ON THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE

YOU ARE WHAT YOU SPEAK

I had a surreal moment of internet multi-tasking today that I wanted to share...I'm listening to Indian blogger and ethnographer Dina Mehta's Skypecast interview on Global Voice (RECOMMENDED), while reading New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's follow-up column (another must-read) on his current visit to Bangalore, India. 

Dina is talking about how important even the least educated and poor Indians seem to be taking English education for their children.  She gives an anecdotal example of a woman who works for her, I believe as a housekeeper.

This woman is putting her child through private school in India at an extraordinary personal cost to her as a percent of her income.  She's driven by the primary motivation of giving the child a better shot at learning English earlier than the state school, where English is taught in the fourth vs. the first grade.  Mind you, this is in the second most populous country in the world, where English is already the second most spoken language in the country after Hindi, the "national" language.

At the same time as I'm listening to this, I read Mr. Friedman saying in his column, titled "A race to the top",

A grass-roots movement is now spreading (in India), demanding that English be taught in state schools - where 85 percent of children go - beginning in first grade, not fourth grade. "What's new is where this movement is coming from," said the Indian commentator Krishna Prasad. "It's coming from the farmers and the Dalits, the lowest groups in society."

Even the poor have been to the cities enough to know that English is now the key to a tech-sector job, and they want their kids to have those opportunities.

This of course struck a nerve with me for two reasons: 

1. my preceding post on the French inventing  a home-grown word for blogging, while at the same time getting off the EU bus for an indefinite siesta.
2. my personal experience with this issue.

But first, some context...the desire to preserve one's culture from alien influences is as ancient as humankind.  India has gone through its own version of protecting its plethora of regional languages from outside influences, especially in the context of teaching the right language at the right time in state schools. 

From Language in India, a monthly online journal focused on the study of languages in India, noted the following over two years ago:

All these years, governments in Indian states talked about concept formation, maintaining regional identity, preserving the culture of the people, and adoring and venerating our mother tongues, etc. And these goals were seen to be opposed if English is taught in earliest stages of school education.

Now the imbalance between the rural and urban areas has come to the help of the governments to change their time-honored policy. Even West Bengal has assumed this posture now.

Should we welcome such a change when the governments and the parents do not seem to take mother tongue education seriously? India is well set on the road to becoming a country with English as the only medium of instruction.

Interesting side-note...in a separate item, Language in India observes:

The Chinese are eager to learn English from Indians as they find it easier to understand the latter's accent! Is it really true that the Chinese find it easier to understand our English accent?

A Karnataka minister, who had a busy visit to China, says so. He said, "Members of the delegation of the Standing Committee of the Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress in China wanted to seek the help of the Karnataka Government in teaching English in primary schools in the province … a survey conducted jointly by the Chinese and the Japanese had found Indians were among the better teachers of English in the region."

As I mentioned earlier, all this resonates for personal reasons as well.  While growing up, my parents faced their own personal, family tug-of-war that France, and state governments in India are facing:  how do we teach the kids (my younger sister and I), their own language and culture while making sure they're also best equipped to deal with the world?

Neither of my parents finished high school, nor speak English.  Yet, while raising my sister and I in a middle eastern country, my Dad made sure both of us went to a private school where the medium of instruction was English.  That privilege was also a high percent of my parents' income on a relative basis, and I know they endured additional hardships and sacrifice for a number of years.

At the same time, I'm grateful to my mother, for home-teaching both of us how to read and write in Gujarati, our mother tongue, and Hindi.  Of course, we also learned some French in high-school.

My parents "debated" the issue of where to strike the right balance between familiar and foreign constantly as we grew up.  It wasn't easy...

As my mother always reminded my Dad, they had to live with both their children jabbering in a language neither could understand for all the time we were growing up, and the resulting feeling of exclusion from an important part of their childrens' lives.  And they were helpless in terms of helping us with our homework, which is something I know many parents truly look forward to in their time with the kids.

They couldn't provide the deep guidance that most parents do, on what educational tracks first I and then my sister should pursue after High School.  This made me depend on family friends (thank you Karias!) and resources like the US embassy, which I've alluded to in previous posts.

For all that and more, I'm truly grateful...it enabled me to be the first member of our family to go to the US at 17, and earn an undergraduate and graduate degree, and then ultimately, to blog...in English.

I know I'm going pass it on with my kids, making sure they learn Chinese, Hindi, or Klingon if need be (don't laugh...even Google speaks Klingon)...whatever will make them able to function best in the world of their future.  And of course a little French, for that savoir-faire...

Comments

[Dina Mehta]

Hey Michael - here from a trackback ping that i somehow lost until now in all my travels - just wanted to touch base and say hi from Mumbai. You've got such an interesting blog - how have you managed to "hide" it from the Indian blogworld so far :) ?