Many of the children of my acquaintances learn Hindi as their mother tongue. However, the syllabus offered to these students is increasingly out of sync with developments in the language, and extremely difficult.

Having been a language teacher, I know that the content and the quality of the language have been becoming archaic as well as unmanageable for students. The parents I have discussed the matter with agree.

They have voiced their complaints, but to no avail. The stock response is that the language syllabus for the mother tongue being offered here is in tandem with the Hindi curriculum in India. That is no longer valid as the language syllabus in India has also changed and become more contemporary and meaningful.

Do the schools offering mother tongue in Singapore receive guidance from the Ministry of Education? Do they realise that the ministry constantly monitors, updates and studies the impact of the curriculum in Mandarin, Malay, English and other languages? While the Mandarin syllabus is in the process of being made more student-friendly, the Hindi syllabus has been made more difficult and learning-unfriendly.

The captive Indian expat student numbers give these schools a misplaced sense of success. This should certainly not be taken as a reason not to re-assess the present curriculum and take steps towards framing a meaningful learning curriculum for the students.

The Hindi Society and the DAV Hindi School, which are involved in crafting Hindi as a mother tongue here, must plan their strategic objective of teaching the language to students and preparing them for the future, instead of stressing them out in the present and regressing them to the past.

Atima Joshi (Mrs)