IN 1994, Assam witnessed the emergence of a unique academic experiment named Assam Jatiya Bidyalay. When it commenced, sceptics and naysayers were quite confident that it was doomed to fail. After all, how could one even imagine of sending their kids to vernacular medium schools at a time when India was taking its giant leap under the new economic reforms and the fruits of globalisation had already entered our lives like never before! The memory of the Assam Agitation days were still fresh in the minds of people. The complete academic shutdown for a whole year and the subsequent tailspin of the Assamese medium government-run schools, due to faulty teacher appointments were hard to forget.
The founders who were not more than a group of five people, strongly believed that Assamese is a rich language to express thoughts and ideas and the medium is capable of enriching the students to keep pace with the outer world. They often cited the fact that numerous scientific analysis have always asserted that the mother tongue is the best medium of instruction to develop the personality of the students in the school level. This conviction led to the establishment of the school on January 1, 1994.
A school which began it�s humble journey in a rented house of the Rajgarh area of Guwahati has today transformed itself to an education movement with chain of hundreds of independent Jatiya Bidyalays in every nook and corner across the State of Assam who are inspired from the main Assam Jatiya Bidyalay currently located in Noonmati. Today, the alumni of Assam Jatiya Bidyalay have reached the top educational institutions of the world be it the IITs, IIMs, Yale, John Hopkins or JNU without finding any difficulty in adapting to academic environments there. Around early 2009, it was widely noticed that the utterance of Jatiya Bidyalay�s name brought two ideas on people�s mind � its quality teaching and the fact that it used to produce State toppers every year in the HSLC examination. During that period itself, due to the live space talk programme, the school was able to organise with famous astronaut Michael Fincke who was stationed in the International Space Station, it instantly grabbed the eyeballs of the elites of Assamese community. The message was loud and clear � a school with essentially Assamese characteristics was ready to compete with every high and mighty educational institution of the State with its impressive infrastructure, innovative educational methods and determined zeal to outdo the others.
The school has developed a body of text books for all subjects from preparatory to class VIII which are studied by the students of all Jatiya Bidyalays across the State. It publishes a monthly magazine called Anweshon on current affairs and general knowledge. The cream of its teaching faculty often conduct workshops for teachers throughout the year. The school actively disseminates to its students, the contribution of the doyens of Assamese society namely Sankaradeva, Lakshminath Bezbaroa, Jyotiprasad Agarwala, Bishnu Rabha, Bhupen Hazarika and many more.
Just like most great happenings in modern India, the Jatiya Bidyalay movement too grew and became successful in spite of the system, not due to the system. It will complete 25 years of its formation today. However, has the Assamese youth become more aware of his roots? Has the love for our mother tongue come back? Has the disdain with which the language is treated vanished in these 25 years? Has it been able to attract that so called �creamy layer� of our society which often treats the knowledge of Assamese language as unnecessary in today�s world? Has the alumni body of the school proved to be an alternative model of exception and excellence? These are some questions which the people associated with this movement and our society at large need to ponder upon because Assam Jatiya Bidyalay is not just the property of the any trust. It�s the collective expression of a society which wants to scale the heights of today�s competitive world without losing it�s basic characteristics.