PART TWO
Teaching Problems -- The BASIC Approach
CHAPTER 6
English -- Teaching Medium or Second-Language ?

What is wrong with Indian students is that they cannot think. They have not learnt their own language; they have not been able to master the foreign one forced on them they have fallen between two stools. When von take away the language of a community you take away its ideas too. All coherent thinking depends upon adequate expression of what we think. To write badly is to think badly. One who has not mastered any language is inevitably a bad thinker.

Of course I do not suppose that it is possible, for India is a long way off from swaraj ; but even after its attainment we could not afford to isolate ourselves from the main current of western thought. The world has become one as it was never before in world history. Our means of communication have become so rapid that a quick exchange of ideas is continually taking place. In order to keep pace with the march of events and the growth of new ideas we have got to link ourselves with the western world. English at the present moment is the language of many countries, and will gradually become, even if the British Empire breaks up, the language of three- fourths of the whole world. Therefore it is in our best interests that we should retain English as a second language in the curricula of our educational institutions.

I could understand and forgive a furious national reaction against the use of English in India. But that would be to impoverish unpardonably the intellectual life of India. No language today has a range so wide as English. It will open the New World no less than our little island. It will give Indians what they never had before in their history, a key to the other great civilization of Asia, for every educated Chinese knows English. And finally, may I say, as a European who has enjoyed the hospitality and learned to appreciate the courtesy of Indians, that while they retain English as a second language, they render easier of access to the rest of mankind their thought and their national personality.

CHAPTER 7
AIM -- Understanding or Expression ?

1 . Hearing -- Understanding the spoken word.
2 . Reading -- Understanding the written or printed word.

1 . Speaking -- Expression of thought by the spoken word.
2 . Writing -- Expression of thought by the written word.

However fruitful the foreign language may be in respect to knowledge and thought it can never possess for them the intimate emotional significance of the language of the home. They grow up, therefore, intellectually educated but emotionally sterile.

It is only the very few, of greater intelligence, linguistic aptitude and opportunity, in any country who have occasion to converse with foreign peoples in their own languages. The average boy has neither the ability nor the opportunity to learn a foreign language in this way -- nor yet has he the need. If he succeeds his success is useful to him only in so far as it enables him to read the foreign language -- a power which (as we shall see) he might have achieved in far less time and without any sacrifice whatever.
The essential need of the average Bilingual child of a minor language is simply that of reading ability in one of the major languages to apply the informational and scientific deficiency of this national literature.

1 . That it is easier for the average pupil to learn to read than to speak and write. Therefore, while all pupils should be taught to read, speaking and writing should be reserved for the more gifted pupils.
2 . That the technique best employed for the development of reading ability differs from and is simpler than the technique best employed for the development of speaking and writing.
3 . That in any case the initial stage in learning a foreign language should be to learn to read it -- even for the student who aims at compete mastery (of reading, writing and speaking.)

1 . That at least in the early stages of learning English it is neither easier nor more difficult to develop ability to read than it is to develop ability to speak and write ; the two abilities go hand in hand.
2 . That the best first stage is not a training in reading but a training in speaking.