Learning Another Language - Really Needed?

I have spent my entire childhood and youth in the same school. From the age of four, until now, I've been in Amity International School, Saket and I know for a fact that there can be no better school to tend to my needs and to help me in reaching my goals. Out of the many things I love about this institution [to be covered in another article] one of the things that I appreciate the most is the prevalent presence of neophilia. The students in our school are more than willing to learn new things, to really accept our school as a temple of learning.

One very fine example to quote at this point of time would be that of the choice of language that is to be decided by our students. Before the beginning of ninth grade, every pupil must decide which language they wish to continue learning in the next couple of years.
The choices offered are - German, French, Hindi and Sanskrit.

Amongst us students, Hindi is the most common language and English is not far behind. Most of us just learn a foreign language for the sake of it in School. So why do we even need to learn a foreign language [I don't have any comments about learning Sanskrit as a language]? As if any of us would ever need to actually speak German, French, Spanish, Russian or Japanese in our lives ..

Wrong.
People who wish to live their entire lives blind to the outside world, happy with their monotonous lives and mediocre jobs can continue to consider the learning of a foreign language as an added burden to their already pressurized lives. They can spend their entire lives building a happy little tent of oblivion and never feel the need to zoom the camera out and see the lie they call their life.

The fact of the matter is that our country is no longer cut off from the outside world. Globalisation is growing at a very fast pace. The world is no longer divided into multitudinous societies, but itself exists as one huge society. Overseas jobs are no longer available to only a few priveledged handful. Now, in such a world, is learning a foreign language really such an 'unnecesary burden'?

A large proportion of students, when asked, answered that they would pursue higher education in a different country, a few of them specifically mentioned Germany as an ideal choice. Yeah, as if pursuing higher education in a country like Germany can really be managed without a little prerequisite knowledge about their native language.

Therein lies the point I've trying to put through. Hopefully my job here is done.

More Later.
Signing Off.
Mallika Priya Khullar.

Just as an afterthought, my heartfelt gratitude to Goethe Institute for what they've been trying to do.