Open Letter to Sir Cyril Taylor

[Iftikhar]

Open Letter to Sir Cyril Taylor
Sir Cyril Taylor, the chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, is of the opinion that Muslim children are not doing well in schools because they speak their own mother tongues at home. A very high proportion of the mothers come from the sub-continent, few speaking English. It is a major cause of lower results in English.

If children do not use their home language, it will die and with it they lose a big part of their faith and culture. Children see language as a feature of their identity. By welcoming a child’s home language, schools facilitate the flow of knowledge, ideas and feelings between home and school. Humans have a unique ability to learn more than one language. Jimmy Carter called for the providing all immigrant pupils with a teacher speaking their native language. One of the most powerful ways of boosting the moral and academic ambitions of bilingual pupils is to help them get the easiest qualification of all – their home language GCSE. The result has been stunning. More than 80% of bilingual pupils at st. Martin school in Lambeth who have studied for home language GCSEs have earned As.

According to the Rights of the Child, all children must be allowed to speak their own language and practice their own religion and culture. Schools must recognize bilingualism as positive learning resource. Bilingualism should be explicitly valued as a special achievement. The opportunity to use first language will help development in English. Language is a very important symbol of cultural identity and schools should ensure that they value the linguistic diversity. British schooling is very unwelcoming and intimidating institutions for those with lesser or no English. The studies carried out in Britain concluded that children who speak two languages do better at schools than those who speak only one. Dr Raymonde Sneddon of UEL was able to demonstrate that far from being confused by using different languages, these children display greater comprehension when reading English. They tend to be on higher ability groups – because the skills they acquire and develop in their language use is transferred to other subjects. A study in Leicester by Arvind Bhatt found that bilingualism improved a child’s overall educational performance by instilling a more subtle use of language and better communication skills. The findings contradicted the controversial comments made in 2002 by the Home Secretary David Blunkett and recently by Ann Cryer, who decried the “negative impact” on society of children growing up with different languages at home and at school. Their views were based on the false premise that children can learn only one language at a time and that learning a mother tongue interferes with English. Another study in Watford found that a large number of British children learn to read in more than one language at the same time as they learn to read in English. It is a well known fact that to reject a child’s language in the school is to reject a child. Children’s cultural and linguistic experience in the home is the foundation of their future learning and the school must build on that foundation rather than undermine it. The cultural, linguistic and intellectual capital of British society will increase dramatically when we stop seeing culturally and linguistically diverse children as “a problem to be solved” and instead open our eyes to the linguistic, cultural and intellectual resources they bring from their homes to schools and societies.
Iftikhar Ahmad
www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk

[London Mick]

What about the rights of the host country? Sorry pal, if anyone wants to retain their own language and culture let them stay in their own countries. If they choose to come here then they should assimilate and integrate and join our tribe. Multiculturism is an insult to the indigenous people of this Great Britain and should not be allowed.

What has this to do with the 9/11 truth movement? Quite a lot actually. We are having multiculturism forced upon every society in the west dissolving the ancient cultures that are already there. This is an essential part of the NWO agenda to break down societies and to do away with borders and the soveriegnity of individual nations. The EU and Nafta are also parts of this same agenda.
Anyone who discovers the truth behind this evil plan of the bankers and the masons and the Zionists will be labelled right wing racists for pointing out what they are up to.
This country has survived perfectly well with one language and a few fringe Celtic languages. We do not need our children learning any other languages except for the languages of our nearest neighbours.

[Ignatz]

[Mark Gobell]

Social Cohesion. Our beloved gubment even have a whole policy unit devoted to it under the "inclusion" initiative.

It's difficult to imagine a more devisive wall of separation than language.

If I cannot communicate verbally with someone how else are we to communicate ?

How can I progress outwith my own community if I cannot speak the language of the locals ?

What are the costs of providing for many different languages ?

Would you keep your child in a school where they were suffering because they could not communicate with other children ?

Or the teacher ?

There are a million issues surrounding the question of language, including cultural aspects.

My personal view is that if you choose to live in a country whose mother tongue is not your own, then you should be able to demonstrate basic, rudimentary practical ability in the host nation's language.

This not only benefits the individual but society as a whole.

[kbo234]