LINGUISTICS AND ADULT EDUCATION
Adult education in a multilingual country like India is the greatest challenge to the linguist. Faced with problems of instant communication to be linked up with the standardisation and modernisation of the languages, the linguist is called upon to develop a strategy of literacy which can steer through the maze of languages, dialects, styles, registors and such other varieties.
Most literacy workers have convinced themselves that the dialect has nothing to do with literacy. And yet when a farmer's literacy manual is written in 'Suddh Hindi' (Chaste Hindi) in Delhi and is not accessible to a farmer in Rajasthan or in parts of Bihar, they do not know what to do about it. It is not as if a linguist can solve all the problems of literacy. After all there is the Mahaboobnagar experiment in Andhra Pradesh (Deshmukh 1967) where one of India's well known linguists was associated in a programme for producing instructional material in the dialect. But the result was unsatisfactory. By the end of the course, the learners could read (and write) Mahaboobnagar Telugu, but they could not read standard Telugu with facility. What, then, is the role of a linguist in an adult education programme ?
The Mahaboonagar programme clearly shows that unless adult literacy is functionally defined and all steps from the curriculum formation through apperception to self-actualisation are well integrated, adult education is bound to be incomplete. Unless reading the dialect is linked with the reading of the standard by a switch over mechanism, this problem cannot be satisfactorily solved. It is not enough to identify the needs and set the objectives, but it is necessary to structure experience through language in such a way that the competence in a language would be of a level which will not permit sliding back to illiteracy. Use of dialect in illiteracy is not an end in itself, but a means to attain necessary skills in the literary language in which sufficient reading material is available for him to maintain literacy.
Mahaboobnagar as well as similar experiences of the project run by the Council for Social Development, the Seva Mandir in Udaipur (Rajasthan), the Institute of Indian Education, Poona and Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore go to indicate that whether it is for motivation or for ensuring the functionality of the programme, material sensitive to local language use is more effective for bringing the learners quickly to the threshold of literacy. But this is not enough. Constant bridging at all levels of language is necessary to relate the local to the standard, which invariably is the high status language. The problem of literacy in case of language which have accepted another language as 'culture language' (Pattanayak 1977a) needs more serious attention. It is to be remembered that the purpose of literacy is not to develop the undeveloped languages and dialects, but develop the human potential through conscientisation. Therefore, a knowledge of language dynamics and language engineering becomes a must for a literacy worker in a developing country.
It is not as if the linguist can be eliminated if the problem of dialect is isolated. In a poona slum where the literacy worker asks the child tujhe vadil kay kartat and gets frustrated as the child does not understand, the problem is of a different order. Undaunted, the worker asks tujha bap ka karto and pat comes the reply daru pito ani aila marto 'drinks wine and beats mother'. This forcefully brings out the distance between the slum language and the standard spoken language, the problem of comprehension and the problem of status and attitude build into the language use. Linguists, who make it their business to study the structure of varieties of spoken and written languages in different domains, must be treated as indispensable allies of literacy workers to solve such problems.
In a meeting of the Scientific and Technical Terminology Commission, there was a discussion about the word for 'fishing rod'. Although many languages have the word 'bansi', the pundits rejected it in favour of a more Sanskritised word 'akheta danda'. Many people are in favour of such Sanskritisms without knowing their implication. The choice of a high culture word, whether Sanskritic or Perso-Arabic, determines the style of writing. Since this has serious consequences for literacy, it must be understood by the material producer. Take, for example, the Oriya word nasika and nake 'nose'. The choice of nasika will require kuncana kariba while nake modiba in the sense of disapproval. This not only is a problem in collocation, but the style of writing itself would be determined as a result of such choices. Hindi danta cikitsa and dat ka ilaj illustrate similar problems as the above.
Yet another dimension of the problem of language which has direct bearing on literacy is illustrated by the Tamil word which is written as patam, read as padam and spoken as pado or the Assamese word which is written as citi bach but read as siti bas. The language specific conventions of writing and reading need to be analysed and integrated in the literacy curriculum. The rules for moving either from the spoken to the written or from the written to the spoken have to be carefully worked out and graded before texts are prepared.
Telugu, where most textbooks and much of the printed material was written in the Granthika style presents another formidable challenge to those engaged in adult education. In spite of the decision to effect a phased change over to the SiÀa vyavaharika, the spoken standard style, the anomaly is bound to persist for some more time. The literacy workers even though working in a small homogeneous dialect area have to keep these broader aspects of language development in view. Otherwise devoid of the continuing flow of reading material which is likely to be available in the standard language for years to come, the neo-literates are bound to lapse into illiteracy.
