Open Letter to Bradford LEA

[Anonymous]

Established 1981
London School of Islamics
An Educational Trust
63 Margery Park Road London E7 9LD
[email deleted]
Tel/Fax: 0208 555 2733 / 07817 112 667

Open Letter to Bradford LEA
Children who don’t have a good grasp of English should be encouraged to speak their own language in the classroom, according to a new draft policy for Bradford. Teachers should make more use of other languages to help children both at school and at home. A third of Bradford pupils speak a language other than English at home. No child should be expected to cast off the language and culture of the home. Improving pupil’s English and encouraging them to develop their home language go hand in hand. Encouraging children to use their mother tongue could learn other subjects faster. If the children’s mother tongue were not developed, they would struggle to learn any other language properly.

It is the first time in the history of Bradford’s LEA that a right step is going to be taken seriously to raise the standard of education. It is a well known fact that a child’s education suffers if there is a negative co-relation between school and home. Majority of pupils are Muslims and state schools have been mis-educating and de-educating for the last 50 years. British teachers are not professionally and academically well equipped to teach bi-lingual Muslim children. Muslim children suffer from Identity Crises and face mental, emotional and personality problems.

Muslim children need Muslim bi-lingual teachers. Teacher is a role model. It is very difficult to find such teachers locally because state schools have followed the policy of suppressing bilingualism for the last 50 years. The first wave of Muslims arrived with two or three languages including English but the subsequent generations know only English in local accents and not Standard English to follow the National Curriculum.

The only way forward is to recruit teachers from Pakistan who are professionally equipped in bi-lingual education. They are in a position to help and assist local teachers, teaching National Curriculum right from Nursery level. They can also teach Urdu language so that Muslim children could keep in touch with their cultural roots, as most of Islamic literature and poetry is in Urdu language and is a National language of Pakistan. Urdu language will pave a way for the learning of Arabic language because of similar script. I am in a position to recruit 100 teachers from Pakistan within a month, if the LEA asks for it. Without proper teachers, children will keep on suffering academically and socially. It is money well spent not only for the Muslim community but also for the betterment of the British society. It is a lesson for other LEAs to follow to raise the standard of education of the Muslim children in their schools. It will pave the way for better understanding and respect between host community and Muslim community.
Iftikhar Ahmad

 

[RonBee]

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[RonBee]

Bilingual Education

Bilingual education is bad policy. Experience has proven that children in bilingual education programs do not learn English and that they fall farther and farther behind the other children as the years go by. If you do not want your child to succeed you should put him in a bilingual education program. If you want your child to fail you should put him in a bilingual education program. Bilingual education is an idea whose time has come and gone. If you want your child to succeed you will not put him in a bilingual education program. If you want your child to learn English you will not put him in a bilingual education program.

 

[Tdol]

Iftikhar,

While I can sympathise with your point of view and, in the specific case of Bradford, where there is a localised predomiantly Pakistani community, this recruitment might be viable. However, in other areas, where the newcomers are more mixed or less localised, it would not be practical to recruit like this.

There are also plenty of bilingual British teachers of Pakistani ethnicity who could be employed.

I find sentences like "British teachers are not professionally and academically well equipped to teach bi-lingual Muslim children" a little worrying. In a multiracial society, we all have to make compromises and adjustments. This sentence is a generalisation that could be taken the wrong way. Also, racists could use the same argument as a justification for their twisted ideas about immigration.

I think this should be debated and discussed, but will surrounding Pakistani children in Bradfoird with non-British teachers help them integrate into the wider community in the workplace later?

My first port of call would be from the British Pakistani community. There are also issues about the education itself. While I have great respect for the Pakistani community (my boss is one and I have close links to it), I believe that establishing Madrassa style education here would be the passport to more conflict and more BNP councillors.

If Muslim schools are established with the taxpayers' money, where is the non-Muslim, or whichever religion, taxpayer's right to be consulted over where their money is spent.

A knowledge of Urdu can be gained from the home. The knowledge of Arabic is primarily for religious purposes and not for the wider benefit of British society (the non-oil GDP of the Middle East is less than that of Spain), so I see no need for that to be financed by the state.

I agree with your point about how central a knowledge of the mother tongue is. Bilingual teachers where there is a localised community do make sense, but it seems to me that a place like Bradford is not short of intelligent graduate bilingual Pakistanis, who would be of great use to newcomers. I have no objection to the idea of special\extra subjects of relevance to the community being taught at all. In fact, I think such things are a good idea.

Do these Pakistani teachers have an intimate knowledge of our society? The Pakistani diaspora here do. They'd be better, IMO, if this policy is to be adopted.

However, there are many who would object- why would the gay community accept financing schools that teach that they are 'worse than dogs'. Many would object to the ideas about women. If you wish to ignore these views from a religious perspective that is fine by me, but you cannot expect public money to spent in such a way without problems. It's just so contentious an issue. Put it another way- would you approve of your tax money being spent on schools that advocated atheism?

