THE CONFLICT OF THE BILINGUAL MIND

THE CONFLICT OF THE BILINGUAL MIND

The multilingual education raises children nimbler but too language-oriented?

Kiyotaka ISHIKAWA

As the world more globalized, we have a lot of situation in schools, business, and daily lives that requires more than one language. One of the most effective way to learn a multilingual skill is to start early, precisely during a pre-school period when an ability to acquire languages peaks at 9 months and sharply drop off at 6 years. Mastery of multiple languages in this period, according to a study, unexpectedly affects neurological structure of growing brains, which means bilingual children grow nimbler. However, some mothers with a half-blood child concern the brain specialized in multilingual skills might miss his chances to have interest in non-lingual subjects. Does putting children in a multilingual environment necessarily do better than a monolingual education does?

Learning a second language can produce a nimbler mind

A physiological experiment last year in Sweden proved there is detectable growth in the nerve system among a group of children mastering an unfamiliar language as compared to a controlled group studying non-lingual subjects. Most changes were observed in the cognitive areas of the brain, for example, in the hippocampus which governs memory, and in the cerebral cortex, where higher-order reasoning is proceeded. 

This is coherent with a result of the empirical experiment, known as the Stroop test, in which subjects are flashed the names of colors on a screen, with the word matching or mismatching the actual colors of the letters, and are told to say the color’s name. The point  of the test is to examine simultaneous recognition of the color and the letter in the case of mismatch; announcing only the color while ignoring what the word says. At the trial, almost all bilingual subjects are faster and make fewer mistakes than monolinguals. 

These consequences indicate the bilinguals retain a higher cognitive ability and do better at handling multiple tasks simultaneously. A research psychologist attributes the bilinguals’ superiority over the cognitive test to the fewer loss of efficiency when they rotate among tasks, called the global switch cost in psychology. She says, “Everyone slows down some or makes more errors, but multilinguals have less of the drop-off.”

Bilingual education may fail to establish profession

Although it is surely advantageous over monolinguals for children to speak more than one language and even have a smarter brain among classmates and colleagues, they have to give up something everyone has in order to gain what the others do not have. There are time and interest limits over human’s intellectual development, so devoting one’s time and interest mainly to language mastery means missing a chance to learn something else.

An essay writer Sandra Haefelin, a half Germany and half Japanese, analyzes people with mixed blood of Germany and Japanese, comparing those who speak only Germany to those proficient at the both languages, and empirically concludes the German speakers are more likely to be engaged in a highly-specialized job like a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. Contrarily, the bilinguals tend to show a deep interest in language and culture and result in starting their career as a interpreter or translator.

Therefore, multilingual education may possibly spoil a child’s aptitude for non-lingual fields such as science, music, or sports. In other words, once a bilingual brain is developed at expense of time and interest in childhood, he might live the rest of life without begin aware of his talent even if he was a born mathematician, being afraid of wasting those resources already spent.

Conclusions

On the one hand, the neuroscientific evidence proves multilingual training at the primary stage of education enhances a child’s ability to process a few tasks simultaneously at faster pace and greater accuracy than monolinguals do. On the other hand, his inborn capability over non-lingual subjects could be prevented from expression by forcing him to concentrate his attention on language mastery. 

This issue is about a typical dilemma every person involved in education concerns about, that is, do they train a child’s brain so that he gains intellectual advantage at the early stage of life, or do they try not to interfere a child’s interest so as to improve his ability along his aptitude? 

From my case of primary education, I respect how my parents provided me with a variety of opportunity to find out my aptitude by myself. They sent me swimming, gymnastics, piano, and Japanese calligraphy school, and took me a number of foreign countries when summer vacations came, but never forced me after entering the high school. So, I believe I could have established my own core values and trained myself to develop ability for my career, and I would do the same thing as my parents did, for my future child. 

*kluger, Jeferey, “The Power of the Bilingual Brain,” TIME, pp.32-37, July 29, 2013

**Haefelin, Sandra, “The Pitfalls of the Bilingual,” retrieved from http://young-germany.jp/article_315