Why Mother Tongue Education Beats English for Better Development?
Questioner: Acharya Ji, after a lot of study and thought process, and after listening to various analysts, scholars, and philosophers, I decided to withdraw my child from a renowned English medium school and enrolled him into a Marathi medium school, which is my native language. So, considering all the factors that learning in the mother tongue develops the child much better than learning from a non-native language education, in this case, was in the English language, non-native.
So now he's in first standard, he is learning in a Marathi school. The things which I'm becoming afraid of are something like that— in that school, the facilities like, there is no playground, there are some unpleasant classrooms, which I have earlier seen in the English medium schools. Then, the parent crowd in that school is very behind, relatively, in education, the open-mind perspective, and mostly they come from the lower economic strata. The teaching staff is average, not very mature enough, and driven by some old-fashioned social cultures.
For example, they celebrated a doll's marriage in their school, and, literally, the students were following the marriage ceremony. So, concluding this, my question is: shall I take a tough decision of enrolling my kid again into a renowned English medium school, where he will at least get some good sports culture or discipline?
Acharya Prashant: There is a phrase in logic—it comes from Greek, Latin, I don't know. It must be from Greek, mostly. They come from Greek. "Ceteris paribus."
Heard of it?
Questioner: Never.
Acharya Prashant: Those from an economics background would know of it. What does that mean? "All things remaining equal." Only if everything else is equal, then this conclusion holds good.
Yes, a Marathi medium school is better than an English or French or Russian medium school—only "Ceteris paribus." If everything else is equal—if there are two schools, one Marathi medium, one English medium, and they are equal in all other respects, the only difference being the medium of instruction—one is English, one is through Marathi—only then the Marathi school is preferable.
Yes, basics of logic, sir. That completes my answer.
Questioner: Yeah.
Acharya Prashant: You used the word "perspective." What does "perspective" mean? Perspective means to keep a thing in its proper place. To know the place and size of a thing in the macro context. That's perspective. You're seeing just one thing—the medium of instruction. You're not seeing the size of the playground. You're not seeing the cultural biases of the teachers. You're not seeing seventy other factors that are operational. How can you come to a valid conclusion?
Same thing I find with many people who say, "No, I'm pulling my kid out of the school and will prefer homeschooling." Homeschooling has these many advantages. Yes, all those advantages are there. "Ceteris paribus."—if you can give all the advantages of the regular formal kind of schooling at home as well, then homeschooling is preferable compared to formal schooling.
But can you give the other things at home? Do you have a lab at home? Do you have a playground at home? Do you have two hundred other kids to give him company at home? Do you have discipline at home? You do not have these things at home. You're considering just one thing that has maybe a 5 to 10% weightage, and you are forgetting all the other things that have 90 to 95% weightage. What kind of rationality is this?
Being spiritual does not mean that you have to necessarily rebel against everything. You don't have to be a professional rebel. You don't have to make it a point to compulsorily go against the crowd. If you do that, neither you nor I are entitled to wear these shirts because that's what all the commoners do. Let's be special—let's put our socks on both these arms and our undergarments on our chests.
We don't have to necessarily go against the flow. We don't have to necessarily go with the flow either. We have to logically see what is best. What is the intellect for? This too is some kind of a cult—militating against everything that is contemporary or prevalent or modern. Everything. Obviously, the contemporary things or prevalent things, they come with their share of inadequacies and harms.
So, you have to see how to navigate through it to minimize the harm and maximize the benefit. You can't summarily reject everything that is modern or contemporary. It's not as if the modern civilization is just totally debauched. It has its own share of merits sir, and let's acknowledge that.
I will not— I, you know, I'm— I'm a great parent. I do not allow my kid to watch TV at all. I don't concur with that. You have to be discreet. See what can be allowed and see what cannot be. See what is good for the kid, see what is not, and leave a few things to the child's discretion. “I do not allow the kid to play these modern European sports. He will only play Kabaddi and Kho-Kho.”
