BirKibrisli wrote:Kikapu wrote:YFred wrote:BirKibrisli wrote:Me Ed wrote:Gasman wrote:Interesting about the schools. Considering there are 'English' schools in Cyprus where the Greek Language is not a compulsory subject (though English is) and I haven't heard any GCs objecting to that. It surprised me when I first moved here. I know teenagers who have attended them for 10 yrs and can speak hardly a word of Greek.
There's a fundamental flaw in your argument, amusing as it is.
RoC citizens choose to go English school and the analogy would be Germans going to Turkish schools.
We all know that these Turkish schools will be for ethnic Turks, thus propogating the islamist model of separation and intollerance.
Are you for real??? There are English schools,German schools,French schools,Armenian,and soon a Greek School I believe,in Turkey...Why can't we have a Turkish school in Germany where 3 million Turks live???Is this your idea of democracy and human rights,you know, the kind you preach for Cyprus???
Who said that school would only be for German children of Turkish background? It would be for anybody who wants to go there...Overwhelming majority would of course be of Turkish background,but not because of restrictions,but because most German parents would share your blind prejudices against such a school...
Bir, I have nothing against Turkish being taught in any country as a second language but the primary language should be the oficial language of the country. For the sake of the children otherwise they will be disadvantaged when it comes to entering University and the job market.
This bad idea is/was tried out in California where Mexican Spanish speaking Americans and illegals were tought in their own language at the tax payers expense, and in the end, the Mexican kids spoke very bad English, because they were tought in Spanish and they learned more about Mexico than they did about America. As a result, they lacked a good education for them to compete with other Americans. I agree with YFred on this one, that, primary education has to be the one provided in the country one lives in. This is not to say that there can't be private language schools that teaches anything under the sun, but the cost has to come from the parents and not from the tax payers. If Erdogan wants German-Turkish kids to be tought in Turkish, then Turkey should pay for their private tution in Germany or he should pay for them to be brought to Turkey for them to be tought there.!
I see both your points Kikapu and YFred...But teaching in the host country's primary language is also not a guarantee that children who come from another background and whose mother tongue is something else will NOT be disadvantaged...In fact I see this often in Australia...If there is no special or remedial English classes these kids fall behind the others,often get put in "slow" classes and end up with all sorts of psychological and academic problems...Given the fact that often their parents cannot speak English well they lack home support as well...So they either leave school prematurely or the parents have to pay a lot of money for private coaching...There is a lot of merit in educating them in their mother tongue,making sure that they also learn the host language well...After all these people pay their taxes as well,but their children do not get the same benefits from the education system because of the language disadvantage...
It was this fear that led me not to teach my children turkish when young. Hence they have had a reasonable chance of going to University.
But surely teaching them their own mother tounge as a second language would remove all the communication bariers.
