Our greatest national resource is the diversity of cultures in our country. Diversity means more viewpoints to clarify, more ways of solving problems, more creative ideas, a greater ability to deal with change… Where diversity is crushed…the nation becomes weak and divided. (Waiko 1997) If mother tongue (MT) is not utilised children tend to remain illiterate in both (or all) languages. If MT is not developed sufficiently for them to become fluent readers and writers, their understanding of the vocabulary and syntax of their own language will be limited. This gap in their understanding of the structure of their first language limits their ability to learn the second language (L2). A strong foundation in MT is required for learning L2, as Cummins (2000) points out:   “The level of development of children's mother tongue is a strong predictor of their second language development… Children…with a solid foundation in their mother tongue develop stronger literacy abilities in the school language. Thomas and Collier would agree that it is a fallacy to think that children who are immersed in L2 from the beginning learn L2 better. They do not. This is what they found happens when children learn in L2 only: "English (L2) language learners immersed in the English (L2) mainstream … showed large decreases in reading and math achievement by grade 5 when compared to students who received bilingual/ESL services. The largest number of dropouts came from this group.” Thomas and Collier, 2002 Benson corroborates this finding: Submersion in L2 is at least highly inefficient, if not wasteful and discriminatory, since such school systems are characterised by low intake, high repetition and dropout, and low completion rates. The costs to the individual, who sacrifices productive agricultural and family work time to go to school, only to experience failure and rejection, are high. Carol Benson, 2002 p314 Children’s understanding of concepts is limited or confused if learning only in L2, but the knowledge and skills they acquire in their first language “transfer across languages from the mother tongue…to the school language”. (Cummins 2000) Jhingran (2005) sums up: The exclusion of mother tongues from early education has serious consequences for tribal children …..