[lg policy] Wales: Time to rethink our language policy (letters to the editor)

[Harold Schiffman]

Time to rethink our language policy

    by Our Correspondent, Western Mail
    May 22 2012


SIR – Alan Davies’ contribution to the debate on compulsory Welsh in
schools (Letters, May 16) raises several points. He says Wales is a
bilingual nation. However it would be more correct to say Wales is a
country with two languages. Mr Davies makes some interesting
comparisons with other European countries.

It is surprising that he gives Belgium as an example of a bilingual
nation. Belgium is the most divided country in Europe. The two
linguistic groups may learn each other’s language in schools but apart
from such institutions as parliament, monarchy, the legal system and
the armed forces the French and Flemish speakers live totally separate
existences.

He also makes comparisons with Ireland. The only thing Wales has to
learn from that country on how to promote the use of the national
language among young people is how not to do it. Irish has been a
compulsory school subject since independence but the way the language
is taught and promoted has totally failed to produce a bilingual
country. Ireland has a million speakers of Irish but only 20,000 of
these class themselves as habitual speakers of the language.

Nine years ago a major report into the teaching of Irish stated that
most pupils resented learning the language regarding it as at best “a
necessary evil” and at worst “a complete waste of time”. Has anyone
surveyed young people in this country as to their attitudes towards
learning our national language?

Also, it is the policy of the current Irish government to end the
compulsory study of Irish to leaving certificate level making it
mandatory only to junior certificate level.

Perhaps it is time for a serious examination of the effects of
compulsory Welsh to GCSE level in schools. One figure that has never
been given is that before Welsh became mandatory what proportion of
pupils with choice opted to continue learning the language after the
age of 14? To judge only from my own time as a pupil in the 1970s the
figure is between 50 and 60%.

If this figure was and is representative it proves three things;
firstly, Welsh is a highly popular subject; secondly, a substantial
proportion of pupils would not choose to study Welsh to examination
level and thirdly, there is no link between an O-level or GCSE pass
and a desire to use the language in daily lives; if there were, more
than half the population should by now be Welsh-speaking.

Has making Welsh compulsory to GCSE level proved more effective than
the Welsh Not at dissuading young people from speaking the language or
has it somehow imbued people with a desire to carry on using the
language after the age of 16?

The decline in the numbers and percentage of people who speak Welsh
has ended; for the first time ever the proportion of people speaking
the language is increasing.

The question needs to be answered: how much of this is due to
Welsh-speakers ensuring that they pass the language on to their
offspring; how much because of English-speakers choosing Welsh-medium
education for their children and how much because of compulsory GCSE
Welsh?

GWYN MEREDITH

Brynmawr, Gwent

Ireland’s experience

SIR – Alan Davies (Letters, May 16) is correct in stating that Irish
is compulsory in Ireland’s schools.

In fact it has been since 1922. so our Celtic cousins’ and near
neighbours’ experience is worth looking at. After 90 years the result
is that beyond school years only a relative handful speak Irish and
usually in the traditional Irish-speaking areas in the west.

In 2011 Enda Kenny, the Fine Gael leader, fought a successful election
that included in his manifesto making Irish optional in schools. This
had the predicable result of causing uproar among the minority Irish
language traditionalists.

In an influential book “Compulsory Irish – Language and Education in
Ireland” by Adrian Kelly he concludes that compulsory Irish in schools
“has led to intellectual and educational wastage because it weakened
students’ achievements in other subjects” he goes on to say that
generations of pupils were failed by the education system and were
sacrificed on the altar of nationalist ideology because of the
compulsory Irish policy which has been a “spectacular failure.”

I didn’t think Barry Taylor’s “ludicrous” algebra analogy needed
explaining. Algebra is part of a maths core qualification throughout
the world whereas languages are optional. For Mr Davies to suggest
that employers give Welsh equal relevance with maths for
school-leavers seeking a career in plumbing and the building trade is,
well… ludicrous. I prefer my builders and plumbers to have a knowledge
of algebraic formulae such as pi, area, volume etc...

DENNIS COUGHLIN

Heath, Cardiff

Distasteful trait

SIR – With all respect to Mr Tony Jones (Letters, May 19), has he
considered that home reactions may have unwittingly contributed to the
learning difficulties he quotes?

