Blog feedCall for children to learn Polish
4th February
The Times reports that the Polish government wants Britain to make Polish a standard choice for British children studying a foreign language because so many are now living in the UK.
Krzysztof Stanowski, Poland’s deputy minister of education, said that Polish language teaching had ‘about the same status as Swahili’ even though there were now some 100,000 Polish pupils in British schools. ‘It should have a higher status,’ he said. ‘It would be unrealistic to say we could set up Polish as a second or third language in British schools in time for the next school year. But the year after, why not?’
Read the full story on the Times website.
Categories: Community languages, Take-up of languages
Comments
Comment from Joanna McPake
Time: March 10, 2008, 11:11 am
I can’t see where on the Times website it states that ‘Polish has about the same status as Swahili’ and as it appears to be intended to be a disparaging remark I think it should be removed from this summary. Swahili is spoken by 35 million people worldwide (comparing well with 42 million for Polish) and, because it is widely used as a lingua franca in eastern Africa, is the only African language with official status in the African Union. Given the UK’s long history of involvement with east Africa, and the many people living here now whose origins are in that part of the world, there are lots of reasons why British school children should learn Swahili as well as Polish It’s not a good idea to try to get one language on the agenda by rubbishing others.
Comment from Ewan McIntosh
Time: March 10, 2008, 11:28 am
I agree with you, Joanna: clearly an education minister and not a diplomat. But this is not so much the Times (or the MFLE) making a statement; we are reporting what a Government Minister has said in justification for his request that Polish takes on, say, the same stature as French in British schools. As such, I’d be welcoming debate about whether he’s right or wrong in doing so - you put forward plenty of reasons why he’s wrong in his message - but we cannot avoid reporting in a balanced fashion what is already in the mainstream media.
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