5 ms·

For adults it is easy to move across the EU: you can work and socialise using in English. But for children, and families, it is impossible. How can a child mov

For adults it is easy to move across the EU: you can work and socialise using in English. But for children, and families, it is impossible. How can a child move and be expected to learn a new language immediately? This seems like a huge disconnect. National governments need to start to offer (for parents that opt-in) primary and secondary education in English, with the entire curriculum and exams in that language as well. Universities degrees are already offered in English, and at the very least fluency in the language is required to study most courses, since all of the articles, case studies and reference materials are in that language. It is time that that same flexibility was extended to the earlier years of education.

jacquesm 7y ago
> How can a child move and be expected to learn a new language immediately? I've seen children do this repeatedly and without any issue whatsoever, it is the adults that struggle.
barking 7y ago
Sounds like a dystopian future to me.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  A dystopia where every human can speak to any other? Imagine it was the other way around. There is a single language humans speak and someone suggests we should instead split in hundreds of non mutually intelligible ones. Why would any one want that?
  - barking 7y ago
    Because it's more interesting I think. Like I find europe more interesting than USA because the cultures are more varied and a big reason for that is the language variation. Sadly we are becoming more homogenised already. Dialects are disappearing and it's becoming possible to speak English everwhere as well as to dine in MacDonalds.
geekpowa 7y ago
Renato Constantino, Filipino historian, argues persuasively that children should be educated in their natal tongue. Largely a political essay, also discusses language issues like a child having to learn a language not spoken in the home before they can begin to learn. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7735/865e2ea8fd8d9662f3916ffe41cc14376706.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7735/865e2ea8fd8d9662f3916f...
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Education strives to transfer the knowledge and experience of those that have gone before to the next generation, so they don't have to start from scratch. As such, it is usually more efficient to do that in the language the recipient understands best, their natal tongue. But over the longer timespan of a human life being limited to your natal tongue will also severely reduce the amount of knowledge and wisdom that you have access to. Most countries address this by giving children in school compulsory lessons in other languages once they reach a certain minimum age. Children from multi-lingual homes have a distinct advantage here, their concepts are already mapped to multiple representations and they do not need to first translate what they want to say or hear into their mother language.
chmod775 7y ago
> National governments need to start to offer (for parents that opt-in) primary and secondary education in English, with the entire curriculum and exams in that language as well. This already exists in many places. European countries are used to offering education in multiple languages. Multilingual schools or schools teaching in something other than the local language have existed for hundreds of years.

jacquesm 7y ago

> How can a child move and be expected to learn a new language immediately? I've seen children do this repeatedly and without any issue whatsoever, it is the adults that struggle.

barking 7y ago

Sounds like a dystopian future to me.

jobigoud 7y ago
A dystopia where every human can speak to any other? Imagine it was the other way around. There is a single language humans speak and someone suggests we should instead split in hundreds of non mutually intelligible ones. Why would any one want that?
- barking 7y ago
  Because it's more interesting I think. Like I find europe more interesting than USA because the cultures are more varied and a big reason for that is the language variation. Sadly we are becoming more homogenised already. Dialects are disappearing and it's becoming possible to speak English everwhere as well as to dine in MacDonalds.

geekpowa 7y ago

Renato Constantino, Filipino historian, argues persuasively that children should be educated in their natal tongue. Largely a political essay, also discusses language issues like a child having to learn a language not spoken in the home before they can begin to learn. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7735/865e2ea8fd8d9662f3916ffe41cc14376706.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7735/865e2ea8fd8d9662f3916f...

jacquesm 7y ago
Education strives to transfer the knowledge and experience of those that have gone before to the next generation, so they don't have to start from scratch. As such, it is usually more efficient to do that in the language the recipient understands best, their natal tongue. But over the longer timespan of a human life being limited to your natal tongue will also severely reduce the amount of knowledge and wisdom that you have access to. Most countries address this by giving children in school compulsory lessons in other languages once they reach a certain minimum age. Children from multi-lingual homes have a distinct advantage here, their concepts are already mapped to multiple representations and they do not need to first translate what they want to say or hear into their mother language.

chmod775 7y ago

> National governments need to start to offer (for parents that opt-in) primary and secondary education in English, with the entire curriculum and exams in that language as well. This already exists in many places. European countries are used to offering education in multiple languages. Multilingual schools or schools teaching in something other than the local language have existed for hundreds of years.