Kabaddi is a great sport, and India has been doing well in that, we acknowledge that. But we also know the benefits of racket sports. And racket sports in India do not come to us from tradition, be it badminton, tennis, squash, or table tennis. They come to us from abroad. You know, medical research proves that if you want to really live healthily, racket sports are the best for that.
Why just rubbish everything that belongs to this age? Just as everything cannot be accepted en toto, similarly, everything cannot be rejected en toto. Vivek. Discretion. Yes, I would want the kid to be a great man, fluent in his native language, right? A great person fluent in his native language. But what if it comes to a choice between greatness and fluency in the native language? What would you pick?
What if it comes to this—that he can either be great in consciousness, or he can be fluent in the native language? What would you pick? Obviously, greatness.
Language is a wonderful thing, and I too have a special feeling for our native languages. One by one, we are launching channels in the native languages. We already have five—Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada—two more are on their way. We respect our native languages, we love them.
But that does not mean that you don't have to benefit from what is not native. Nativity is fine, but truth is above everything else. Are you getting it?
Yes, we all love our native foods, our staple diet—who does not? But that does not mean that I'll not have a look at Mexican cuisine or whatever—Continental, Italian, Japanese. I have a look at everything. One cannot be biased either side. And we see both kinds of biases.
There are those who are such fans of everything that is not Indian that they are ever ready to consume even shit, provided it is imported. And then there are those who say, "You know, we are Indians, so—gobar."
Unfortunately, in India, the ecosystem—the educational infrastructure in the native languages—is pretty weak. Not that schools don't exist—they exist a plenty. But as you pointed out, the quality of teachers, the quality of the crowd—all that is, a bit abysmal. And there is no obligation on you to make the child suffer due to your linguistic biases.
Today, we have the biggest Hindi language channel—must be in the entire world, right? The entire world. I have had an English-medium education throughout. You hear of those schools where kids are penalized for speaking in the native—the vernacular, right? Questioner: Yeah.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah. I come from such schools. And obviously, I do not support anglicization of the mind. But I also probably know that my English-medium education has contributed to what I am currently doing. So that's a curious thing.
This world's largest Hindi language channel probably could not have come without my English-medium education. So many of the great poets—think of Ageya, for example—their education was in English, and they went on to become stalwarts in the Hindi field.
Think of Gandhi—a coat-and-pant-donning barrister from London, then South Africa—and he becomes the Hindi heartland's Mahatma. When he went to Champaran, he didn't even know the Bihari language. Bhojpuri was spoken and written in the Kaithi script, and Gandhi knew neither. And he's a Gujarati, returning from abroad—and see where he begins his mission: in Bihar.
His education abroad helped him do great things in the Hindi heartland. You don't have to stick to Hindi and Hindism alone to do good for the Hindi people. You don't have to stick to the Marathi language to do good to the Maratha homeland. And you can even be a great Marathi scholar without having studied in a Marathi-medium school.
Obviously—again, ceteris paribus—if you get a Marathi-medium school that is almost at par with the standards of an English-medium school, then you must definitely opt for the Marathi school. Definitely. But if the difference is too large, then we cannot be unjust to the kid.
Swami Vivekananda is a Bengali icon. Did he receive his higher education in the Bengali medium? No, he did not. And today, he is revered in Bengal—particularly because his education enabled him to go abroad and do great things there. Had he known only Bengali, would he have been able to achieve the feat that he did in Chicago, 1893?
And obviously, his hold over the Bengali language was awesome. Nehru too had an exclusively English education. But you listen to him speaking in Hindi—he used to call it Hindustani—you listen to him speaking in Hindi, and there is such fineness.
Tagore—the very pride of Bengal—immaculate English. And which language did the Gitanjali appear in? Bengali. You know, to get the Nobel, it had to be translated so that they could understand. Not an either-or thing, huh?
The first thing is quality. Quality. The first thing is that the child should be built up. The first thing is that education should be able to raise consciousness. The language comes after that. The medium of instruction comes after.
It is very important, but it is not the first thing. The first thing is consciousness. The second thing is language.
