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Gayathri, a mom from Sri Sitaram Vidyalaya Matric school, Chennai wants to know & discuss if English is like fair skin in India. Every one wants to get that. Is this probbaly just the scale of aspiration.
View from another parent:
Sobha, a parent of Sir Sivaswami Kalalaya, Sr. Sec. School, Chennai.
English is like a scale of status measuring in the society. If one does not reach certain level of standard in English that one will be discarded. That is the trend of the current time.
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I think every parent should realise the importance of learning mothertongue. Since India is a multilingual country, and Hindi is not a must learn language in many of the states,we find English comfortable as a common language. But mothertongue is like mother. Evey child should be encouraged to develop reading skills in their own mothertongue which definitely has a bearing on their thought processes.
Look at it from another perspective. Let us first get it right, “We shall speak to our children ONLY in our mother tongue at home”. As someone has rightly said that is the only way we can help the child think clearly and learn to communicate. However, when they get into school be prepared to support them inlearning the English language the correct way, as it is an immensely useful tool.
Notwithstanding all the empty rhetoric of the political class, very litle has been dopne to inspire pupils to learn modern science and other products of technological development in our mother tongue. We, as parents, should ensure that our children learn their reppective mother tongue and be able to read great works of literature in these languages.
Swaminathan
Well, this is like the fair-skin syndrome. However, this is nothing new; it has been there from our school times (that is 2 decades back – don’t know if all of you are from the same generation though). Now we have got used to it. During my school times it was more than this, and parents used to take pride in announcing that their children did not know how to read/write in mother tongue. I come from Kerala, and I remember my classmates in School & College (in the 90s) carrying over this pride of reading only English fiction while not having read even a single Malayalam poetry/classic/novel. Those who took Malayalam as second language were looked down upon – the majority of the class took French, Hindi, or Special English. This was to do with the upbringing and outlook of the parents of my time. Exceptions (those who did not get a chance to study the mother tongue) were those who studied in KVs and whose parents got transferred across India every 3 or 5 years. The outcome – they are neither good at English or Hindi, nor at Malayalam. This is evident when we get together now with our kids Many of my friends who studied in Malayalam medium write/speak (now we get to know the standards of others coz of FB, blogs etc.) better English. May be because, they always had some inferiority complex (that was created by the so-called Daddy-Mummy generation) so they were extra careful and became perfect in the process. Those who ‘Talked English & Walked English’ neither bothered to find own faults nor bothered to catch up with the evolution of English language – thus lost the hold on language.
I feel it is good to learn as many languages as possible. In a country like India, though the national language is Hindi, it is not compulsory in many states. In some states, the regional language is compulsory while in some states it is not. Because of all these, in India, we are having to use more of English to communicate with one another. India can’t survive with Hindi – We are not like China or Japan. In Hong Kong (SAR-China), one has to say ‘Ingwan’ (Cantonese for English) to get English news paper – and they say ‘Wai’ (not Hello) while taking calls on phone. Most of them don’t even know the word ‘English’. That is the power of Chinese. Japan might have similar stories.
The language problem in India has been there for a very long time. We need to think of the tri-language formula suggested by Jawaharlal Nehru… But has it worked?! Finally it is English that takes Indians everywhere (within the country and outside). But we need to teach our children our mother tongue and encourage them to read books in the mother tongue. The obsession for English will continue in a country like ours.
Yes it is…….coz we are still the mental slaves of Britishers…i have seen people proudly announcing they do not know Hindi but feeling ashamed in telling they do not know English
u r correct!
Hi,
Please do not think much about speaking in English language with your kid. Children will automatically catch it when they start going to school. Speak in your mother tongue at home as many thought processess cannot be expressed fully in English. Love and care can be best communicated to your kid in your mother tongue.
Regards
Anil
True ,unless the parent acquire this knowledge up to certain level the so called elite class will not accept them as their equal.