Multilingualism for the New Age

Multilingualism for the New Age
(Previously published in The Island)
“Knowledge of more than one language points to the expansion of specific types of competence. Multilingualism appears to help people realise and expand their creative potential. In addition, thinking, learning, problem solving and communicating, all of which are transversal knowledge-steeped skills used in our daily lives, show signs of enhancement through multilingualism.” – David Marsh and Richard Hill, from the executive summary of a study commissioned the European Commission (2009)
For us in Sri Lanka the synergy between English and Information Technology is an axial force in making headway in the domain of education for knowledge society. This has been already recognized and is being acted upon as would be clear to anyone sufficiently interested from the various initiatives launched under the aegis of the incumbent government such as the declaration of 2009 as the Year of English and IT, opening of nanasalas (literally ‘Halls of Wisdom’, meaning IT training centres) across the island, the Ten Year Trilingual Plan, and programmes for distributing laptops among school children and university undergraduates, etc. (The state is doing its part; it is up to the bureaucrats, teachers, students and adult citizens to ensure that these ventures succeed by actively involving themselves in them.) We certainly are taking a step towards transforming our society economically, socially, culturally, politically, and institutionally by utilizing knowledge as a source of economic productivity, and as a basis for building a more humane social system.
The phenomenal proliferation of electronic communication resources has enabled millions all over the world to gain easy access to enormous quantities of information at little or no cost. Their capacity to retrieve, process, and store or transmit this information equally cheaply has also increased. In a knowledge society information is gathered and processed for the generation of knowledge. However, that alone does not make it a knowledge society. Applying the knowledge for wealth creation is the vital factor. It should be applied for enhancing the performance of the individuals and the community in general in all such fields as economic, social, political, cultural, and institutional. The liberally available digitalised information and the Internet have made knowledge a powerful factor in the creation of wealth in many countries. According to an Irish government report quoted in the Wikipedia, as much as 70 to 80 percent of economic growth is said to be due to the availability of new and better knowledge. Of course, the knowledge society is not only about economic productivity, it is about people’s individual and social development and empowerment as well.
The correlation between the knowledge society and education need hardly be stressed. Education enhances the knowledge and the creativity of the individuals who constitute the society, and stimulates the strategic application of these qualities to productive processes for the general good. No country can achieve any high level of development, economic or otherwise, without the contribution of its educated sections. A knowledge economy is driven by the members’ brainpower properly channelled. But knowledge is never static; it is an ever renewing, ever growing element, the new driving out or making obsolete the old. Appropriately modernized education is a vital need in a knowledge society.
A knowledge economy promotes economic growth and prosperity. But excessive concern with profit and self interest to the exclusion of humane values tends to strain social cohesion, and threatens social order. An economy based on knowledge essentially serves both private good and public welfare. Education should aim at inculcating in the young those values that favour a proper balance between the two.
In a knowledge based society the economy revolves round the constituent members. Therefore the young need to be taught the values that enable them to work creatively in an atmosphere of cosmopolitan identity, compassion, and community. Inventive economic activity coupled with collaborative interaction instead of selfish isolation and mechanical routine make for social integration.
The amazingly fast rate of change associated with the emerging social transformation (knowledge society) is reflected in a somewhat distressing scenario for teachers at all levels who qualified and joined the profession 20 to 30 years ago, i.e. before the digital revolution, unless they have managed to appropriately keep abreast of the contemporary technological innovations and attitudinal adjustments they call for in the field of education. But they are reaching the end of their careers while the generally IT savvy young are replacing them. Yet the old are not redundant yet, for they are still stronger in certain vital domains including the knowledge of the world, an essential part of which comes from lived experience.
Foremost among those confronting the tidal wave of societal transformations caused by the accelerated generation and dissemination of knowledge through the newest technological innovations are the students, and their teachers old and young. Education for knowledge society means learning to live and work in the new age. In this activity, no subject is more important than the linguistic medium through which such knowledge should be acquired, and processed for the benefit of the community. Language study therefore occupies a central position in the educational curriculum.
In global terms ‘knowledge society’ is like ‘democracy’. Democracy is the most powerful, most prevalent form of government today, and the vast majority of nations are ‘democracies’ with different realisations of the ideal. Democratic states are interrelated. In the same way the world is moving towards being a collection of knowledge societies. If knowledge society means anything, monolingualism is a thing of the past for most nations of the world. To no country is this more relevant than it is to us.
