Four decades after the Bengal Left scrapped English at the primary level ~ to the detriment of a generation of students ~ the present education minister’s directive on Thursday will be generally welcomed. Principals of government and government-aided colleges have been directed to take “suitable steps” towards enhancement of the students’ “communication, reading and speaking abilities in the English language”. So far, so reassuring. The realization has dawned after engineering graduates from vernacular schools have failed to interact in English effectively in their places of work, despite the seemingly attractive placements.

That said, the chief regret must be that skills in communicative English are best honed at the primary stage if not earlier, and not when the student steps into the portals of a college after 12 years of schooling. “Despite students of colleges/universities being good in academics, they are not able to perform to their level of competency at the national and international levels due to the lack of proficiency in the English language”. However welcome Mr Bratya Basu’s directive, the decision to drop English from the primary curriculum in the early 1980s is now showing its long-term impact.

Indeed, an earnest effort towards the teaching of communicative English ought to have been initiated from the school level to improve the students’ proficiency in English. The minister’s imprimatur can, therefore, be greeted with a qualified ‘yes’. For close to 40 years, it has been fairly evident that Bengal is producing a large number of students who are hamstrung by their inability to follow instructions in English or even communicate their thoughts in the language. Books on science and technology are by and large authored in English, and not in the regional language, as the Left stalwarts had once imagined.

Thankfully, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as Chief Minister took the bold decision to reverse the decision of his senior comrades. English was reintroduced in the primary curriculum, but the initiative has turned out to be too little, too late. The incumbent education minister has logically extended the ambit of the former Chief Minister’s decision. Not wholly unrelated is the imperative to recruit suitable teachers to improve the standard of English that is sought to be taught.

A survey conducted a couple of years ago had revealed the distressing detail that few teachers are suitably proficient to teach English in schools. “To pursue science, one must develop a command over the English language,” is the prognosis of Bikash Sinha, former Director of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics. “And the effort should start at the school level.”

Prominent academics are generally agreed that the skill to communicate in English ought to be imparted at the school level. It is as vital as the teaching and assimilation of elementary mathematics. Bereft of skills in communicative English at the primary level, the teaching of spoken English in colleges and universities might turn out to be a fruitless exercise. West Bengal can scarcely afford serial disasters in matters elementary.