Linguistic minorities pose a major problem to the literacy worker. In many cases people are to be made literate in two languages, the mother tongue and the dominant language. The linguists must stretch their ingenuity to develop the strategy of transfer, thus making it feasible to run simultaneous literacy in the home language and the dominant language wherever possible (Pattanayak 1977). Of course, those of the dominant language area may have to be made literate in either one o both the languages according to their choice. Facilities may be provided for this purpose. The West Bengal Committee for Eradication of illiteracy, for instance, has taken commendable steps in this regard. But very little research and experiment has gone in to making the other minorities literate.
Another peculiar problem is posed by linguistic minority communities who use a pidginised varieties of a language as contact language. The most important among these is the pidgin Naga, which is popularly known as Nagamese. This variety is not only a bridge among the mutually unintelligible Naga language speakers, but also a bridge between the various tribal language speakers and Assamese speakers. No literacy effort in this area can ignore the existence of this variety. The various tribal language speakers in the Koraput District of Orissa use Desia as a communication language in this manner. Similarly those in and around Ranchi in Bihar use Sadri or Sadni. Desia is a variety of Oriya and Sadri is a variety of Hindi. To what extent these intermediate languages can be exploited for furthering literacy has to be examined very carefully.
Problem of Santhali somewhat parallels the situation obtaining in the case of Konkani speakers. The Konkani speakers are spread in Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. The Konkani language is written in four scripts, the Nagari, Kannada, Malayalam and the Roman script. The Santhalis are mainly distributed in Orissa, Bengal and Bihar, though there are few thousands in Assam. The language consequently is written in five scripts, Nagari, Bengali, Oriya, Roman and the 0l scripts. The last is an indigenously developed script by one Raghunatha Murmu, himself a Santhali. Since the matter of script is an emotionally surcharged problem and the adoption of one or the other has many wider implications, literacy workers would do well to inform themselves about various aspects of this question with the help of linguists who have worked in these areas.
The above list is illustrative of challenges which literacy workers are likely to face. The various efforts at script and spelling reforms pose constantly renewed problems which need watching by trained linguists and their implications spelled out for the literacy workers. However, it is not only in the area of more language analysis that a linguist is relevant to a literacy programme. In the area of material production three major operations are envisaged in the years to come. Apart from writing materials which would presuppose language analysis, it is visulised that there will be need for translating and simplifying manuals and reading materials written by specialists.
Many international agencies are called upon to send specialists to prepare manuals are either designed for village level workers in health and education or for voluntary organizations engaged in extension work. As the knowledge of English of the workers themselves in minimal, the texts need to be simplified. Take for example an instruction from a manual (v.1 : 101) prepared by the Ministry of Health. "Schedule domiciliary visits to new acceptors of condoms at least one during the first two months and every six months after they have become regular users". This sentence has so many variables that for a person educated up to SSLC level it is difficult to comprehend it in one reading. Even after reading several times the chances of confusion cannot entirely be ruled out. Texts such as these need to be simplified. However the question is not as simple as it sounds at the first instance. How the simplification of an agreement between the governments of UK and Rhodesia assumed different nuances in the hands of government writers (Cripwell 1975 Aug.) goes to prove that a lot of expertise has to be brought to bear upon the problem. In Indian languages where prestige is often attached to the high style, texts have to be simplified to guide the inexperienced reader through graded steps into becoming an efficient reader. Here a parallel may be drawn with preparing textual material for purposes of second language learning. As in the case of learning a second language the learner is first introduced to the simple language used for native speaker he is guided to progress to greater complexities, in this case simplified language for neoliterate inexperienced reader slowly moves through simple language to greater complexities. Needless to say that the help of a linguist is essential in this operation.
Translations will have to be resoited to, as, for sometimes to come, the experts will write in English. Even if some good reading material is published in one Indian language it may have to be translated into other Indian languages. Translation is one of the most neglected fields in the country. Without going into the details of discussion regarding linguistics and translation (Pattanayak 1955; 57-63), it may suffice to point out that with language belonging to four language families and many languages of doubtful affiliation, almost all structural and semantic complexities of translation one is likely to find in the tour of the world can be illustrated by Indian languages. Fourteen languages as medium of higher education, administration and mass communication should indicate the extent of translation needed in the country. Apart from the problem of vocabulary, the presence or absence of verbs in equational sentences, passive and gender concord, the different modes of relativisation, the differing case relations are few of the important areas which pose obvious problems in translation. What is important to understand in this connection is that a research base has to be created in all these areas if functional adult education is to be achieved in a meaningful way.
The preparation of instructional material is not independent of the curriculum and philosophy underlying adult education in any country. Lyra Srinivasan (1977) speaks of four curriculum models. The four models, the Information model, the Problem solving model, the Projective model, and the Expressive, the Creative or the Self-actualising model, from a continuum on the basis of maximal and minimal role of a teacher. Each model will dictate its own material and teacher preparation. For example, when people speak in terms of textbooks and supplementary readers their thinking is essentially of the information model. The system in which the teacher engages himself in a one way communication of information where the textbook dominates the class, where education is not relevant to the important segments of living of the adult learner is incompatible with adult education. External incentives and pursuations may result in external allegiance to a programme but it cannot generate the necessary emotional and intellectual precondition for adult education.
