[lg policy] Belgium: Children ordered to watch their language

[Harold Schiffman]

Children ordered to watch their language
BRUNO WATERFIELD
17 Feb, 2012 03:00 AM

BRUSSELS: Children are being punished with detention and language
lessons if they are caught speaking French in the playground of
Sint-Pieterscollege, a primary school in a Flemish-speaking suburb of
Brussels. One father attacked the policy at Sint-Pieterscollege
because it threatened to punish children, too young to choose their
mother tongue, for a conflict being fought out between French- and
Dutch-speaking adults tussling for political control of Belgium.

''This is linguistic wickedness,'' he told La Capitale newspaper. ''It
is not fair and affects only French-speaking kids. The school's
decision is dangerous.''  Two-fifths of the school's pupils are
French-speaking and their parents have, since Christmas, been told via
letter the children can no longer speak the same language they use at
home during breaks. ''You have chosen a Dutch school. For children who
speak another language at home there is no easy way out,'' the letter
said. ''Dutch is compulsory at our school, even in the playground. If
your child speaks French there, he will get a language slip. If he
gets three, he will have to attend language classes after school.''

Veronique Vanhercke, the principal of Sint-Pieterscollege, insisted
the measure was necessary because too much French was being spoken in
the playground, undermining efforts to keep the school Dutch-speaking.
''At enrolment, parents committed themselves to support the efforts of
their children to learn Dutch,'' she said. ''Our teachers were no
longer taken seriously. I'm convinced that many other Dutch schools in
and around Brussels have a similar policy. We do not see it as a
punishment.''

Until last December, squabbling between the Flemish (Dutch-speaking)
and Walloon (francophone) political parties kept Belgium without a
government for 19 months, a world record, and threatened to tear the
country apart. Despite having Dutch, French and German as official
Belgian languages, Belgium enshrines jealously guarded ''linguistic
communities'' in its federal structure, creating municipalities where
public services can be delivered in only one of the three Belgian
tongues.

Divisions between Wallonia in the south of Belgium, and demands for
more independence by Flanders, in the richer north, have been
polarised in Brussels amid hostility to an influx of French-speakers
into Flemish suburbs such as Jette, where the school is based.
Belgium's fragile coalition government is led by Elio Di Rupo, a
Walloon Socialist of Italian heritage who is the first French-speaking
prime minister of Belgium in almost 40 years. On taking office, he had
to promise he would ''work'' on language lessons because,
controversially, he does not speak Dutch.

http://www.greatlakesadvocate.com.au/news/world/world/general/children-ordered-to-watch-their-language/2458671.aspx?storypage=0

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