This policy, however, is implemented in a manner extremely detrimental to the interests of the young pupils. For instance, of the 23 indigenous Naga languages spoken in Nagaland, only 13 are recognized for being taught as mother tongue and as the medium of instruction. These languages are : Angami, Sema, Ao, Lotha, Rengma, Chokri, Kheza, Sangtam, Konyak, Chang, Phom, Yimchunger and Kuki. This decision deprives the remaining ten lingustic groups an opportunity not only to learn through their mother tongue, but also an opportunity to learn their respective mother tongues as a subject. These linguistic groups are : Khiamngan, Zemi, Liangmei, Rongmei, Pochuri, Makware, Tirkhire, Chin, Mao, and the creole or the Kacharis. All these linguistic groups are obliged to learn through the medium of the language of the neighbouring provided the language and different subject textbooks are available in the language of the neighbouring linguistic group; otherwise, the children are obliged to learn through the medium of English from Class I onwards, even before their respective mother tongues are learnt as a subject. Owing to the non-availability of the language and subject texbooks in some of the recognized languages, the situation is not quite rosy for the children belonging ot all the languages recognized by the Education Directorate for being taught as a subject and medium of instruction at the primary level. The production of textbooks in Nagaland is the monopoly of the Directorate of Education. Hardly any original writing goes in the production of these textbooks. Both the language and the subject textbooks are transitions from the books in English used elsewhere. This puts the Naga children to a severe handicap, as the contents in both the language and the subject matter of the textbooks have hardly any relevance to their culture or experience. Further textbooks are available only in some of the recognized languages, for instance, language textbooks are available upto Class X only in Ao and Angami and upto Class VII in six languages, viz., Ao, Angami, Sema, Lotha, Konyak and chokri and only upto Class II in the remaining recongized languages. Arithmetic and Science textbooks are available only in six of the 13 recognized languages. These languages are : Ao, Angami, Sema, Konyak, Lotha and Chikri. Whenever the language and the subject textbooks are not available in any language, the Naga children of that particular linguistic group are obliged to learn through a second language which at times may be of a neighboring one and most often English. The Naga children who are obliged to learn through English from class I onwards are handicapped very severely, in that they have not only to learn the items that have not relevance to their culture and experience but also a completely new linguistic structure, for instance: at the sentence level, English has SVO pattern as opposed to the Naga language having SOV pattern and at the phrase level, the Naga languages have the Noun Phrase ¾ ¾ ® Noun ± adjective ± number and the Verb phrase ¾ ¾ ® adverb + verb, whereas in English the adjective is preposed to the Noun and the adverb is postposed to the verb. Thus the handicaps of the Naga children aged five to six years extend from confronting new cultural input and new experience in learning new linguistic structures and all these new items have to belearnt before the children are equipped to handle their mother tongue satisfactorily (cf. Sreedhar 1983c).
 

To cap all these hardships arising out of learning through a Second Naga language or English, the Naga children from the minor linguistic groups have the misfortune of learning from untrained teachers, many of whom, themselves had not studied upto class V. The recruitment of the untrained, unqualified teachers also arises out of a policy decision, i.e., only a Naga belonging to the local ethnic/linguistic group can be recruited as a teacher at the primary level. Therefore, in backward areas like Tuensang District, one