Author: Hemali Chhapia
Publication: The Times of India
Date: March 23, 2008
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_shining_US_headhunts_Hindi_teachers/articleshow/2890036.cms
Little would Jagdish Prasad Sharma have dreamed
that his proficiency in Hindi would one day take him from the quiet holy town
of Mathura to the bright lights of the US.
Earlier this month, Sharma was one among the
100-odd Hindi teachers who travelled to Noida to be interviewed by a delegation
from Connecticut and Carolina, in India to headhunt young, full-time Hindi
teachers for their schools.
Hindi is the new Mandarin. Just as Mandarin
is being learnt by youngsters all over the world to give them a strategic
advantage with the emerging China, Hindi too is being sought after as the
language of the other Asian tiger.
Some schools in the US have decided to introduce
Hindi as a foreign language with staples like French, Spanish and German.
Apart from Hindi, the visiting delegation
also interviewed about 70 Arabic teachers. Last year, the Bush administration
had identified Arabic and Hindi among half-a-dozen critical foreign languages
which it felt was vital for its national security.
"We're going to teach our kids how to
speak important languages. We will welcome teachers here to help teach our
kids how to speak languages," US President George Bush had said during
a National Security Language Initiative in New York.
With an initial budget of $114 million, this
initiative aims at helping more Americans to become multilingual and to do
so at a young age. Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, Persian and Hindi are all "important
languages".
Instructors are being recruited to teach these
from kindergarten right up to the university level.
In India, the recruitment process is being
facilitated by an arm of the human resources development ministry, called
EdCIL (Education Consultants India Limited.
In 2004, EdCIL signed a memorandum of understanding
with the American Department of Education to export several full-time Indian
teachers for math, science and special education.
"Now, for the first time, there is a
demand for Hindi teachers too,'' said Anu Banerjee, chief managing director,
EdCIL. "The applicant needs to have a master's degree with a B.Ed or
an M.Ed and a minimum of three years' work experience."
This American dream beckons many. For 39-year-old
Sharma, who has been teaching Premchand's writings and Kabir's dohas for years,
teaching in a US state school at a salary of Rs 12 lakh a year is an unimaginable
opportunity-and one that truly makes him a global villager.