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Chinese not among foreign languages prescribed by NEP
SruthySusan.Ullas@timesgroup.com

Bengaluru:

The National Education Policy (NEP) approved by the Union cabinet two days ago does not mention Chinese among the foreign languages it cites as examples students can learn at the secondary level. The language was mentioned in the draft released in 2019.

The 2019 draft had named French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese as foreign languages which could be offered as electives, and not in place of the three-language formula. The approved policy released on Wednesday omits Chinese language.

The ones cited are Korean, Japanese, Thai, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian languages “for students to learn about the cultures of the world and enrich their global knowledge and mobility according to their own interests and aspirations”.

State edu policy likely by Aug 20
Karnataka could be one of the first states to implement the new education policy with minister S Suresh Kumar setting a 15-day deadline to implement the Karnataka Education Policy, which will be a mix of NEP and policies that match the state’s requirements. He fixed August 20 as the probable date. P 4

Many teachers say Chinese was gaining popularity in Bengaluru

An official associated with the formulation of the final NEP said he was unaware of the change, but “the reasons are obvious”. India has banned over 100 Chinese apps following a faceoff with China in eastern Ladakh.

Foreign-language teachers say Chinese as a language was gaining popularity in Bengaluru since 2017, and it was set to surpass many Asian languages, including Japanese.

“Our certificate and diploma programmes are attended by China-bound students or corporates taking up projects there. Since Chinese is a difficult language, the 15-18 students we were getting last year was a good indicator,” said Jyothi Venkatesh, coordinator of Centre for Global Languages, Bengaluru Central University.

However, the March 2020 programme for Chinese language didn’t have any student signing up. “Global events do affect the student intake, and it’s the pandemic in this case. Of late, we received a couple of queries on the Chinese classes,” she added.

“Learning Mandarin is important in an increasingly interdependent world. Regardless of the recent tensions, China remains one of our largest trading partners. Only a few academics know the language and we rely them to even interact. We should not politicise such decisions,” said MJ Vinod, retired professor, department of political science, Bangalore University