Today is International Mother Language Day and our blog is turning multilingual today. We are hosting a series of blog posts by different authors, illustrators, parents, educators and children – sharing their thoughts on languages and more. International Mother Language Day is an observance held annually on 21 February worldwide to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. 2015 is the 15th anniversary of International Mother Language Day.
(This post was sent in by Smurti Jena. Smruti Jena is a senior member of IGNUS-ERG, a guild of educational resource experts. A linguist by training, he works to make education meaningful for marginalized children.He is instrumental in making the Adikahani series, a joint initiative of Pratham Books and IGNUS, a great success. In this post written in Odia, he talks about how school education is at a crossroad due to the lack of understanding of using the mother tongue to help explain/understand concepts. He believes that to bring clarity in conceptual understanding, improve creativity, limit drop out rates, use of mother tongue based education at an elementary level is crucial)