English education is a boon or bane for students-Debate
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
More than half a century has passed since British rule ended in India but the language of those rulers has a much firmer hold on Indian society today than at the time they departed. This may not be a cause for concern. After all, English is the language in which most advances in the fields of science, technology, business, entertainment, etc. are expressed. It is the language of the most powerful and most developed nation on the earth. The greater the acceptance of English language in Indian society – the argument goes – the faster India would advance.
If this were true, India would already be more developed than East Asian nations where medium of instructions is non-English. In fact, quite the reverse is true, and how! It is not our fluent-in-English engineers who go and make cars and televisions in Korea. Rather, it is Korean engineers who by studying translated-from-English-to-Korean books somehow better absorb the knowledge and are able to make better use of it. One can give such examples in virtually any field of endeavor.
Could it be that mastery of the English language is not essential for progress? Japan has been demonstrating this for more than a century. Some may view this as an exception due to legendary industriousness of those people. But Taiwan and Korean have followed the same non-English path, with similar results and now China is growing by leaps and bounds to eclipse all other Asian nations, without mandating its citizens to learn English.
Of course, India is different! Not so in the sense that our languages are too primitive to be fit for translation from English; far from it since all Indian languages are either directly-derived-from or greatly-influenced-by Sanskrit, which had one of the richest word-stocks in the ancient world. India is different in that it has many languages and there is pervasive apathy and even animosity between these languages. In this discordant atmosphere, a language of foreign lands rules even though an average citizen can barely comprehend a sentence or two in it.
In the major cities of India, there are schools where foreign languages like French and German are taught. In such schools, the emphasis is always on grammar and on enhancing the vocabulary. Students learn to converse and comprehend these languages without studying any literary pieces. This is how English, too, is taught in other non-English-speaking countries around the world. But in India, we insist on following the British way of teaching English – which is fine for someone living in London – and waste immense amounts of time and energy of students, with so little to show for their efforts.
This is not to say that we should not familiarize our students with literature of other languages. We certainly should, but by first translating those works to the mother tongue of the students, as is done everywhere else. In most other Asian countries, students are not only better acquainted with works of Shakespeare and Wordsworth; they even understand poems of Rabindranath Tagore better than non-Bengali students of India do. This is so since in India, Tagore’s poems and stories are part of English textbooks and as a result, most students grasp a fraction of the meaning even after consulting their “kunji’s” (guides).
In today’s India, those who oppose the all-encompassing English influence are pooh-poohed as parochial and anti-progress. There is also a presumption that such people are merely showing their envy and frustration, not having the means or ability to learn English. Thus, it is impossible to launch any movement opposing English rule from within India. Just as struggle against British rule was, quite often, started by overseas Indians, a movement against English rule in India would have to be initiated by non-resident Indians, especially the ones here in the U.S. After all, no one can accuse us of being backward-minded or of being unable to speak English
The debate is structured below-
1. The statement that English education is a boon is agreeable and justifiable.
2. English education was introduced in India in the British ages and it is considered one of the blessings of the British renaissance.
3. English is one of the most common languages through which people communicate almost across the entire globe. People who are native to English can understand and comprehend basic English.
4. English introduces various career paths and can broaden the perspectives and scopes.
5. English education is necessary and crucial for the development and welfare of the present and upcoming generations.