00:00So, considering all the factors that learning in mother tongue develops the child much better
00:05than that learning from a non-native language education.
00:10In this case, it was English language, non-native.
00:12Being spiritual does not mean that you have to necessarily rebel against everything.
00:16Language is a wonderful thing.
00:18And I too have a special feeling for our native languages.
00:22One by one, we are launching channels in the native languages.
00:27We already have five. Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada.
00:30Two more are on their way.
00:32We respect our native languages. We love them.
00:34And we see both kinds of biases.
00:36There are those who are such fans of everything that is not Indian.
00:41That they are ever ready to consume even shit, provided it is imported.
00:46And then there are those who say, you know, we are Indians.
00:49So, cow dung.
00:51The first thing is quality.
00:54The first thing is that the child should be built up.
01:01Acharya ji, after a lot of study and thought process,
01:05and after listening to various analysts and scholars and philosophers,
01:10I decided to withdraw my child from a renowned English medium school
01:15and enrolled him into a Marathi medium school, which is my native language.
01:21So, considering all the factors that learning in mother tongue develops the child much better
01:26than that learning from a non-native language education.
01:30In this case, it was English language, non-native.
01:33So, now he is in first standard.
01:36He is learning in Marathi school.
01:39So, the things which I am becoming afraid of are something like that.
01:44In that school, the facilities like there is no playground.
01:48There is some unpleasant classrooms, which I have earlier seen in the English medium schools.
01:54Then the parent crowd in that school is very behind relatively in education,
01:59means the open mind perspective.
02:02And mostly they come from the lower economic strata.
02:05And the teaching staff is average, but not very matured enough
02:10and driven by some old-fashioned social cultures.
02:15For example, they celebrated a doll's marriage in their school.
02:20And literally the students were following the marriage ceremony.
02:26So, concluding this, my question is,
02:29shall I take a tough decision that enrolling my kid again into a renowned English medium school,
02:35where he will at least get some good sports culture or disciplines.
02:41There is a phrase in logic.
02:44It comes from Greek, Latin, I don't know. It must be from Greek.
02:47Mostly they come from Greek.
02:49Ceteris paribus.
02:51Okay.
02:52Heard of it?
02:53Never.
02:54Those from an economics background would know of it. What does that mean?
02:58All things remaining equal.
03:01Only if everything else is equal, then this conclusion holds good.
03:11Yes, a Marathi medium school is better than an English or French or Russian medium school.
03:19Only ceteris paribus.
03:22If everything else is equal.
03:24If there are two schools, one is Marathi medium, one is English medium,
03:28and they are equal in all other respects.
03:31The only difference is the medium of instruction.
03:34One is English, one is through Marathi.
03:37Only then the Marathi school is preferable.
03:39Yes.
03:40Basics of logic, sir.
03:44That completes my answer.
03:47Yeah.
03:48You used the word perspective.
03:50What does perspective mean?
03:51Perspective means to keep a thing in its proper place.
03:55To know the place and size of a thing in the macro context.
03:59That's perspective.
04:01You are seeing just one thing.
04:03The medium of instruction.
04:05You are not seeing the size of the playground.
04:08You are not seeing the cultural biases of the teachers.
04:11You are not seeing 70 other factors that are operational.
04:21How can you come to a valid conclusion?
04:32Same thing I find with many people who say,
04:35I am pulling my kid out of the school and will prefer homeschooling.
04:40Homeschooling has these many advantages.
04:42Yes, all those advantages are there.
04:48If you can give all the advantages of the regular formal kind of schooling
04:54at home as well,
04:56then homeschooling is preferable compared to the formal schooling.
05:02But can you give the other things at home?
05:05Do you have a lab at home?
05:06Do you have a playground at home?
05:08Do you have 200 other kids to give him company at home?
05:13Do you have discipline at home?
05:18You do not have these things at home.
05:20You are considering just one thing that has maybe a 5-10% weightage.
05:24And you are forgetting all the other things that have 90-95% weightage.
05:29What kind of rationality is this?
05:35Being spiritual does not mean that you have to necessarily rebel against everything.
05:46You don't have to be a professional rebel.
05:53You don't have to make it a point to compulsorily go against the crowd.
06:05If you do that, neither you nor I are entitled to wear these shirts.
06:13Because that's what all the commoners do.
06:15Let's be special.
06:17Let's put our socks on both these arms.
06:23And our undergarments on our chests.
06:28We don't have to necessarily go against the flow.
06:32We don't have to necessarily go with the flow either.
06:35We have to logically see what is best.
06:42What is the intellect for?
06:45This too is some kind of a cult.
06:54Militating against everything that is contemporary or prevalent or modern.
07:02Everything.
07:04Obviously, the contemporary things or prevalent things, they come with their share of inadequacies and harms.
07:19So you have to see how to navigate through it.
07:24To minimize the harm and maximize the benefit.
07:27You can't summarily reject everything that is modern or contemporary.
07:35It's not as if the modern civilization is just totally debauched.
07:40It has its own share of merits, sir.
07:43And let's acknowledge that.
