December 12, 2018 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
John Stuart Mill on Indians Learning English
Gottlob Frege as some of you may recall on
my series on logic and Foundations of Mathematics was one of the founding
fathers of the branch of mathematical logic.
John Stuart Mill being an employee of the
Company for 35 years was in close association with Indians and hence his
observation is worth considering seriously.
He noted that the Hindus and Moslems would
acquire ‘English Education’ to gain respect in their society without making any
practical application of it.
For them the acquisition of this so called
‘English Education’ became a goal in itself for the sake of prestige that came
along with it rather than a means to actual substantive advancement.
More than 180 years after the passing of
the English Education Act of 1835 thanks to Macaulay and almost 60 years after
English officially leaving India for good the obsession for ‘English Education’
among the Hindus and Moslems of India remains undiminished.
This is in spite of the fact that there is
enough evidence to show that children grasp the concepts of science and
mathematics much better in their own native language.
Yet there remains a pervasive belief in the
Hindu society that education in English is superior (for the reason well
defined by John Stuart Mill).
While everyone sees great scientific
progress in English speaking nations like the United States and the United
Kingdom they all are blind to the fact that equally great science is done by
Europeans, Japanese, Chinese and Koreans among others and Russia still
continues to produce mathematicians that think out of the world.
Mathematics for instance is a language on
its own (besides search for patterns in numbers, space, topology and much more)
and I would argue that it is one of those sciences where the knowledge of
natural language becomes a hindrance.
This is so because in mathematics even very
elementary words such as “or” and “and” have a very precise meaning from the
sense very different from that they have in everyday speech.
Similarly words such as “open”, “field” and
“groups” are such powerful mathematical ideas that have almost nothing in
common to their general English language meaning.
So a child made proficient in English
grammar and vocabulary on entering mathematics class would perhaps drown in
angst at the complete novelty of the ideas inherent in the words that was used
by Shakespeare.
Of course I am not saying that a person
educated in his native language would find mathematics any easier.
All I am trying to say is that language
does not matter when it comes to grasping the substance of scientific ideas and
mathematical logic.
It is not surprising that campuses of
American Universities are littered with brilliant minds some of whom may be
barely or poorly articulate in the English language.
The ability of a mind to comprehend and to
understand is not a function of any specific language used by it.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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