What is mother tongue education?

Mother Tongue

     Mother tongue is a person's native language. The term mother tongue denotes not only the language one learns from one's mother but also the speaker's dominant and home language. Mother tongue education(MTE) is also referred to as first language, mother tongue medium education or mother tongue instruction. It is clearly linked to language in education policies because while language is the bridge between home and school, the norm is for example, second language students are schooled in such a way that their own language is devalued and they tend to reject their mother tongue, which is related to prejudice and discrimination. Mother Tongue Education is  an alternative that has been known for decades. Mother Tongue Instruction should occur through language immersion for the first three years of schooling, according to UNESCO.

Advantages:

1. MTE helps to develop the thinking capacity of child in spontaneous way.
2. It helps to increase the enrollment rate of the child at school.
3. Parents are interested as the medium of communication is mother tongue.
4. Mother tongue ultimately expand the reach of education to the common people.
5. Mother tongue education creates an awareness regarding the protection and preservation of local language.

Disadvantages:

1. After mother tongue education for a long time, it becomes difficult to shift to other language in higher education.
2. Only mother tongue education is not enough to compete with the rest of the world.
3. For science and technology development, other language knowledge is very much important.
4. Mother tongue education sometimes creates obstacles in the path of opportunity as the competitive world runs through International languages, particularly English.

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