The Andhra Pradesh model of education under CM Jagan Reddy is breaking barriers for children.
He’s equalising language.
(Samaj Weekly)- The Andhra Pradesh government is doing an unusual experiment in the education sector. In 2019, it introduced English as the medium in government schools from class I to VI — a move stuck in legal trouble. Now the government has made English the medium of teaching in all UG colleges. The state’s young and ambitious chief minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy had to fight several battles to do so.
The hypocrite intelligentsia of the state, who educate their own children in costly private English-medium schools, opposed the move and made it a huge ‘mother tongue’ issue. They shouted ‘mother tongue is like mother’s milk’. When the shouting did not cow down Jagan, they went to court.null
The Andhra chief minister launched a counter-attack by exposing their hypocrisy and deployed his young cadre and leaders to counter their street and media fight. The Telugu Desam Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Left forces opposed him and said he was anti-Telugu. But Jagan stood his ground because English medium education was part of his navaratnalu (nine jewels) programme and a promise in his election manifesto.
Jagan also made one Telugu subject compulsory in private and government schools, and ordered all textbooks to be printed in bilingual mode. The same lesson will have the English version on one page and the Telugu version on the other for all subjects. His critics had no option but to keep quiet because this also pushed their own children into learning two languages, even in private schools. Many private English medium schools till then were not allowing Telugu learning at all.
