EDUCATION - Part -II

Language Education

by Our Guest Writer D.Saravanan( http://oru-thuli.blogspot.com/ )

This time I would like to share my views on language education. Though I am not even sure whether the term language education exists. For me, this term means teaching or learning a language, to be precise – mother tongue, English, and Hindi. Whether to teach three languages or two languages in a school is a political issue, which I would not like to discuss in this article. I would rather like to share my views with you on importance of learning languages. I feel our students should be given a fair chance to study languages of their choice. I would like to insist that it is more important to learn languages than studying science or maths.

To understand the importance of learning languages, we first need to know why language education is ostracized or why learning of languages is not encouraged amongst our students. I guess the national fervor – ‘it promotes no economic or intellectual growth prevails’ is the main reason for this kind of discrimination against language learning.

“Language education provides/promotes no economic growth” – Do you think this is a good reason for discouraging our students from learning languages? I say NO. If you have read Swami Vivekananda’s view on education, you will agree with me that purpose of education is not to facilitate economical growth only. However, I do accept the fact that education facilitates economic growth as well but it is not its only motive or goal. In fact if you analyze closely, you will understand that even science education provides no economic growth; it is the way we apply science that gives financial benefit.

“Language education provides/promotes no intellectual growth” – Is it so? Well, that depends on how we define “intellectual growth”. If you say learning scientific principles or mathematical theorems alone are intellectual growth, then a considerable part of world population is not intellectual. Intellectual growth is perhaps possible by constantly interacting with the world around us and learning whatever we can from our experiences, experiments and education. Through this process, we continuously gain knowledge and use it for our material and intellectual upliftment. And for communicating, we need languages not science or math.

The next question: How is language education ignored or overlooked? It is mainly done by messing up the syllabus of the languages taught in schools. It is messed up to such an extent that it makes no sense to the students. Also, perhaps the curriculum developers make sure to take away its relevance. If you compare the syllabus of subjects such as science or mathematics with that of the languages taught in schools, you will understand what I mean.. Language is a vast subject and we should carefully and responsibly decide what is to be imparted – grammar, literature that reflects heritage, or contemporary linguistics etc. Science and mathematics can stimulate a student and give knowledge of specific fields and kinds, but when you a study language, it not only stimulates and excites but also inspires.

Many of us know that Swami Vivekananda started his speech with “Brothers and Sisters” in the World Parliament of Religions, Netaji said “Give blood, I will give Independence”, and Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream”. But how many of us know what they said after Those legendry words. As I said earlier, if the syllabus of a language is structured properly and taught in detail with interest, we will have a man-making and nation-building education.