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
Poor argument.
Others do not lose their mother tongues either.
As an example Sikh's are pretty strict on keeping their identity.
Are they doing as bad as Muslims? If theya re, why is no one concentrating on them?
If they are not, then language uis not the issue. It is something else.
(I used sikhs as an example as they are the first thign that popped into mjy head. Substitute it for another group, and the argument will still stand.)
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
It's the governments job to teach you the language of your country. In your case that would be england.
It's up to parents to teach their kids any additional languages they feel are necessary to know...
Actually this has been kind of interesting, Annette is going to teach our kids Spanish and French... so... that will be kind of interesting...
I don’t use my mother tongue at home…I can understand how I’ve lost a part of my culture, but how exactly have I lost a huge part of my faith?
BTW my teacher training institute is really big on celebrating multiculturism and encouraging teachers to value the mother tongue of their pupils…in fact, we have an entire module dedicated to it.
But like Dave pointed out….retaining ones mother tongue is the parents job – not the teachers.
i have family over for Pakistan
for the first time ever i've got an insight into hw crap my Urdu actually is
i thought it was bad- but i never struggled to construct a simple sentence before
i blame my family
Urdu is my mums second langauge so cos she struggled to express herself properly in urdu she has always spoken english to her kids
urdu is my dads first language but he has always spoken english with his kids
ALL my extended family - uncles, aunties, cousins etc also speak terrible urdu as they were all born here - so they have never spoken urdu with us
my Nan - God bless her, was the only one who spoke Urdu with me - but she aint around anymore
and cos my dads family is half way across the world - contact has always been limited
and when they DO visit i'm always reminded of how rubbish my urdu is and am shocked :shock:
i'm serioulsy contemplated signing up to some course
my family wont help me - they always crack up whenever i open my mouth so i dnt speak in front of them
so maybe ur right Mr Iftikar
i blame my English teachers :twisted:
[b][color=indigo]I only speak english, i cannot speak a single word of urdu and i struggle to understand it. At home everyone speaks english and abit of punjabi. My punjabi is so bad so i neva speak it! My dad blames my mum for not speaking to us in urdu/punjabi when we were little. I can never communicate properly with the older generation cz i dnt understand what my gmas are saying half of the time and it's so embarrassing!! I think im gona sign up on sum urdu course sumtym in the near future.[/color][/b]
I speak English mostly.
However if I am confronted with someone who speaks urdu, I get into this dilema where my english speaking ability degrades to such a level, my urdu is better.
So to diferent people I speak diferent languages. There are some people who I know can understand and speak english, but I am totally uncomfortable using it.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
Salaam
I speak English to people. (Generally) if people speak to me in Urdu I resort to communicating with my eyes.
Gentleness and kindness were never a part of anything except that it made it beautiful, and harshness was never a part of anything except that it made it ugly.
Through cheating, stealing, and lying, one may get required results but finally one becomes
Lol.
I'm really surprised at how many of us speak much better english than our mother tongue. I always felt kind of embarrased that I didnt speak punjabi fluently, although having read some of your lots comments I don't think I'm that bad, lol.
I have never ever in my life spoken to my Dad in punjabi and 95% of the time he speaks in english to us kids, he only really speaks punjabi in front of others if they are speaking punjabi. My mum understands everything in english, but only speaks it when she really has to, so always speaks punjabi to us.
My punjabi isn't very good, half english really, but it's a lot better than some of my friends or cousins. My youngest sister can't even put one sentence together, seriously not even one sentence - her punjabi is really, really bad - sometimes very embarrassing. I can read, write and understand urdu very well coz after finishing mosque mum sent us to urdu classes, but I feel really self-conscious if I have to speak it. My best friends family speak urdu and I always have to kind of prepare myself when I go round to her house in case her mum starts a conversation with me. But I absolutely love the urdu language and would love to be able to speak it fluently.
I do think it's kind of sad that a lot of us kids today don't speak our mother tongue very well and that it's dying out. I would like my kids to know urdu and english, but if I don't know it myself how the hell am I going to teach them.
I always speak bengali with everyone, at home or with friends.
The only time I speak english is when I really need to, for example with someone who doesn't understand bengali.
I can't believe you guys (and girls) can't speak your mother tongue, I thought it came to everyone naturally. I think it depends what language you speak at home, as most people here are saying that they speak english. Even though I can speak bengali, there are certain words I cannot say in bengali so I have to say it in english; this was a problem when I went back home and had to say certain words in english and my cousins couldn't understand me.
If you guys can't speak your mother tongue, do you have problems when you go back home, or do your cousins understand english?