[lg policy] Multilingual education threatened in Brussels, Belgium

[Harold Schiffman]

 Forwarded  From: LINGANTH at listserv.linguistlist.org


Dear colleagues,

The Flemish Minister of Education, Pascal Smet, decided last week to cut the
financial aid for multilingual and multicultural teaching in Brussels, the
heart of Europe. Multicultural and multilingual teaching is a broad approach
to teaching which includes language courses and classes on culture for
children who speak another language at home (LCO -- OETC in Flanders). These
children take a part of the courses in their mother tongue.

The organizing non-profit, Foyer, has promoted multicultural projects in
Dutch-speaking pre-schools and primary schools since 1981. At present, more
than 500 pupils are involved in programmes in Italian, Spanish and Turkish
in six schools across the European capital. Over the years, Foyer's
multicultural projects have attracted researchers who have published a
number of studies in journals and in the media, nationally and
internationally.

As you undoubtedly know, multicultural teaching has a positive impact on the
linguistic integration of students. From a linguistic perspective, learning
a foreign language is easier if the knowledge of the mother tongue is
sufficiently developed. From a psychological perspective, including creating
an identity, self-confidence, motivation to integrate, et cetera, this
approach recognizes and validates the foreign mother tongue within the
school. Once these multicultural students reach secondary school (age 12),
they achieve higher grades than other students of non-Belgian origin. An
impressive 90% of the children that followed this project graduated, whereas
the results for the average group of immigrant students are significantly
lower (respectively 70% for boys, 75% for girls).

Why the Minister of Education decided to abolish the project, leaving 500
children and their families in the cold, is totally incomprehensible.

We really need your support to revert this decision. How can you help?
(1) Sign the online petition (and don't hesitate to leave comments and to
self-identify as an expert): http://goo.gl/fve3c
(2) "Like" the related Facebook page: http://goo.gl/NDF80
(3) Spread this news worldwide

I thank you, in name of the children, their parents and their teachers.

All the best,

Dr. Noel B. Salazar
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Noel B. Salazar, PhD
CuMoRe - Cultural Mobilities Research
New book: Envisioning Eden <
http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=SalazarEnvisioning>
EASA Executive Committee Member (2011-2013)
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IMMRC-Anthropology, University of Leuven
Parkstraat 45, bus 3615, BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium
Tel: +32 (0)475 53.73.13, Fax +32 (0)16 32.59.02
http://kuleuven.academia.edu/NoelBSalazar
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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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