Junior College students give Hindi the boot, prefer IT to a second language

Bollywood might be popular in the city of dreams but the number of takers for Hindi as a subject in the Junior College curriculum is going down alarmingly More students are opting for Information Technology IT which is being offered as an option to second languages at the Junior College level At a few colleges Hindi as a compulsory subject is being taught only in governmentaided divisionsStudents prefer to learn IT and Hindi has no takers File pic for representationHindi language teachers are raising their concern over the situation Calling this state of affairs a danger to the countryrsquos national language the Maharashtra Rajya Hindi Shikshak Sangathna an association of Hindi teachers across the state is going to write to the state government requesting to put corrective measures in place According to the association this situation will also affect basic Hindi learning in schools Since Hindi is not perceived to add any benefits at the Junior College level students prefer to opt out of Hindi in schools tooDr Dayanand Tiwari president of the Maharashtra Rajya Hindi Shikshak Sangathna told midday ldquoThe current education minister who also handles the cultural ministry should take a more empathetic view of the situation as languages are an integral part of any culture And here we are talking about our national languagerdquoNo takersExplaining the situation further Tiwari said ldquoWhile takers for the Hindi language were anyway going down in the last two years the situation has worsened IT is being offered as an option to the second language Many students prefer IT to learning a second language which is either Marathi or Hindi in most colleges Many students opt for Marathi as many come from Marathi medium schools and feel comfortable studying that as a second language But Hindi medium schools are already less in number and many students opt for IT as it is considered an additional qualificationrdquo According to Hindi teachers the number of students opting for Hindi in Junior College has come down by around 10 per cent over the past two yearsExplaining the situation from another angle Dr Vandana Pradeep Hindi professor SIES College said ldquoThe IT subject being a professional qualification comes with an extra fee whereas languages being traditional subjects are included in the regular curriculum For Hindi the fee is almost negligible as it is covered in the overall fee But for IT the extra fees are above Rs 10000 But students do not mind paying this extra fee as there is a general assumption about professional subjects that they are additional qualifications This is beneficial to colleges as well as they can charge extra fees for ITrdquoDr Ancy Jose principal of N L Khandwala College has also observed the dip in the number of students learning Hindi She said ldquoThere is a general assumption among children that languages are not scoring subjects But second language level is not very difficult While IT is being offered as an option to second languages once IT seats are filled many go for foreign languages but Hindi continues to remain last in their preference listrdquoStudents across the city feel that learning Hindi in a regular curriculum is a waste of time Neha Juneja Std XI student of SIWS College Bandra said ldquoI have opted for IT because even with extra fees of Rs 12000 learning this subject is more beneficial If I opt to learn it in private classes they would charge me more Plus it is not as if we will not know Hindi or the language will die out just because we are not learning it in the curriculumrdquoAdding to this Rutvik Kamble Std XI student from Siddharth College said ldquoHindi is so routine and familiar to us that we are not attracted to learn it again formallyrdquoExpert saysCommenting on the situation Vasant Kalpande former chairperson of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education said ldquoIt has been observed time and again how subjects at Std X and XII level are selected on the basis of how much they will help a student in scoring higher marks Based on this there are several assumptions among students and parents No student takes a decision based on interests and choice at this level as scoring marks is of utmost importance to be able to get admission to a higher education course of their choice While it is true that IT as a subject may be more helpful in scoring high marks students fail to realise that a subject offered as a second language is also much easierrdquo