New education policy wants ‘rich’ Sanskrit to start at primary level

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 30

Hailing Sanskrit for its rich body of classical literature, the government is all set to offer the language at all levels of education through schools and colleges.

The National Education Policy 2020, stressing multilingualism as a force for national integration, provides for introduction of Sanskrit at foundation stage, which covers primary school students, and goes on to recommend the language as a subject till university level.

While the new policy retains the long-in-force three-language formula, it provides for it to be implemented from grade 3 through grade 12 instead of the previous system where it was introduced between grades 6 and 8.

The policy also allows state governments to sign bilateral agreements to hire teachers for satisfying the three-language formula where two of the three languages have to be Indian languages.

“Sanskrit contains vast treasure of knowledge, written by people of varied religions as well as non-religious people over thousands of years. It will be taught in interesting, experiential and relevant ways,” the policy says. Sanskrit textbooks at the foundational and middle school level may be rewritten in “simple standard” Sanskrit to make its study truly enjoyable, it says.

The policy seeks to introduce language learning at the age of two, noting that children pick up languages quickly between ages of two and eight and multilingualism enhances cognitive abilities in young students. Among foreign languages the NEP mentions for offer under the three-language formula are Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, French, German, Spanish or Russian.