The conventional thinking on the subject makes a distinction between adult literacy and adult education. Thus in a curriculum of 350 hours, 90-100 hours are given for literacy. This represents a gross distortion and misunderstanding of both literacy and education. First of all it must be understood that language is not taught in a vacuum. Unless the content of the language instructional material is closely knit with the needs and interests of the learners this itself may act as the greatest disincentive for them. Therefore, taking structures like lala tala la, lala la, tala la, selected on an ad hoc and random basis, and trying to generalise it for all groups of learners may not be the most efficient introduction of literacy.
Many perfer to use the primer prepared for native children for initial literacy. This thinking does not take into consideration the special psychological problem of an adult who either feels deprived, because of being bypassed by the school or has a low self-image, because of being a drop-out. He certainly resents when treated as a child. Secondly, a primer is a unit of formal schooling where it is structured differently with the curriculum. Thirdly, even the primers themselves are often not even properly designed for the children. For example, the first seventeen pages of the current Marathi primer contains mostly imperatives. Under these circumstances, no matter how convenient it is for the administrator from the point of sale of material, this is not the proper answer to adult education.
The knowledge sought to be imparted in an adult education situation must be need specific and the medium of communication location specific. This would indicate diversification of instructional material. But even accepting this diversity as basis, to what extent the initial material can be generialised needs to be studied more throughly and scientifically. So far only assertations of various literacy workers for and against such claims are available. For example, when one claims that the same literacy manual is being used for small and marginal farmers, industrial and mining workers, urban service workers, workers in different trades, tribals, scheduled caste groups and women it has to be examined a little more carefully and should not be taken at the face value.
Literacy to be functional, language must be well integrated with content. If the aim of adult education is to impart a level of competence to the learner so that he can sustain his interest of his own without lapsing into illiteracy, then it is not enough to give a mere recognition and manipulation of scripts, reading of controlled texts and writing letters to the grand child about one's health and the village fair. The adult learner must be made a competent reader with understanding of fairly complex structures so that he can read newspapers and make sense of various governmental forms and notifications. Very little research has gone into the officialise language of our country. The forms and notifications, even in English in many countries, are written in a language which need simplification in order to be accessible to the English knowing public (Wright 1975 : 213-220). Many of our forms and notifications, which are not originally drafted in Indian language, but are translations from English, are not even comprehended by highly educated native speakers. Therefore, it must be understood that both the content and language must be graded to carry the learner through successive skills while maintaining their relevance and creativity. This presupposes a team work in which a linguist is an indispensable component.
When we think of adult education, often, it is considered to be connected with writing and reading. Since every body speaks a language, spoken activity is completely ignored in the scheme of things. It must not be forgotten that India has a 2000 year old tradition of oral transmission of knowledge. In any case through dialogue it is not only possible to establish a personal bond between the teacher and the learners, but also lay the foundation of problem sharing and culture sharing. Very little research has been conducted about the structure of oral presentation in the formal class room, the radio and under more non-formal conditions. The research conducted by the Coimbatore Agriculture University (Sudarsanam 1975) tend to indicate that there is more similarity in the structure of the class room presentation and the presentation by the Radio. This may be because, the radio presentation is first written and then read. The linking of the oral structures to reading and writing must also engage the attention of linguists.
A question is often asked about testing those who pass through adult literacy programmes. In such situation the word 'assessment' should be used to include besides testing, such observation techniques as rating and interviews, class performance records, job records and evaluation of the total learning outcome to reflect developmental changes. This also requires formulation of the goals of literacy in a more meaningful manner. Functional literacy in terms of UNESCO norms was considered to be equivalent to education of the level of class V. But in the circumstances where the emphasis is on non-formality the specification of goals has to be spelled out in terms of skills, learner's confidence level creative interpretations of a stimulus, problem solving ability, etc. This is the only way to ensure fairness of assessment of both individuals and groups in a pluralistic society.
Terms such as motivations, animators, facilitators are being freely used in connection with adult education. Following the Indian tradition in this regard, some have even suggested a three-tier organisation where a motivator is the programme in-charge whereas the facilitator is the teacher. Those in-charge of adult education must ensure that the new lables are not used to either maintain status quo or smuggle in the formal class room authoritarianism. Malcolm Knowles developing the concept of Androgogy (Knowles 1971) describes it as the art and science of helping adults to learn. Androgogy has also been termed as 'A technology of involvement'. This involvement on the part of both orgnisers and learners is crucial to the success of an adult education programme. This is the biggest challenge before the educationists and linguists of this country today.