At the age of 8 to 10 they would graduate perhaps into a school conducted in the mother tongue. There they would carry on with all the subjects of a normal curriculum. This would include, in time, courses in literature of those languages in which their earliest schooling had been presented. They would turn to those subjects effectively and without accent.

During higher education it will always be desirable that some students take up new languages at a later period and there is a good deal of evidence that he who has learned more than one language as a little child has greater facility for the acquisition of additional languages in adult life.

I make no plea for any particular language anywhere. But if this method were to be employed in this country in areas, for example, where the mother tongue is neither English nor Hindi, teachers would have to be found who could conduct the first years in Hindi, others, perhaps in English. They need not be specially trained in languages teaching. After those primary years it would matter little what tongue was used in subsequent teaching. The growing child could later expand his vocabulary in any one or in all these languages with relative ease.

My plea is simply that educators and parents should give some thought to the nature of the brain of a child, for the brain is a living mechanism, not a

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machine. In case of a breakdown, it can substitute one of its parts for the function of another. But it has its limitations. It is subject to inexorable change with the passage of time.

In the words of the unknown writer of Ecclesiastes: "To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven: "A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck UP that which is planted.

* * * * * *

"A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance".

The human brain specializes in the learning of languages before the ages of 10 to 14. After that, gradually, inevitably, it seems to become rigid, slow, less receptive. In regard to this function it grows old all too fast. But it is ready for life's fulfilment in other ways, ready for resoning, self discipline, understanding, and at last there comes, for all of us, a time of Wisdom.

(Courtesy: External Services Division, All India Radio)

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