SCSE, SIET-H cock a snook at official language policy

Hyderabad: In violation of the Official Language Act and the policy of the State government, the State Commissioner of School Education (SCSE) and the State Institute of Educational Technology, Hyderabad (SIET-H), has adopted Roman script in place of Telugu script to communicate in Telugu.

According to State School Education Department (SCSE) sources, the proceedings issued by the department recently on the telecast schedule of the digital lessons to the school students through T-SAT (Vidya) channel exposed the violation of the official language policy by the two government organisations.

Speaking to The Hans India, a senior official from the SCSE said, "the said proceedings in question were issued by the Director of the SIET-H to all the District Education Officers (DEOs) in the State. The DEOs were told that the Digital Lesson through T-SAT (Vidya) channel for the academic year 2019-20 will start from June 20."

It may be mentioned here that the digital lessons are being telecasted for the school children studying Class VI to X in the State, specifically, for those studying in the schools run in the public sector.

Clarifying the issue, the sources said the official language policy of the State has made it mandatory to do the official correspondence in Telugu language and wherever needed in Urdu, which is the second official language of the State.

But, "most of the communications by both the SCSC and SIET-H to the DEOs and school headmasters are routinely sent only in the English language," the sources said.

What is more interesting is that the State government has made learning of Telugu language compulsory even to those students from other States. For this, the State government has been publishing special books in simple Telugu for those whose mother tongue is not Telugu.

Defeating the spirit of the official language police, the SIET-H telecast schedules are not only sent in English but also they have also adopted Roman script to write the Telugu language.

For example, as per the telecast schedule, Class X social studies lesson would be telecasted at 10.40 am on June 20. It says that the topic going to be telecasted in the digital lesson would be "Bharata Desham-Bhaugolika svaroopalu."

Similarly, the Hindi lesson which would be telecasted on the same day from 2.40 pm for VII is "Man Kartha hai-1." This shows that whenever these State-level organisations are supposed to use Telugu they are adopting Roman script to write the official language.

This proves observations made by the draft National Education Policy that English is being imposed where it is not even necessary, the sources pointed out.