Medium of Teaching Science Part II and III

                                                                                   Part -2

Let us examine in a purely theoretical way about the fact that s&t teaching in Indian colleges and universities is mainly in English. India is a  federation of peoples speaking several highly developed Indian languages.The  reason  for so called “nonemployability of  majority of engineering and science  graduates ”  in India is  failure of teachers to implant the fundamental concepts and principles of science and technology("s&t") into minds of the students.This failure is not due to any fault of teachers but is due to utilizing English for all purposes in s&t matters resulting in inability of even intelligent students to properly express themselves in the foreign language. (English should be taught right from elementary school level).

The blame can easily thrown on governments stating it is showing a casual attitude towards teaching s&t in mother tongue. But  governments are not to blame. The main reason is  nonavailability of simple standard words for s&T in the  Indian languages  such as are available in English and the major European languages.

In English we have very simple but highly standardized words with well defined most accurate meanings  for s&t----words  like work,light,ray,density, heat,metal,acid,entropy,enthalpy etc. These words are so simple and commonplace.A little bigger words like molecule ,radioactive,exothermic,calorific etc are there but they are only a little more difficult .all such standardized words used in  science with very specific meanings  are  sunk deep  into science for two centuries.

In Indian languages too we should develop extremely simple words of two or three syllables for scientific terms.The words should be as simple as in English and   so simple as to permit their meaning  to be grasped even by a school boy . But the words  being coined in science in Indian languages  are so tough that the student should first become  a master of ancient  Sanskrit before trying to learn science.The science text books in Indian languages are generally overloaded with long stone tough Sanskrit words. Both the student and teacher would loose whatever interest they have in science  by using such books.! In modern days science is such a simple thing to learn provided there is good language.

 To construct a standard base of extremely simple two or three syllable words  for s&t(common for all the Indian languages)we should search all the languages of India and also the most  beautiful  Sanskrit  language ,then standardize them through a standardizing authority for entire India in a very very strict way. As with  English words in s&t, the words for s&t in Indian languages  should be picturesque and should convey the general  meaning even without any explaining from the teacher. (In this respect  there is really  a very  casual attitude among teachers and governments and universities perhaps due to complexity of the problem).

As already mentioned , majority of students  are from poor and backward sections who had no access to higher learning for centuries  and thus acquired a kind of inertia. Theoretically speaking ,their progress to the top can be ensured if science teaching of very high standard is is done using the internationally standardized English s&t terms and using the mother tongue for explaining ,answering in exams and writing text books and research papers.

                                                             Part-3

Now let us go back to the theory that most s&t graduates  in India are unemployable.This means that (1)they have not acquired power to express ordinary and routine s&t matters in English language (the top language of the state for practical purposes) and (2) they have not in the first place not grasped the all important basic   s&t concepts and are not able  to solve the large number of tough s&t problems occurring daily in their official duties. This may be one of the extremely serious problems facing Indian s&t.

The fault does not lie in the student of India who is second to none in the world,nor in the teacher( who is not supplied with  a bag of simple and  attractive s&t terms to carry to the class room). The fault lies elsewhere .Meanwhile the teachers appear to have no clear aims and say there is no work to do for them except teaching  in a mechanical way  not in the least concerned whether the student understands or not . The teacher’s duty  is to arouse  an inquiring and researching  mentality in students.

The  teachers should associate  themselves to a big national movement to modernize science teaching in Indian languages there by leading to  uplifting the socially backward majority of  Indian people from  superstition and ignorance and bringing Indian languages to glory in s&t field.They can help translate standard science text books into Indian languages retaining the English s&t terminology and introducing standard Indian language s&t terms common for all the Indian languages. We should be able to  hold science conferences in regional languages . Science is  not concerned with political and  administrative units (i.e.dividing a particular language area into several political units). The s&t   teachers are concerned only with improving science teaching standards so that the students grasp all the basic concepts of science and technology and become 100% employable. The students  can do an intensive course in English so that they are acceptable anywhere in India for employment.

NB: The author is  only a general writer and  not a teacher by profession.
By Sastry Polavarapu.