Kamal Ghorui
Teenagers are naturally attracted to foreign cultures, and thus languages. Encourage this
Policy is all very well, but what about pleasure? It gets little mention in politically charged shouting matches about the Centre’s three-language policy, or its heated two-language rebuttals. In all the earnest talk of national identity, competitiveness and cultural preservation, joy barely gets a footnote. In classroom models too, language learning is more grim duty than delicious discovery. And yet, look around. Teenagers are picking up Korean because they adore BTS and binge-watch Squid Game. Others slip into Spanish thanks to Despacito and Money Heist. They are gaming with friends in Brazil, France and Italy, absorbing slang and syntax as casually as oxygen. No previous generation has had such easy, daily contact with peers across continents. For them, language isn’t a syllabus; it’s a soundtrack.
To learn most naturally and efficiently, the language has to feel like an invitation. Like being pulled into a darkened cinema where unknown joys await. Neuroscience tells us the teenage brain releases more dopamine in response to rewarding experiences; motivation matters. So do our schools understand this? Do they fling open doors to the mysterious continents students long to explore, or do they quietly use nationality to fence them in? Remember that even as visa controls tighten in some corners of the world, the traffic of ideas remains gloriously free. As Michael Erard writes in Babel No More, that means our brains also have to flow, to stay plastic, stretch toward new sounds and skills. Multilingualism, after all, is a workout for neuroplasticity.
Yet, parents and teachers still wave away a student’s fascination with some foreign culture as frivolous. But a language acquired through teenage passion compounds like an investment. Beyond all the possibilities of direct career enhancement, it sharpens those softer skills – empathy, flexibility, executive control – that employers will prize even more tomorrow. What joy and utility are joining together, let no school put asunder. So the student may forever sing, Non, je ne regrette rien.
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