07:45I am a great parent. I do not allow my kid to watch TV at all.
07:51I don't concur with that.
07:53You have to be discreet.
07:58See what can be allowed and see what cannot be.
08:01See what is good for the kid, see what is not.
08:04And leave a few things to the child's discretion.
08:15I do not allow the kid to play these modern European sports.
08:20He will only play Kabaddi and Kho-Kho.
08:23Kabaddi is a great sport and India has been doing well in that.
08:27We acknowledge that.
08:30But we also know the benefits of racket sports.
08:34And racket sports in India do not come to us from tradition.
08:39Be it badminton or tennis or squash or table tennis.
08:47They come to us from abroad.
08:52You know medical research proves that if you want to really live healthily,
08:57racket sports are the best for that.
09:02Why just rubbish everything that belongs to this age?
09:15Just as everything cannot be accepted in total,
09:20similarly everything cannot be rejected in total.
09:25Vivek, discretion.
09:32Yes, I would want the kid to be a great man fluent in his native language.
09:42A great person fluent in his native language.
09:45But what if it comes to a choice between greatness and fluency in native language?
09:50What would you pick?
09:53What if it comes to this?
09:56That he can either be great in consciousness or he can be fluent in the native language.
10:02What would you pick?
10:03Obviously greatness.
10:09Language is a wonderful thing.
10:11And I too have a special feeling for our native languages.
10:17One by one we are launching channels in the native languages.
10:24We already have five.
10:26Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada.
10:32Two more are on their way.
10:36We respect our native languages. We love them.
10:39But that does not mean that you don't have to benefit from what is not native.
10:50Nativity is fine.
10:55But truth is above everything else.
11:03Are you getting it?
11:05Yes, we all love our native foods, our staple diet.
11:10Who does not?
11:12But that does not mean that I will not have a look at Mexican cuisine or whatever.
11:19Continental or Italian, Thai, Japanese.
11:29I have a look at everything.
11:32One cannot be biased either side.
11:40And we see both kinds of biases.
11:42There are those who are such fans of everything that is not Indian.
11:51That they are ever ready to consume even shit provided it is imported.
12:02And then there are those who say, you know, we are Indians.
12:10Unfortunately, in India, the ecosystem, the educational infrastructure in the native languages is pretty weak.
12:22Not that schools don't exist. They exist aplenty.
12:28But as you pointed out, the quality of teachers, the quality of the crowd, all that is a bit abysmal.
12:38And there is no obligation on you to make the child suffer due to your linguistic biases.
12:51Today we have the biggest Hindi language channel.
13:01Must be in the entire world, right?
13:03Entire world.
13:07I have had an English medium education throughout.
13:10You hear of those schools where kids are penalized for speaking in the native, the vernacular, right?
13:27I come from such schools.
13:32And obviously I do not support Anglicization of the mind.
13:49But I also probably know that my English medium education has contributed to what I am currently doing.
14:01So that's a curious thing.
14:04This world's largest Hindi language channel probably could not have come without my English medium education.
14:16So many of the great poets, think of Agye for example, their education was in English.
14:24And they went on to become stalwarts in the Hindi field.
14:32Think of Gandhi, a coat pant donning barrister from London in South Africa.
14:45And he becomes the Hindi heartland's Mahatma.
14:49When he went to Champaran, he didn't even know the Bihari language.
14:59Bhojpuri was spoken and written in the Kaithi script.
15:08And Gandhi knew neither.
15:12And he is a Gujarati returning from abroad.
15:16And see where he begins his mission.
15:19In Bihar.
15:21His education abroad helped him do great things in the Hindi heartland.
15:33You don't have to stick to Hindi and Hindism to do good to the Hindi people.
15:44You don't have to stick to the Marathi language to do good to the Maratha homeland.
15:55And you can even be a great Marathi scholar without having studied in a Marathi medium school.
16:07Obviously, if you get a Marathi medium school that is almost at par with the standards of an English medium school,
16:21then you must definitely opt for the Marathi school. Definitely.
16:25But if the difference is too large, then we cannot be unjust to the kid.
16:35Swami Vivekananda is a Bengali icon.
16:46Did he receive his at least higher education in the Bengali medium? No, he did not.
16:56And today he is revered in Bengal particularly because his education enabled him to go abroad and do great things there.
17:07Had he known only Bengali, would he have been able to achieve the feat that he did in Chicago in 1893?
17:25And obviously his hold over the Bengali language was awesome.
17:38Nehru too had an exclusively English education.
17:43But you listen to him speaking in Hindi. He used to call it Hindustani.
17:48You listen to him speaking in Hindi and there is such fineness.
18:07The very pride of Bengal.
18:15Immaculate English.
18:18And which language did the Gitanjali appear in? Bengali.
18:35You know to get the Nobel it had to be translated so that they could understand.
18:48The first thing is quality.
18:52The first thing is that the child should be built up.
18:57The first thing is that education should be able to raise consciousness.
19:02The language comes after that.
19:07The medium of instruction comes after. It is very important.
19:11But it is not the first thing. The first thing is consciousness.
19:15The second thing is language.
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