GUWAHATI, June 25 � The Friends of Assam and Seven Sisters (FASS) has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to use his good office in scrapping the foreign languages like German and French from the Central Board of Secondary Education�s (CBSE) list of third language. FASS is a joint platform of the Indian diaspora of NE India origin and the people of the NE region.
In a memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister, the FASS said it is for maintaining the spirit of the three-language formula propounded by the 1968 National Education Policy. �We feel German or French or any other foreign language should not be taught in Indian schools as a third language; rather these can be offered by schools in a �hobby class� if the schools have the infrastructure,� it said.
Commenting on the options for the English-medium schools of Assam, it said that in that case, English being the first language, scope should be there for choosing either Hindi-I or Assamese-I as the second language and either Hindi-II or Assamese-II as the third language. Freedom should be given to the schools, if they so wish, to teach a foreign language in the hobby class. A similar pattern may be followed in the vernacular-medium schools, too, to maintain the three-language formula.
But, when the medium of instruction is the State language (like Assamese in Assam), then the second language should be English and the third language should be Hindi. The third language should be dropped after class-VIII.
