In the globalization epoch, having knowledge of foreign languages helps people to communicate with foreigners. Therefore, it is advocated by a few professionals that people should begin learning international languages from their primary schools rather than secondary schools. From my point of view, despite having some drawbacks, the advantages of this trend outweigh the disadvantages.
To commence with, the underlying reason for learning foreign languages in primary schools is the high grasping power of children. In other words, at the young age, students have higher grasping power in comparison of older people to adapt to anything new easily in shorter time. For instance, according to the report presented by the Times of India in 2020, the proportion of students who passed the IELTS exam and had studied foreign languages in elementary schools was higher than that of older persons. Moreover, education of other languages in childhood develops better communication skills among pupils, which helps them to communicate with local people when they go abroad for their higher studies. Hence, knowledge of foreign language can be advantageous in many ways.
On the other hand, this development has a few drawbacks. The preliminary disadvantage is that knowledge of other languages may be useless in future for those who do not want to go to other countries. For example, if a child is learning German during his school days and then chooses his career in their own country, the knowledge of German becomes useless for him. Furthermore, sometimes giving more attention to language learning than other important subjects may be detrimental for their academic scores. Therefore, learning international languages in younger age is not always beneficial.
In conclusion, although learning a new language has some drawback, such as waste of knowledge and distraction from academics, the benefits, such as their high grasping power of children and the development of communication skills, outweigh its disadvantages. Therefore, I firmly believe that learning foreign languages in primary schools has more benefits for children.