HARBEN LETS HL Fashion Show Preview - The Founder

28
Comment & Debate
A
victim’s
right and
a child’s
right:
who
wins?
» continued from page 27
management classes (which he had
been attending prior to the attack)
had been working, the subsequent
rape surely proves otherwise. If we
fail to believe alcoholics anonymous
is working for someone who
carries on drinking, surely Naomi
Perry, defending, must take the
British public to be fools if she
thinks she can confidently say that
Khan’s anger management classes
have helped him.
Our Justice System is far too
lenient on rapists and, considering
that the crime is an act which leaves
the victim emotionally scarred for
life, ordering a rapist three to eight
years in prison is as disgusting as
the crime itself. The punishments
are disrespectful to the victim, to
their family who suffer with them
and to women and men everywhere
who fear they would have no justice
if ever they were in the same position.
I recently discovered that the
average length of sentence for rape
is seven and a half years, and the
sentence can vary depending not
only on the age of the rapist but
also the age of the victim. I hardly
get a warm feeling knowing a rapist
would have got a higher sentence
had I been attacked at 13, than if I
were to be attacked now at 22. Why
are we using age brackets in the first
place? It is fine to have guidelines
but not when the guidelines fail
to reflect the physical and psychological
effects of sexual attacks. It
is about time the British Judicial
System started to issue punishments
which reflect the severity of
rape, and then, perhaps the public
can believe that, for once, justice
does exist.
The Founder | Thursday 11 March 2010
Bilingualism: double
language, double standard
Camille Nedelec-Lucas
Chief Sub-Editor
The list of the benefits
of childhood
bilingualism that
is posted on the
National Literary
Trust website
includes meta-linguistic awareness,
increased cognitive flexibility, and
social sensitivity. It also mentions
research from Goldsmith’s, which
shows that multilingual children
can outperform monolingual
children in secondary school.
Behavioural psychologist Dean
Keith Simonton adds: “Research
has shown that intensive exposure
to two or more different languages
helps build the cognitive basis for
creativity. ” I can’t really vouch for
any of these qualities affecting me
(especially the bit about outperforming
monolingual children
academically!), but speaking
another language enables me to
communicate with my non-English
speaking family (so it’s pretty essential…
although when the family
nags, complete ignorance of what
they are saying might admittedly be
useful), and it is also the medium
through with I can assert a link
with my second culture.
Knowing how precious my language
is to me (and how my schools
always applauded and encouraged
my language acquisition), I was
horrified when Sonia, a Chinese-
American friend, described her first
year at primary school; as a fluent
Cantonese speaker, she would
sometimes mix Cantonese with
English, including when speaking
to her teachers. In response, her
teachers told her parents to stop
speaking Cantonese to her, which
they did. As a result, her level of
fluency dropped and as an adult,
when she moved to Hong Kong for
postgraduate study, she was faced
with the task of recovering a language
that she shouldn’t have lost
in the first place. The saddest thing
in this story is that language mixing
in bilingual children is actually very
common and very normal; as the
National Literary Trust explains,
“children will not get confused by
learning more than one language
in the household; up until about
the age of 10 or 12, children learn
foreign languages almost as if they
were one big language.” When a
bilingual child speaks, they will
therefore use the first word that
springs to mind regardless of which
language it is from. They will grow
out of this - that is, if an adult
doesn’t screw it up for them - with
both languages intact and fluent.
Remembering her story, I wonder
if it wasn’t just ignorance that had
made her teachers react in that
way; I can’t help but think that if
she’d been ‘confusing’ English with
a European language, she would
have been met with more patience.
Perhaps she would even have been
applauded for having a rare and
valued linguistic talent.
Stories of other Asian friends in
England and Australia with similar
experiences - in which their other
language was either repressed or
ignored within formal education
- have lead me to ask if this is not
a wide-spread trend, in which a European
language trumps a Non-European
one. Muriel Saville-Troike,
in her book Introducing Second
Language Acquisition, agrees:
“Maintenance of indigenous and
immigrant languages other than
English is not widely encouraged
(in the US) and is often actively discouraged.
Indeed, pride in ethnicity
along with associated language
use can be seen as very threatening
to the dominant group, and as a
symbol of disunity and separatism.”
Liberals like to cheerfully remark
that, despite our train-wreck
economy, and our PM who sold
reserves of gold when the market
slumped (perhaps the hint should
have been in the name: he’s a reverse
Midas - everything he touches
turns to Brown), multiculturalism
is definitely one thing that Britain
does well. So perhaps, Saville-
Troike’s comment doesn‘t apply
to us…. Sorry kids. No such luck.
When I asked an Indian friend of
mine whether his Punjabi skills
were ever valued in school, his response
was: “Why should they be?”
It’s a response that says it all. On
further questioning, he admitted
that perhaps this was because Punjabi
is considered “more primitive”
(despite being the product of one of
the most ancient civilisations in the
world), in contrast to (for example)
French, which brings to mind high
fashion, depressed poetry, and cups
of artistic and/or existentialist coffee.
A Modern Foreign Languages
secondary school teacher I spoke to
agreed, although she was also keen
to point out that GCSEs in native
languages are available at special
request (that is, GCSE as a foreign
language, resulting in the ludicrous
situation of, say, a fluent speaker of
Guajarati taking an exam in beginner’s
Guajarati). One argument for
their difference in status may be
that French is widespread around
the world (and therefore more useful),
but so are many Asian languages
(Sonia’s ‘useless’ Cantonese
is spoken in Malaysia, Singapore,
Hong Kong, and China, and Chinese
is the most spoken language in
the world). Besides, you can’t look
into a crystal ball and say: “During
the course of this child’s entire life,
we know for absolute certain that
he/she is never going here, here,
and there, so he/she doesn’t need
to learn that language.” You never
know when a language will be useful,
or where someone will end up
in the future. Furthermore, in terms
of brain development, it doesn’t
matter which language the child
speaks in order to derive a benefit,
yet the opportunities (or should I
say lack of opportunities) available
to speakers of non-European languages
in British education doesn’t
seem to reflect that.
English Linguist Kit Fields, in
her book Issues in Modern Foreign
Languages, laments: “Why is it
that a child bringing into school a
particular skill in music or drama
or sport will have that skill nurtured
or encouraged, but that a
child whose skill lies in being able
to speak Turkish or Chinese or
Bengali, as well as English, is likely
within our education system to
have that skill ignored? Why is such
a skill not seen as important for the
cognitive and emotional development
of that child and as a resource
which can promote the language
and cultural awareness of all pupils?
Why do we not value an outstanding
performance in a Gujarati examination
as highly as a mediocre
one in French?” I hate to be the one
to say it Kit, but that sounds like a
type of intellectual racism to me.