including, can you imagine, math. Why do they do this? Because the teachers cannot explain things in English and what do they do? They resort to the lingua franca to explain even English lessons! It is phony education for the students and a fraud on the parents. What a bloody joke! How can the students then LEARN?
The answer is simple, isn’t it? Learn everything in your mother tongue and learn languages only as languages. What you mug up in English you will LEARN in your mother tongue. This solution may be simple enough but parents will never agree. They would rather send their children to “English medium schools” and memorize even their names than LEARN anything.
You have objections to my thesis? Stop a college or school student and ask him to fill a form, any form and see what happens.
Or, ask the first question everybody asks everybody: What is your name? The answer will hit you as fast as a bullet train. Ask the next question; any question and see how the bullet train transforms itself into a flattened tyre and fall to the ground.
