The superiority of Esperanto in Education


The internationalization of human relationships in all ranges of life during the last decades has caused the need to know other different languages, besides the mother tongue, but the battle for the world domination among the so called Great Languages and the evident difficulty at their learning calls the question of rational need for a paradigm language, a language model which acts as an introduction in all the essential elements, either morphologic, grammatical or semantic, which are present in most languages.

Among all the languages which could play this paradigmatic function of bridge language between the mother tongue and the foreign ones, it is Esperanto the one which appears with an evident superiority from a foursome point of view:

A. Due to its intrinsic features:

  1. Because its limited grammar and lexical elements are most simplified.

  2. Because it is a model of formalized language, because it contains everything which is common to languages: the universal elements in every grammar.

  3. Because abandoning the way of thinking in the mother tongue is a quicker process during the studying of Esperanto, due to the greater easiness to study this language.

  4. Because the psychological barriers in the study of Esperanto do not exist or they are not meaningful, and so it is the ideal bridge between the mother tongue and the one which is being studied.

  5. Because Esperanto enables the formation of a rich positive transfer system which can be applied to the foreign language.

  6. Because Esperanto fulfills the important pedagogical demand about the gradation in difficulty: thanks to the internationality of its grammar and vocabulary the elements of different languages are known.

  7. Because the knowledge of elements of the Model of General Language makes it clearer the structure of many languages, making their learning easier.

B. Due to its extraordinary propedeutic value for learning other languages.

  1. Because of the greater easiness and regularity of Esperanto in relation with the other languages.
  2. Because its previous study informs the teacher about the ability or lack of ability of the children to study foreign languages, allowing advice for the languages for which they are best prepared.

  3. Because Esperanto meets the demands of an ideal teaching model: simple (getting rid of the non essential traits in the subject); regularity (avoiding all casual deviations from the paradigm); neat (showing the difficulties in the subject).

C. Due to its ability to transfer linguistic competencies.

Because Esperanto is a language which makes you think, its study develops other General Skills: ability to observe, think, rationalize, analyze, compose, infer and deduct, etc. These qualities are developed very fast, and they are very useful for the study of other foreign languages and they can be applied to other different situations in study.

D. Because Esperanto is a first order educational tool for the integral development of the pupils.

  1. Because research made all over the world prove that knowledge about Esperanto wakes in the students a more real knowledge and more pleasure for other languages, for geography, world history and, even, for ethical education, more interest and sympathy for foreign peoples, for its customs, literature and art.

  2. Esperanto educates children towards tolerance and understanding, enhancing in them the ideal of UNESCO and Universal Community. All this is taken into effect by means of interchange of letters, postcards and drawings between children and youngsters from different countries; by means of the studying of foreign literatures, by means of establishing links between schools, school trips and many debates: living example of what means practicing the Education for Peace, respect for the other languages and dignity in the defense of your own one.

  3. Because the compulsory introduction of one or two ethnic languages as international ones would not only be fundamentally unfair and a discrimination, contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but also would be politically impossible, because of the actual nationalistic tendencies. And so the purpose of this paper is pointing out that saying Learn languages is an important lack of responsibility without a previous debate and without offering the ideal method to achieve it; and also it is our purpose to state in front of the educational politicians, that Esperanto, together with the other cultural languages, must belong to the curriculum in any civilized country. And that is why we summon the attention of all reflective and creative linguists and educators in the International Community.

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