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Message started by Nigel on Nov 17th, 2010 at 6:11pm

Title: Re: English-speaking children in Catalan schools
Post by Huw on Feb 15th, 2011 at 9:06am
This post is what motivated me to renew my membership of this site and to want to post again.

It seems curious to me that in the point in history in which we are, when we are seeing more and more feelings stirred up against certain groups in our communities, when the Uk government has finally admitted that multuculturalism doesn't work and so on and so forth, that someone has the nerve to speak out asking for "special programmes for native speakers of English".

Why is it that some people believe that because you are a native speaker of English you deserve a special programme whereas if you are a native speaker of, say, Arabic, you don't.

Dr Stone, working as he does, in education, albeit at further ed, ought to know that schools already exist in Catalunya that have chosen to work as bilingual schools.  You can, already, opt to educate your child in a school where English is the main language (subject to the normal rules on catchment areas etc.)  More than this is just favouring a certain special group, native English speakers, for no particular reason.

If you enrol your children in a normal public school in Catalunya they WILL receive a bilingual education that, supposing you continue to maintain their level of English, will result in them being tri-lingual eventually.  If your children live in Catalunya and are being educated here then it is logical to think that they will continue to live and then work here, why then would you want to opt out of them being educated in the language of the country in which they live.

Sometimes this sort of ex-pat blind belief in the automatic merits of England and English makes me really puzzled. 

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