The English Factor & The education system in Bihar

#2
Hi, there. Experiences in your life give you the opportunity and a vision of discussion. Tough! Eh?? Well, read the blog and you will get what I'm trying to say..

Welcome to blog-2 and today, I will try to enlighten how the education system works, along with the impact of english language on the life of Bihari students ..

Before we get into this, I would clarify that I will be discussing the condition of the majority and not those few students who are from the few convents of Bihar..
How things work out here:-
Basically in India, middle class is the majority . The case is the same with Bihar.
I was born and brought up  here, so I have seen things very closely . Also being from a bangla family, I travel to West Bengal almost every year, so I am able to compare things between Bihar and West Bengal...
Let's start from  the primary level.
I was admitted to Shishu Niketan Madhya Vidyalaya on my 3rd birthday100 metre away from my home. It was a hindi medium co-ed school as english medium schools were not so hyped back then. I was good at studies right from my childhood and all credit goes to my parents, who were concerned a lot about my studies. I had a home tution till class 5th and after that I used to go out for tutions. I read hoti standard 2nd in Shishu Niketan Madhya Vidyalaya then 3rd to 5th at St. Mary's Academy (you must be thinking, it was an english medium school!! No it was not.), 6th to 8th at Arunodaya Vidyalaya and last but not the least 9th and 10th from High School, Chanpatia .(राजकीयकृत उच्च विद्यालय to be precise)
All the schools were hindi medium and we studied english just as a language. I don't complain about it, rather I appreciate this phase of my life as I feel that this particular phase was the best phase till date.

Till 8th, I was into my studies and I was known as a good boy and a good student who was into everything i.e extra curricular activities.
Things changed when I came to the High School, a pure example is what you call a Sarkari School. Everything was disoriented there. Very few teachers used to take class regularly. This was exactly the stage when you feel a lot of changes not only in your body but also in your attitude and behavior .. 

This was the stage when some students started getting influenced from negative activities, revolts & you know what I mean!!. Some students grew up to be professional Criminals. I was strictly warned by my father and heartily requested by mother, not to be part of any brawl. I always obeyed them like a good boy. Though sometimes it went beyond the threshold of tolerance still, somehow I managed to not to be into it. 

Some teachers were well-qualified still they didn't teach us for some unknown reasons. Huge number of girl-students were there but most of them were there because of the cycle provided by the state government and neither they or their parents gave a shit about studies. No, I am not jealous as we too were provided bicycles from the next year the scheme came in. 

Ok back to studies..

 I still remember, we were taught mathematics by almost 4 or 5 teachers and each and every teacher started trigonometry and never finished it. Almost every subject had the same condition. Had we not taken the tutions for our preparation , we would have been in a serious mess. Now the giant question is, Who the hell is responsible for such irregularities in Govt. Schools? When I talked to my classmates, those from the Govt middle schools, I came to know that the condition there was even worse.
I can say it with assurance that only the sophisticated schools run by Govt. like Navodaya Vidyalayas, Sainik schools and some others are providing decent quality education to the students where as rest of the schools are running with no planning and may be without any motto.
Students from these schools have to prepare themselves or with the help of some tutions to clear their boards having good marks.

English The Devil..........

English is not a compulsary subject in the Bihar Board. Marks of English language is not added to your result. As a result neither the student nor the teacher stresses a lot on english, after all one just have to appear in the english paper. According to me, this is the reason why the students of hindi medium is so bad in English. Obviously! Why should someone focus in a subject which marks are not going to be added to your result. It's a waste of time. But this english starts to waste you from that very stage...
First fatal attack of english takes place as soon as you enter 11th. Students who have chosen science faculty in 11th should relate with it, I think. Students coming from the remotest villages, can't even understand when english stood tall and try to suppress them down. This stage really freaks them out because here they sit in the class along with the CBSE and CONVENT students, who are pretty good at it. The students who dodge the Demon English at this level, have to stand face to face at a higher level when the impact of the Demon becomes double, may be triple.

After graduation, a huge number of students go towards the competitive examinations which includes, SSC-CGL, banking and similar, have to face this problem and upto this stage, the problem grows up to be really huge. English has a very big share in the syllabus and here it gives you no way to dodge it.

Some (Majority) of the students who were never into learning english from the very beginning, find it very difficult to give it a fresh start and to learn it now. Reason being the fear of english, the hype created in the society and the assumption penetrated deep in their mind that it can't be done from here. 

What I felt is, with the increase in age the capability and the urge to learn new things decreases. Children are very energetic towards learning, they are very curious towards how things work and how things happen but this is not really the case with the students of graduation or post-graduation.

Some students fight and stand tall eventually while others fail to do it and find their different ways, but that's not the point.

The point is, if the knowledge of english language is so vital then why aren't the students are told this thing from the beginning?

Why are the students kept in the dark?

Why is English not compulsory in the 10th board?

These are the irregularities which are never looked after by the authorities and their lack of prevision is to be suffered by thousands of students every year and worse part is that they don't seem to be in a mood of taking some steps regarding this in the near future ..

What can we do??

After all this things, it's about our future, so no one else is going to give a damn about it, what should be done is to be done by ourselves.

Prevention is way better than cure.

The thing is, what should be done...

So, I'm sharing with you how it can be done according to me.

First of all, you should not fear it. Yes, it's important, not to fear english, because if you fear it, you can't conquer it. You have to take it just as a language and try to learn it with the same interest that people show asking a bengali ' Bhai mai ghar ja raha hu ko bangali mein kya kehte hai'?

(Personal Experience)

Second thing is if you give a start in your begining, like 6th or 7th class, it will be way easier. Take the NCERT book in both hindi and english medium and read it. In the beginning, it will be a little boring but one should never give up and the interest will come with time. 

Read english CHAMPAK, English Comics, keep a good dictionary, try to talk to yourself in english, ( it will help you improve your vocabulary, reduce the hesitation and will help forming sentences)

Take a tution of english if needed and make sure the tution emphasises on the grammar and translation part (basically the learning part) and not the english spoken course type, because as per my experience, English spoken classes in small towns of bihar are nothing but fake. You will get nothing there.

Now talking about  the students at the graduation level, well, I'm not mature enough to state much but as per the best of my little belief if you are bad at english , you have to do everything I mentioned in the last paragraph and one thing what I do and specially recommend you will be as follows:-

Everyone today at the graduation level or those who are compitition aspirants have a smartphone and they watch movies  on that and majority of you people watch english movies but the hindi dubbed version, so What I am saying is, do watch good English movies (good one only😂)

but make it count, make it beneficial. Watch the movies in english and download the english subtitles ( just google the name of the movie followed by English subtitles and you will get subtitles of more than 99% of the movies.) . Watch the movie with english audio with english subtitles . It will help you, for sure..

It will help you with the vocabulary and the accent and the words and sentences you will learn there will set deep as visuals set deep down in your brain comparatively better than what you will get from the books.

It may look tough, lethargic, gradual process but it can be done. You can do it.. You surely can.

The only reason why I wrote this in english is to show that, if one says it's easy to say but hard to do.,, I'll say, look brother I've done it. 

I'm still learning, so there may be mistakes grammetical or constructional or spelling errors. Bear with me please.

With that said, concluding the blog-2 but promising you to come with another topic/issue very soon and if you like the blog comment in the comments section and if you find it useful do share it with people. It may be useful for them

Thankyou..❤🙏

I appreciate your patience to read it till the end.😊

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