Now we explore the Experts view aboutEnglish-medium policy. EXPERT1 maintains that the policy makers have alwaysturned a blind eye towards the fact that despite extensive solid researchevidence about the benefits of mother-tongue based instruction at the earlierstages of schooling, mother tongue based schooling is yet to impress the policydesigners and educationists.Contextualizing thesociolinguistic, cultural or ethno linguistic landscape of the country, EXPERT2also proposes a broad-based, pluralistic and additive language policy, whichdismantles all the reductionist ideologies we witness in the current top-downlanguage policy discourses. Children from different linguistic backgrounds willin the first place learn each other’s languages, and they would start learningEnglish language much faster than they do now.
He is critical over the demandfor English-only medium of instruction policy, and argues that the currentpolicy is causing language displacement instead of language learning. EXPERT3, another renownedproponent of mother tongue based language policy criticizes the low-feeEnglish-medium schools because those schools promote rote learning rather thanmeaningful inculcation of the concepts. She further proposes that, Apart from avery tiny minority where parents speak with their children in English andEnglish is spoken at home, English medium education even in the elite schoolsshould not be encouraged. EXPERT4 also recommends mothertongues at the early stages. Alongside reformulating medium of instructionpolicy, Akhtar also emphasized the schools to disseminate critical literacy andencourage critical thinking among students.
on the other hand, mother tongue isthe easiest medium for learning as children have greater amount of familiaritywith their mother tongues . According to EXPERT 5 severalinstitutions were doing research project on global scale on the issue, and theinstitutions such as UNESCO, Save the Children, SIL, the British Council andAga Khan Foundation found mother tongue education as the best policy at theearlier stages.EXPERT6 who has closely observedthe schooling system in the province also proposed that there was a need toteach all children in their mother tongues because a ” child’s learning canincrease manifold.
