Early initiation of learning a mother tongue is important for a child’s creative thinking, while English can be learnt at any time in life for use as a communication tool, according to University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar.
The teaching of regional languages, however, could not be done at the cost of English in a globalised world, he said.
“Suppose I give you a task and say you have to reach a destination, but you don’t know how to reach there. I give you a cycle to reach the destination, but you don’t know how to cycle. Now, you have to do two tasks — you have to learn how to cycle as well as ask people for directions to reach the destination. On which will you focus in order to be a good learner? That is the dilemma a child faces? We want to remove that dilemma and let the child think naturally in their own mother tongue, forget about English. You can learn it at any time,” Mr. Kumar told The Hindu in an interview.
