Multi-Lingual Education

1. What is it?

2. What will it do for the problems of low attrition, high dropout

rates?

3. What will it do for the problem of low achievement?

4. What will it do for the tribal child unfriendly school environment?

5. What will it do to help the tribal child learn?

Answers
Question 1 What is it?
1. Multi-Lingual Education is a curriculum and teaching
methodology that:
a. Begins with mother tongue (L1, home language) as a medium of
instruction and builds good bridges to other languages, while
maintaining the use of L1 for as long as possible.
b. Builds on what we know about how children learn best. (Begins
with the known and moves to the unknown by building on the
child’s prior knowledge, using his/her world or real knowledge
and moving to new knowledge.)
c. Allows the child to construct knowledge rather than the teacher
being the only way to knowledge and rather than the teacher
designing only one learning experience.
d. Uses the language the child knows best to teach reading and
writing skills.
e. Allows the child to learn academic concepts in mother tongue

2. Multi-Lingual Education: What will it do for the problem of

low attendance and high drop out?
If the cause of low attendance and high dropout is due to education
not being relevant,
Multi-lingual Education:
a. values local languages and gives respect to local culture
b. develops self-esteem and cultural identity
c. stresses academic progress in the local language as well as
providing state/national language acquisition and
instruction

3. Multi-Lingual Education: What will it do for the problem of

low achievement?
Multi-lingual Education:
a. begins with the language the child knows best
b. brings the child’s world into the classroom
c. develops a curriculum around what is familiar to the child
d. utilizes the mental constructs, the schema the child already
has
e. builds upon the acquired vocabulary of the child rather
than plunging the child into a situation of not controlling
the vocabulary of the medium of instruction

4. Multi-Lingual Education: What will it do for the tribal child

unfriendly school environment?
Multi-Lingual Education:
a. requires that the teacher be a speaker of the child’s
language and a member of the child’s community
b. involves the local community in the development of the
curriculum and the teaching learning materials
c. utilizes a thematic approach where the weekly themes are
highly emotive ideas, concepts, generative ideas, from
within the child’s culture
d. emphasizes the values of the child’s culture
e. provides a safe and developmentally sensible bridge to
other cultures and other languages that the child will
encounter

5. Multi-Lingual Education: What will it do to help the tribal

child’s learning process?
Multi-Lingual Education:
a. begins with the known and moves to the unknown
b. uses cultural concepts to teach basic concepts. For
example the cultural materials followed by proper
bridging to the language of wider communication
vocabulary items.
c. builds on the vocabulary that the child possesses and then
adds the L2 vocabulary equivalents for what the child has
learned
d. Allows the child to continue building cognitive skills in a
language the child already is using for meta-cognitive
processes.
e. Emphasizes understanding, meaning and communication
as well as emphasizing skill development (accuracy and
correctness).