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The pain of language learning
The pain of language learning
A few months ago, during a school interaction in Chennai, I met a parent who spoke with visible anxiety about her son. The child had once been bright, curious, and academically strong. But over the last few years, repeated relocations due to his father’s transferable job had slowly changed him.
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The family had lived in Tamil Nadu, moved to Karnataka, and later returned to Chennai. During this period, the child learned Tamil, then Kannada, and was later expected to “relearn” Tamil again at a higher academic level. Somewhere along the journey, language stopped being joyful.
The child who once loved learning began withdrawing from classroom participation. His grades dropped. He developed fear towards language classes and was eventually referred for counselling because teachers felt he lacked focus and attention.
But was the child really the problem?
Or are our systems failing to recognise the realities of modern Indian childhood?
As an educationist, I strongly believe that learning one’s mother tongue is important. Language is deeply connected to identity, emotion, culture, and belonging. Children should never grow disconnected from their roots.
But today, an important question needs reflection:
How do we define a child’s mother tongue anymore?
India has changed significantly over the last two decades. Families move constantly across states for employment, business, and professional opportunities. Added to this is the rapid growth of IT and corporate culture, especially in urban India, where inter-state marriages are increasingly common.
A Tamil-speaking mother and a Punjabi-speaking father may raise their child in Bengaluru while communicating largely in English at work. Another child may have a Bengali mother, a Telugu father, and study across multiple cities during their school years.
So what becomes the child’s mother tongue?
Is it the language spoken by the mother? The father? The state they live in? Or simply the language in which the child feels emotionally secure?
These are no longer abstract questions. They represent the lived reality of many Indian families today.
This is precisely why language policies and educational reforms must look at the India of the present, not merely the India of the past. Policies cannot assume that every child grows up within one linguistic and cultural ecosystem.
I personally believe learning the regional language of the state one lives in is valuable. It helps children integrate socially, understand local culture, and develop respect for diversity. Learning additional languages can enrich children immensely.
But somewhere, I feel we are missing the larger point behind language learning itself.
The issue is not learning three languages.
The issue is making them compulsory in a rigid and uniform manner without adequately considering the child’s context, mobility, emotional wellbeing, and learning capacity.
Over the years, academics itself has increasingly become a ritual of rigour rather than a meaningful process of learning. We keep adding layers, expectations, assessments, and mandates while rarely pausing to ask a simple question:
Is the child actually enjoying learning anymore?
There is a vast difference between learning a language joyfully and being academically trapped by it.
Why can language learning not become more communicative, experiential, and culturally immersive rather than heavily examination-driven? Why can children not learn through stories, theatre, songs, traditions, and local experiences instead of memorisation and fear of marks?
Children do not dislike languages.
They dislike anxiety, humiliation, and repeated failure.
One of the greatest mistakes educational systems make is assuming that all children live stable and geographically rooted lives. That assumption no longer reflects urban and semi-urban India.
At the same time, I also understand the concern many people raise that native and regional languages may slowly weaken if they are not protected meaningfully. India’s languages are civilisational treasures. They deserve preservation and pride.
But preservation cannot happen through pressure alone.
Children develop love for languages through emotional connection, not compulsion.
In a diverse country like India, schools also face practical challenges. It is not easy to offer multiple languages due to teacher availability, timetables, and curriculum structures. Which is why flexibility becomes important.
Why can schools not be given more freedom to decide language offerings based on the demographic reality of the children they serve?
After all, education is not meant to standardise children. It is meant to support them.
What concerns me most as an educator is that discussions around language often become emotionally and politically charged, while the child quietly disappears from the centre of the conversation.
We speak today about student stress, mental health, disengagement, and learning fatigue. Yet we continue introducing educational changes without adequately examining their emotional impact on children who are already navigating constant transitions.
As we move towards another academic year this June, perhaps this is the moment for policymakers, educators, schools, and parents to ask a simple question:
Are we building systems around children, or are we expecting children to endlessly adjust to systems?
India’s linguistic diversity is one of its greatest strengths. Our children deserve the opportunity to experience that richness with curiosity and joy, not fear and exhaustion.
If language learning can move beyond compulsion and become a bridge to culture, empathy, and human connection, we will not merely create multilingual students.
We will nurture happier, emotionally secure learners who continue to love both learning and the many beautiful languages India carries within it.
(K.R. Maalathi is an Educationist, Advisor and Mentor to schools across the country. She is also the founder of Auuro Educational Services.)
Published - May 25, 2026 08:30 am IST
education / school / language
Source: TheHindu
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