Children are formed by their parents’ responses. If the parent is
positive and helpful, explaining the differences when a child mentions
that letters and combinations of letters are pronounced differently in
Welsh and English, it is likely the child will take it in its stride.

If the child gets the impression that they agree it is all very hard,
burdensome and oppressive then he or she is going to close down and
decide they cannot learn and don’t want to.

English spelling has developed haphazardly over many centuries and
does not follow a simple pattern but people can learn it perfectly
well (or used to before the cranks got at schools).

Modern Welsh spelling, however, is a more recent and more logical and
coherent system, much easier to learn.

On the continent of Europe and on other continents you often find
areas where it is normal for quite ordinary people to speak two or
three languages fluently.

It is not that uncommon to find countries or parts of countries where
two or even more different scripts or alphabets are in use without
anyone feeling their brains are overtaxed.

I have far too many ancestors from the other side of the Severn to be
anti-English but I do find that fear and hate of other languages a
distasteful part of popular English culture.

DAVID SAGE

Penclawdd, Swansea

Flawless critique

SIR – Congratulations to Mr Tony Jones (Letters, May 19). His critique
of education in Wales was flawless.

Just who does care if we have Third World levels of education? Not the
local authorities, and certainly not the Assembly?

Always remember that in 1999 Wales had a shortfall of £68 per child
against education funding in England, today it’s about £604.

Unfortunately it does not end there. In England about 10% of the
education budget is held by the LEAs, in Wales they hold about 27%. So
the shortfall in Wales is about £1,000 per pupil. Nothing is going to
improve with education in Wales until that simple fact is addressed.

The nationalist genie is out of the lamp, the language zealots will
now always want more, already we spend about 25% of our education
budget on Welsh-medium education. In return only 3.8% of pupils study
at higher education on courses with an element of Welsh, maybe one
hour a week or one hour a month, no one knows.

What we do know thanks to FOI is the Welsh language contributes
nothing to Welsh GDP! Imagine more than a quarter of education
spending and less than 4% study in the medium of Welsh at university,
even for an hour a week, or maybe an hour a month..

With the whole of Wales now qualified, by European rules for the next
tranche of aid, Wales is now 73% of European GDP.

As Mr Jones said “at present we can just expect another decade of
educational under-performance, followed by poverty, and then another
generation of kids who can’t read or write”. But does anyone care?

GRAHAM SIMMONDS

Blackwood, Gwent

Learning languages

SIR – Like a spot of arthritis that flares up whenever the weather
turns bad, so are the bleatings about our poor persecuted children
staggering under the burden of the Welsh language.

Does any other nation in the free world have continually to justify
teaching its own language and culture to its own citizens? Any child
leaving school without having opportunities to gain a working
knowledge of Welsh, and understanding of our history and heritage has
been failed by the education system.

More alarming is why our children should be, as the language
detractors imply, so intellectually inferior that they can’t cope with
what children of other nations take in their stride. Dutch, German,
Belgian, Scandinavian children – not to mention many multilingual
African nations – cope with two (or three, or more) languages without
undue stress.

Is there something in the water that prevents Welsh children achieving
the same proficiency?

CHRIS POWER

Newport

Upsetting letter

SIR – Mrs J Price of Coleford, Forest of Dean, (Letters, May 18) and
one or two other writers since my letter (May 9), have quoted me as
having written a letter of cap-doffing, knee-bending fawning
obsequiousness.

I re-checked my letter, and found it was not my letter which had upset
her, but the letter written by Richard W Davies of Brynsadler RCT.,
headed “Time for a re-think”

My letter never referred to how much the royal household cost us per
head, nor made any reference to Britain being a “third world state”.
Now I know why politicians employ spin doctors and minders: to avoid
misinterpretation and mis-quotes.

My letter’s message (“Unease at boycott”) presaged Wales’ independence
and self-government and its stance in the wider world of international
politics and economics, and how in my view it would be in the best
interests of Wales’ long-term standing to offer the hand of
hospitality and use the dialect of diplomacy and avoid gratuitously
offending any head of state.

I will leave it to Richard W Davies to argue his case and defend his
position for himself.

MICHAEL LEWIS

Llandaff, Cardiff

Read More http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/letters-to-the-editor/western-mail-letters/2012/05/22/time-to-rethink-our-language-policy-91466-31017921/#ixzz1w5kuAJ6i


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