Multilingualism is a natural phenomenon which relates positively to cognitive flexibility and Scholastic achievement. Multilingualism is envisaged in NEP document in the form of three language system.
Several recent studies have effectively demonstrated the positive relationship of Multilingualism with cognitive growth and Scholastic achievement.Multilingual students will not only have control over several languages but are also academically as well as socially more sound.
Multilingualism should be promoted in schools. As we know we have three language formula guided by NEP 2020 which is a welcome step. The idea is to focus on mother toungue at elementary stage, then gradually move to second and third language. But care should be taken not to push one language at the cost of another.
Besides that more research needs to be done on the theme how a child learns mother tongue without much effort and that ought to be applied in transcending of other languages.
People in developing countries who wish to be a part of globalization need access to languages like french, german, arabic or chinese and this could potentially affect their loyalty to their mother language. But what needs to be taken care of is that a threshold of communicative potential be reached at individual level.
But there is another type of language which needs to be taught and that is coding, the language of computers, This age is that of technology and coding is need of hour for children to survive economically in future job markets. It is said that year 2k30 onwards will be called the age of artificial intelligence. In that scenario, language of computers need to be learnt and NEP 2020 has taken care of that as well. Coding as a skill should be included in syllabi ASAP as envisaged by NEP 2020, otherwise we may miss the bus of 2030.
