Most of Government's latest offering on childhood is too risible for words, and the most notable thing about the whole enterprise is the Political Class's determination to meddle in matters that do not concern it, as such, while insisting that it is no business of the State to run, say, schools, or hospitals, or railways.
But the proposal on the teaching of foreign languages in primary schools stands out. Which languages are they to be? The non-European ones being suggested would constitute a wholesale surrender to permanent economic, and rapidly also cultural, domination by the countries where they are spoken.
Whereas traditional European languages would be an important means of resistance to that domination on the part of the Biblical-Classical synthesis that is Western civilisation, while leaving open the option of later study of other civilisations by those who had already come to understand their own.
So, which is it to be?
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Like it or not David our education system has to gear up to the fact that globalisation is here to stay and if we want to have any hope of competing in the future we need to remain in the EU and we need our children to have the skills (including language, scientific et cetera) which will allow them to complete on a world wide scale. It is clear that parties such as yours, UKIP and the Tories cannot be the parties to take the country forward. A refusal to understand the nature and force of globalisation is just a refusal to understand the nature of our future and is the reason why anyone with more than half a brain cell in intelligence and foresight will not vote for you. No doubt you have some cutting (though weak) retort to make but it is the truth.
ReplyDeleteIt is morally repugnant for the State to allow the importation of products that could have been made here by our own people, or the importation of a new and craven working class in order to replace our own, or the transfer of power from democratic institutions meeting in public to undemocratic institutions meeting in secret, or the waging of purely aggressive wars. Such are the realities of globalisation in general and of the EU in particular.
ReplyDeleteAnd it is morally repugnant to suggest that the only reason to learn a language is something to do with economics, or that the West should commit civilisational suicide by acquiescing to Islamic or Far Eastern domination through the teaching non-European languages instead of European ones, thus literally closing the books to future generations. Except, of course, the books in, say, Arabic (guess which one) or Mandarin. We already see the use of Mandarin as a weapon by which to detach Australia from the West.
If we wanted no part in any of this, then we could have no part in it. The sooner, the better.
By all means let trade be among (though certainly not pre-eminent among) the reasons for learning languages. And by all means let people who have been brought to a proper understanding of their own culture seek to grasp other people's, but that is not the province of children.
If time can be found on the curriculum, over and above European languages, for what is being proposed, then that time should instead be given over to the languages and literature of Classics and the Bible.