ELL: Re; "no child left behind"

[William J Poser]

It seems to me that the effective requirement that instruction be in
English is a violation of international law. Article 26, section 3 of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General
Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948, states:

      Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education
      that shall be given to their children.

Language of instruction is such a basic parameter that the parents'
right to choose the "kind of education" would hardly be meaningful if
they did not have the right to determine the language of instruction.

A more specific statement is found in the Declaration on the Rights of
Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic
Minorities, adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights in its
resolution 1992/16 on 21 February 1992 and by the General Assembly in
its resolution 47/135 on 18 December 1992. The relevant provisions are
as follows:

    Article 1

    1. States shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic,
    cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities within their
    respective territories and shall encourage conditions for the
    promotion of that identity.

    Article 2

    1. Persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic
    minorities (hereinafter referred to as persons belonging to
    minorities) have the right to enjoy their own culture, to profess and
    practice their own religion, and to use their own language, in private
    and in public, freely and without interference or any form of
    discrimination.

    Article 4

    2. States shall take measures to create favourable conditions to
    enable persons belonging to minorities to express their
    characteristics and to develop their culture, language, religion,
    traditions and customs, except where specific practices are in
    violation of national law and contrary to international standards.

    3. States should take appropriate measures so that, wherever possible,
    persons belonging to minorities have adequate opportunities to learn
    their mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue.

    4. States should, where appropriate, take measures in the field of
    education, in order to encourage the knowledge of the history,
    traditions, language and culture of the minorities existing within
    their territory.

(Still more specific and stronger provisions are to be found in the
Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, but since this has
thus far only been adopted by NGOs it does not have legal force.)

Bill

--
Bill Poser, Visiting Researcher and Adjunct Professor
University of Pennsylvania
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wjposer/
billposer at alum.mit.edu
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