The reason for this is not difficult to find. The knowledge society is characterised by the easy availability of globally networked information. The main task of those concerned with education is to enable students to master strategies of knowledge construction by drawing on this information. For this, the linguistic medium is of the utmost importance. Though there are thousands of languages in the world only a handful such as Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, and Russian are understood and used by very large numbers of people. Even among these probably English is the most widely used language in the world, widely here meaning ‘over a large geographical area’, and ‘covering a wide range of subjects’. Naturally, therefore, English should predominate the knowledge society. To participate in the knowledge society all non-English speaking nations need to learn English in addition to their mother tongues. Since new knowledge can be created in any language it is an advantage for members of knowledge societies to learn more languages. Thus multilingualism is the norm today.
In this situation our special connection with English (which needs no elaboration) is a clear advantage, for it means that the most useful world language for building up and sustaining the knowledge society is within easy reach for us. The much criticised low success rate of the English teaching enterprise has its legitimate causes. Three among these, in my opinion, are prominent: one of these is the non-perception to date of a valid motive for learning English particularly among our rural students; another is the absence of a meaningful and relevant context for interactive communication in the language; a third reason is the scant attention paid to the teaching of language (meaning mother tongues and English) as the indispensable primary resource in the search for knowledge. The current knowledge society project, if convincingly presented to the students, will contribute a great deal towards eliminating these causes. This initiative of the government reflects a recognition of the last mentioned deficiency (among other factors). Education for knowledge society involves, among other things, exploiting the globally networked information resources available on the Internet. This provides the language learner with a live context for interaction with the materials on the Net and even with other students including those from other countries; the resource can be used for interaction within the same class, in addition to normal non-web-based collaborative activities. The realisation that English is THE linguistic key to knowledge generation and application will not fail to motivate the students. Teachers and parents can do a lot to convince the young of this fact.
Since this is the case, teaching/learning English occupies a pivotal position in education for knowledge society. We have to go beyond basic communicative competence. Our aim should be enable the learners to master English as a tool for both constructing and acquiring knowledge by proactively exploring and understanding its linguistic mechanisms and expressive resources as applicable to various disciplines. Applied linguist Professor Bernd Ruschoff (University of Essen) reminds us that instead of the traditional instructivist paradigm the cognitive constructive paradigm is viewed as an important methodological basis for real innovation in foreign language learning today. He further points out that
“….. apart from basic communicative competences, favoured in the communicative classroom of the 80s, developing strategies of language processing and learning competence as well as language awareness and skills in knowledge perception and knowledge construction are needed for the successful outcome of any language curriculum. … ……………….
“Language learning should, therefore, be described as an interactive, dynamic process, in which new knowledge is often acquired when learners are placed in a situation where they can explore sources and resources rather than in a context of formal instruction.”
That is, instead of depending on being ‘taught’ in the traditional sense, students need to turn themselves into independent learners adopting both collaborative and autonomous strategies. The learning of the native languages must be similarly stressed, and their use encouraged between students who speak them as mother tongues and colleagues who speak them as second languages. The trilingual plan, if well implemented, will facilitate the fashioning of a more integrated Sri Lankan community.
Multilingual communicative competency is crucial for the knowledge society. It increases the ‘mobility’ of workers, students and teachers, as well as that of government servants. The mobility factor is especially important for students at higher levels of education who are preparing to assume productive roles in the society. Multilingual ability gives them access to international knowledge sources not available at home; it familiarises them with other languages and cultures, enabling them to hone their linguistic and cross-cultural skills; knowledge of a number of languages exposes them to alternative epistemological traditions of their disciplines; it prepares them for the international job market; and finally, the mobility gained through multilingual competency enables them to assert their democratic rights. The special advantage of having a knowledge of English is that even if they know only English in addition to their native languages, they can draw on the cutting edge sources of knowledge created in other countries without having to learn the languages spoken in those countries because many nations use English as the lingua franca of scientific and intellectual communication.
The education-industry nexus at the higher education level is a particularly important economic factor in business management, science, and engineering. It is also the foundation of lifelong learning for professionals. There’s no professional domain where those engaged can remain up to date and relevant long unless they succeed in keeping pace with fast advancing new knowledge and associated competencies.
In learning to live and work in the knowledge society, multilingual proficiency and IT skills are indispensable. Knowing English alone is equivalent to knowing a number of foreign languages. But all knowledge gained through English will be useless if a person fails to appreciate their own native cultural heritage. That’s why learning the mother tongues cannot be neglected. Multilingual abilities and IT competencies together will enable the present and future young generations to access and utilize the unlimited sources and resources of knowledge available globally in order to enrich their lives and empower themselves in ways we adults have only been able to dream of.