LL-L "Sociology" 2004.01.22 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 22.JAN.2004 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: society

Almost every day one finds sone comments in one of the Belgian journals
about the problems of Flemish (Dutch languiage) schools in Brussels.

Times have changed. I the sixties the Flemish community got federal law
enacted forcing Flemish parents in Brussels to send their kids to Flemish
schools. This was at the time seriously contested by the French speaking
community, defending the "liberté du pere de famille". At the occasion of
one of the Belgian political compromises the French community got its
"liberty of the family father" in exchange of something I forgot. Some
people thought this was the beginning of the end of Flemish schools in
Brussels.

Now 40 years later, things are reversed. There is so much demand for places

in Brussels Flemish schools, that there is hardly a place for Flemish kids.
Quite some French speaking people send their kids to Flemish schools
nowadays, and I guess, not primarely from love for the Dutch language, but
for "escaping" from their own schools, overcrowed with immigrants, mostly
from North Africa.

Aren't we all very poor politically in managing our city habitation and are
we not in a process of having our city centers turned into slums? I'm
generalizing, since I'm in Wilmington, DE, from time to time. Over there
they have no high schools anymore downtown, and apparently prefer to
maintain that situation for avoiding to end with homogeneous black schools.

-- quote:
The News Journal (Delaware online)
2002-01-18
OPINION
Norman Lockman
...
Wilmington now has only elementary schools, divided up among the four
districts that now share the city. They are attended by city children and
youngsters who are bused in from the suburbs. All city public school
students now attend middle schools and high schools in the suburbs. That is
the result of the landmark desegregation order of a quarter-century ago.
It is tempting to conclude there is something wrong with having no schools
beyond the elementary level in a city with Wilmington's status as the
largest in the state, and the epicenter of banking between New York and
Atlanta.
..
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a predominantly black school if
there were no other practical choices. There were and are a few good ones.
But in the current climate, building a new high school in Wilmington would
create an enormous temptation to use it as a dumping ground for poor
minority city kids that suburban high schools would rather be without.
That would be bad, not merely in racial terms but because it would produce a
school that would quickly be threatened by problems of concentrated poverty.
It would become the region's out-of-sight, out-of-mind high school --
another urban educational wasteland shunned by students and faculty who
could avoid it.
...
--- end quote

The, once quite nice town, is gradually turning into a place with office
blocks surrounded by slummy habitation, with in the middle, somehow lost,
the still even expensive Dupont hotel. Even the famous Market Street will be
given up:

--- quote:(same source as above)
By JEFF MONTGOMERY
Staff reporter
01/05/2004
Road crews will begin converting the last blocks of Wilmington's Market
Street pedestrian mall to a two-way street in the spring, ending a
decades-long experiment in city revitalization.
---

And I muss confess, when I'm over there, I also do my shopping, out of town,
in the Concord mall, closse to the Pennsylvania border. (After all, there is
no sales tax in Delaware.)

My question is: are we not killing our beautiful towns, the "harts" of our
cultural history? Why do we have to move the social activity to shopping
centers in the open praries out of town, vitually only accessible by car?

Regards,
Roger

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Sociology

Thanks for the above, Roger.

I'd like to ask a question rather than answer yours:

Not that I endorse current trends and ghetto creation, but is this current
trend in Brussels not a boon of sorts for Flemish, aside from the fact that
it is currently hard to get into Flemish schools?  For a long time now the
position of Flemish has been eroding in Brussels.  I personally know people
in and from Brussels who are of "Flemish" background and elect to be French
speakers.  This includes people who grew up speaking "Flemish."   Whatever
is behind this latest trend (and I suspect there is a combination of eroding
educational standards and various elements of xenophobia, racism and
anti-Islamic sentiments as are typical of virtually all such situations in
Western Europe), is it not likely to reverse some of the erosion of
"Flemish" in Brussels?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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