Diversity

Many educationists have proposed that learners should be taught through aspects they are familiar with. They should be made aware of their environment first. Then they can be taught about the world outside their milieu. Knowledge from the child’s environment should be used in the classroom. Rabindranath Tagore says that child’s education should be “in harmony with the world around it.” The National Curriculum Framework (2005) also recommends the use of child’s local and folk traditions in the classroom. One of the unique features of our cultural heritage is the rich and varied folk traditions including tales, riddles, songs, proverbs and so on. These traditions are not only part of our culture but represent our knowledge system. They have been performing the role of educating people since time immemorial. There is a need to use them in our classroom too. Tales as we know have a lot of potential to educate children. Towards this aim, an attempt has been made in the book Diversity: Tales for the Multilingual Classroom to put together twelve folktales and simple tasks on them adopting multilingual approach for language enrichment. It is believed that child’s first language can be judiciously used in the classroom to make the child feel accepted, interact with other children and learn new things through it. Such an attempt has been made for the first time in Indian multilingual contexts. Tasks have been prepared to facilitate learners’ inputs in their first language in each lesson. They are encouraged to share their knowledge in the classroom. This will encourage learners to come forward, share their resources from their environment and participate in the learning process. This attempt is a small step towards making indigenous languages survive and in empowering the disadvantaged learners with the skills of English.