Bilingual Education System at Primary Schools of Pakistan

Abstract

A nation’s growth rests upon multiple factors but among
those the most vital asset is its educated people serving and contributing
towards its development and prosperity. It implies that education is the
key factor in the growth of any nation, and in a multilingual and
multicultural society like Pakistan, it becomes imperative that the
medium of instruction in education system needs to be addressed. This
research article aims to explore if a system of bilingual education at
primary schools of Pakistan can be proposed, in which the basic
knowledge and information will be provided to the students in their
native language at primary level. It also aims to investigate if a bilingual
education system can successfully be implemented and run in a society
like Pakistan which is linguistically well diverse. The rationale of this
research article stems from the need that the teaching of basic concepts
in different subjects and provision of knowledge in the native language to
the students at primary schools lead to increased cognitive development
(Bloom’s Taxonomy) and self confidence. It lies within the paradigms of
Qualitative research and the results are reflected through the analysis of
the questions put forward by Tucker, G. Richard (1999) regarding the
prospects of bilingual or multilingual education system in multilingual
societies, and recommendations made by Luis Enrique López (1999) for
the successful implementation process of a bilingual education system.