05-05-2007, 06:16 AM
Laws in Karnataka mandate that vehicle number plates can be either in Kannada or English. However, it was recently reported that "sons of the soil" Kannadiga policemen were often unable to read Kannada numerals and traffic offenders got away as a result.
However - some of these things are a gain in some ways and a loss in other ways. I have never seen a school maths textbook that uses Kannada (or Hindi) alphabet/numerals to say
(a+b)^2=a^2+2ab =b^2.
I suspect that an attempt to change from this would require a complete retraining of teachers and students. No parent would tolerate a loss of performance because of this and only Islamic zeal ("Do this or else...") would be able to force this into the Indian education system. besides - the dilemma is always "Should one attempt to change the system to use regional languages and change the 30% who are currently getting an education, or should one attempt to include the remaining 70% into the existing system?"
The choice typically is the latter.
However - some of these things are a gain in some ways and a loss in other ways. I have never seen a school maths textbook that uses Kannada (or Hindi) alphabet/numerals to say
(a+b)^2=a^2+2ab =b^2.
I suspect that an attempt to change from this would require a complete retraining of teachers and students. No parent would tolerate a loss of performance because of this and only Islamic zeal ("Do this or else...") would be able to force this into the Indian education system. besides - the dilemma is always "Should one attempt to change the system to use regional languages and change the 30% who are currently getting an education, or should one attempt to include the remaining 70% into the existing system?"
The choice typically is the latter.