Multilingual Education and India

Dear MLE friends, The below mentioned website for teachers was launched in 5 languages: English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Telegu. It has several interesting articles and has potential to put some articles on MLE on. Thanks, Troy , for passing it on.

Dear MLE friends, A corpus of material in the local language is necessary for any Multi Lingual Education (MLE) project to succeed. In the attached articles it is announced that Central Institute of Indian Languages will take up a major translation project into all “eight schedule” languages.

Dear MLE friends, The below mentioned brochure makes a clear link between Language Development and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). For those of us active in the NGO world and government this might be useful.

Dear MLE friends, Most of the articles, research papers and newspaper clippings in this list are building a case to support MLE. However, there are also other voices. Some claiming that the tribal people themselves do not want it. Attached is an article making that claim. This brings out an important question: it seems that at this point the academic and NGO world is quite convinced that a multilingual approach will be best for the children on the long run, but have we been able to interact sufficient with the tribal communities themselves on this? Have we been able to find leaders who really represent the voice of the people themselves?

Dear MLE friends, Some good news from Jharkhand: chief minister Madhu Koda made tall promises for the betterment of the tribal and regional languages. Read on…

Dear MLE friends, Below some news on the demand for a special academy for development of tribal languages in Hyderabad . See reference below.

Dear MLE friends, Below is the announcement of an excellent conference on MLE which is here in the region. Last time (2003?) there was quite a group from India participating and giving good papers. I trust that will work out this time again.