Students prefer learning oriental languages or German and French to Telugu

Updated on: Thursday, November 29, 2012

City students prefer learning oriental languages or German and French to Telugu with hopes of getting better jobs abroad while the government said on Wednesday it was firming up proposals of introducing Telugu from 2013-14 academic year in schools and colleges.

Only a minor percentage of students opt for Telugu in classrooms and according to official records of various central boards, just about 5% of an average of 5,500 class X students in CBSE and ICSE schools takes up Telugu as their second language. In Intermediate, just about 20% of the students opt for the language in their final examinations.

As per last year's board examination records, out of 3,856 students who appeared for CBSE boards, just 2% opted for Telugu as their second language. And in ICSE, out of 1,563 students who wrote the examination, just 3% opted for Telugu. The situation is even worse in the intermediate Public Examination (IPE) as out of 8 lakh students who wrote the examination just 20% had opted for Telugu.

The language choices of students in schools are guided by their quest for high scores, teachers explained. While Telugu is a low scoring paper, students opt for languages like Sanskrit and French to get over 90% marks. "Most of the languages other than Telugu which are offered in colleges are taught at the elementary level. It is easy to study and easy to score," said M Prakash, a junior college lecturer.

Students concentrating on cracking the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) always opt for high-scoring languages. "Students in Intermediate second year attend only three to four Sanskrit classes before they write the examination. With Telugu lessons, one cannot do that, hence a very small percent of even the Telugu speaking population opt for the language," said P Madhusudan Reddy, general secretary, Government Junior College Lecturers' Association.

In several central board-run city schools, the reason for opting out of Telugu is different.

"Currently, there is a huge demand for oriental languages like Cantonese and Mandarin as parents are aware of job markets opening up in China," said principal of a school located in Begumpet. While most of the 70 CBSE and ICSE schools in the city offer French, German and Spanish, there are others which offer the less popular languages including Korean and Japanese.

Meanwhile, the Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE) said it was working on the various nuances of tweaking policies to introduce Telugu in colleges. In degree colleges, a three-point language formula will be introduced as per the recommendation of the Telugu Languages Commission, P Jayprakash Rao, chairman of APSCHE said. "It will not be unilateral but made in consultation with the vice-chancellors of universities in the state," he added.
 

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