Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English. Show all posts

Monday, December 17, 2007

Can You Sing "God Save The Queen" In English?

Britain has no control over its borders because of EU law and is being flooded with immigrants at record levels - as emigration of UK natives has also reached record levels. Today's news from the Telegraph puts these facts in shocking perspective. Today, in the UK, native English speakers are the minority in more than 1 of every 20 schools:

Children with English as their first language are now in the minority in more than 1,300 schools, according to official figures.

. . . The figures show that in a total of 1,338 primary and secondary schools - more than one in 20 of all schools in England - children with English as their first language are in the minority.

In 600 of these schools, fewer than a third of pupils speak English as their first language.

The disclosure led to warnings that the rising number of foreign pupils without a decent grasp of English was putting intense pressure on teachers and undermining education standards.

The figures have fuelled demands from teachers' leaders for more money to help meet the costs of teaching foreign-born children.

Teachers' unions said educating a single non-English-speaking pupil could cost as much as £30,000 a year.

Coping with large numbers of foreign children risked undermining the quality of teaching given to all pupils, they said.

Philip Parkin, the general secretary of the Professional Association of Teachers, said rising levels of immigration and a lack of multi-lingual teaching staff were "providing serious challenges" for schools trying to maintain standards.

Dealing with non-English- speaking children "makes it much harder to deliver the curriculum", Mr Parkin said.

"Schools that are in that position need considerable support in order to give those children help with English and help with our curriculum.

. . . Data from the Department for Children, Schools and Families show that in 574 of the 17,361 primary schools in England, children without English as a first language make up between 51 and 70 per cent of all pupils.

Another 569 primaries have more than 70 per cent who count English as a second language.

In 112 of the 3,343 secondary schools, children without English as a first language make up 51 to 70 per cent of all pupils. In another 83 secondary schools, the proportion is above 70 per cent.

The total number of schools where pupils with a first language other than English make up at least 51 per cent of the population is 1,338.

Following patterns of immigration, children who do not speak English as a first language are heavily concentrated in certain areas of the country, especially London.

The 20 councils with the highest concentration of non-English speaking children are in London.

In the borough of Newham, nine out of 10 schools have a non-English first language majority. The same is true of a third of schools in Leicester and in Blackburn, and a quarter of schools in Birmingham.

Gordon Brown last week repeated calls for immigrants to learn English, but critics say he is not doing enough to fund proper language teaching for immigrant children.

David Davis, the Conservative shadow home secretary, accused the Government of failing to meet the costs of its immigration policy.

"We have been warning the Government for years now of the consequences for schools of the very high rate of immigration," he said. "This shows how many schools will face real difficulties." . . .

Read the entire story here. The truly amazing thing in reading the constant litany of stories about the U.K.'s immigration problem is that you hear next to nothing about the long term effect this will have on all aspects of British life and culture. It is suicide by open borders. I am unsure whether it is multiculturalism taken to its logical suicidal conclusion but, reading the news across the pond, it would seem raising the ramifications of Britain's open borders has been tantamount to heresy ever since Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech in 1968, It generates not reasoned and thoughtful debate but only opprobrium. I have yet to see one reasoned discussion by a politician that addresses the causes and ramifications of this immigration castrophe. Its Harry Potter brought to life . . . with the "policy that shall not be named." Can someone across the pond enlighten me on this?


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Monday, November 19, 2007

Hola - Legislating Balkanization

America is the penultimate melting pot, a group of disparate people unified by a few core values and a common language. Remove the latter as a defining characteristic and you start the process towards balkanization. Go further and litigate multiple languages and you take a big step towards balkanization. Be that as it may, step up Nancy Pelosi and the Decomcrat's Hispanic Caucus:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to kill an amendment that would protect employers from federal lawsuits for requiring their workers to speak English. Among the employers targeted by such lawsuits: the Salvation Army.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, a moderate Republican from Tennessee, is dumbstruck that legislation he views as simple common sense would be blocked. He noted that the full Senate passed his amendment to shield the Salvation Army by 75-19 last month, and the House followed suit with a 218-186 vote just this month. "I cannot imagine that the framers of the 1964 Civil Rights Act intended to say that it's discrimination for a shoe shop owner to say to his or her employee, 'I want you to be able to speak America's common language on the job,' " he told the Senate last Thursday.

. . . Mr. Alexander says his battle is about far more than what language is spoken on a shop floor. "The EEOC actions turn diversity, our greatest strength, against the interests of our common future as Americans," he told me.

The late Albert Shanker, head of the American Federation of Teachers, once pointed out that public schools were established in this country largely "to help mostly immigrant children learn the three R's and what it means to be an American, with the hope that they would go home and teach their parents the principles in the Constitution and the Declaration that unite us."

Mr. Alexander says that noble effort is in danger of being undermined: "We have spent the last 40 years in our country celebrating diversity at the expense of unity. One way to create that unity is to value, not devalue, our common language, English."

The battle over Mr. Alexander's amendment is about whether a consensus that used to unite liberals and conservatives in this country can continue to hold. If it can't, expect the issue to become a flashpoint in the 2008 elections. Republicans have their political problems with Hispanics over some of their approaches to illegal immigration, but they may be nothing compared to the problems Democrats have if they continue to cave in to their anti-assimilation extremists.
Read the entire story here.

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