Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, January 21:

The Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) has come up with plans to teach 12 ethnic languages in schools in the country with a view to protecting the culture and tradition of various lingual communities. At an interaction organised by the Education Journalists’ Group, Jagannath Awa, director general of the Curriculum Department, said the lack of some statistics on the ethnic communities has been barring them from upgrading the language studies in the higher level.

The centre has prepared a curriculum on Maithali, Abadhi, Bhojpuri, Tharu, Newar and Limbu languages to be imparted up to the primary level, while curriculum on Rai, Bantaba, Magar, Gurung, Sherpa and Chamling languages is being prepared this year. The centre has planned to prepare the curriculum on 20 ethnic languages, according to Jay Lamsal, curriculum officer.

The government has also plans to teach the ethnic language in the higher level. “However, it depends on the availability of statistics of a particular community, their literature, grammer, dictionary and population,” he said.

The centre has already translated subjects like maths, science, social studies and others (except Nepali and English) in the five ethnic languages. “If 75 per cent of the students of a community are monolingual, the local language is being prepared to make the medium of instruction in all subjects except Nepali and English,” he said. Dik Bantawa, editor of the ethnic language curriculum, said teaching children in their own mother tongue will help boost their capabilities. Awa outlined the need to train teachers and supplying books to the districts has been a problem due to lack of an authentic data on the population. of the different communities.