Recently, I happened to meet a young boy who is in his third grade.
His parents complained that he is not at all studying and getting very less marks, some times no marks.
I asked him what difficulty he faces in studying.
And what he told, made me to think on this subject and to write this post.
He told " My teacher will say the question, I will try to translate the question in Tamil and understand, before I write the answer everyone will write, then teacher moves on to next question. And they will always say I have not studied, Hence I couldn't write the answer"
( P.S: His parents don't know English, He doesn't talk English anywhere apart from study )
And then I understood his problem.
His marks in Tamil were really good.
I translated all the science questions to him in Tamil, and asked him to answer.
He almost answered immediately for 90% of questions.
I asked the same thing in English, He couldn't do immediately.
Then I told his parents that studying is not his problem, language is the problem.
If they could not able to make him understand the English language, I asked them to put him in Tamil medium schools.
They said, we have not studied, at least we want to make him study in English.
I got shocked. What is the purpose of education?
Children have to learn something and to use in their life.
It is good to learn English language, but not to waste his learning interest of other subjects in the name of English.
Even the famous educator Dr. Maria Montessori suggested that education should be in the language which the child understands completely.
I do agree with that.
English can be learnt, if they study it as one language.
But subjects should be understood and learnt at young age, so that it will develop the thinking capacity of children.
Parents should try to understand the real problem of their kids in studying, rather than scolding them for less marks.
Please do think on this.
Vaanadhi
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