I do worry, however, that such measures would lead to a ghetto-isation of the Pakistani community in Bradford.

I teach in an incredibly multiracial area of London and far too disparate to follow such a policy and I am aware of the difficulties faced by such students. However, I don't particulary like your blanket dismissal of British teachers. I'm not saying we're all saints, but most that I work with are dedicated people who are sensitive to students' needs and values. ;-)

 

[sara williams]

I absolutely agree with TDOL. I would also like to add something that may ruffle a few feathers: what is the point in choosing to live in a country when you don't accept their customs and values? Surely it's that attitude that causes conflict. I don't live in the U.K. anymore, but if I thought my tax contributions were being used for something as USELESS as obstructing young Muslim children from integrating into British society in a SANE fashion, I'd be mighty miffed. :x

 

[Red5]

This is spam!

See: google

 

[Tdol]

I absolutely agree with TDOL. I would also like to add something that may ruffle a few feathers: what is the point in choosing to live in a country when you don't accept their customs and values? Surely it's that attitude that causes conflict. I don't live in the U.K. anymore, but if I thought my tax contributions were being used for something as USELESS as obstructing young Muslim children from integrating into British society in a SANE fashion, I'd be mighty miffed. :x

And worse- it is open to charges of racism- he says 'proper teachers'. If I said that people of his ethnic group were not proper teachers, there would be an outcry. And it would not be wise to try to bring the madrassas here.

 

[jwschang]

This is spam!

I don't get on the internet often, and this site is one of the very few that I do. We sure do have a lot of weird stuff out there.

 

[Tdol]

Re-reading the original post, I think the person is not in a position to judge anyone's English as they don't write it very well themselves, so their claims about Bradford Pakistani teachers are unreliable. ;-)

 

[Ayed]

Re: Bilingual Education

Bilingual education is bad policy. Experience has proven that children in bilingual education programs do not learn English and that they fall farther and farther behind the other children as the years go by. If you do not want your child to succeed you should put him in a bilingual education program. If you want your child to fail you should put him in a bilingual education program. Bilingual education is an idea whose time has come and gone. If you want your child to succeed you will not put him in a bilingual education program. If you want your child to learn English you will not put him in a bilingual education program.

Poor Mr.Ayed, he has been educated in di-lingual inveronment.

my regards

 

[RonBee]

I think that being educated in a bilingual environment is a good thing. Unfortunately, according to all acccounts, children put into bilingual education programs in this country (USA) have failed to learn English adequately and have done poorly academically. We should do what works best for our students, and that is to require them to attend regular classes, with additional help available if they need it (ESL classes).

Unless I am wrong, the idea behind bilingual education was to help students learn English. Instead, the opposite happened.

 

[Tdol]

If you want to see the full Mony, here's the link:
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk

 

[RonBee]

If you want to see the full Mony, here's the link:
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk

From the site:

• "Children who don’t have a good grasp of English should be encouraged to speak their own language in the classroom, according to a new draft policy for Bradford."

That would definitely not help them to learn English. (Perhaps that is the point.) Such a policy, if carried to its logical extreme, could eventually lead to the Balkanization of the UK.

 

[Tdol]

He also says that "In my opinion, English, Arabic and Urdu languages should be taught side by side from an early age of five to Muslim children."

I can't see Urdu as being of much use to a Somali Muslim. Basically, he's quite simple a Pakistani racist peddling a mixture of bigotry and nonsense.

If Bradford, already one of the poorest areas of the Uk pursues these pilicies, then it will be wondering why other very multiracial towns have done so much better. I grew up in a town where half of the inner city inhabitants are of visible minorities and it is a prosperous city that is in the top ten towns for desirability in England. It's probably because there are people working to build a community spanning communities, unlike blinkered Iftikhar. The more you look at it, the more frightening it becomes.

 

[RonBee]

If you want to see the full Mony, here's the link:
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk

From the site:

• "Children who don’t have a good grasp of English should be encouraged to speak their own language in the classroom, according to a new draft policy for Bradford."

That would definitely not help them to learn English. (Perhaps that is the point.) Such a policy, if carried to its logical extreme, could eventually lead to the Balkanization of the UK.

Also from the site:

• "Teachers should make more use of other languages [besides English] to help children both at school and at home."

It is unclear how it would help children if they don't learn English in what is a predominantly English-speaking country.

Also:

• "No child should be expected to cast off the language and culture of the home."

That is a straw man argument.

Also:

• "Improving pupil’s English and encouraging them to develop their home language go hand in hand."

No, it doesn't.

Also:

• "Encouraging children to use their mother tongue could learn other subjects faster."

If I understand that correctly, it means that if you encourage children to use the language they grew up hearing they might learn other subjects faster. It is an odd concept.

 

[Tdol]

Especially in a highly multicultural environment. In a London classroom, there could easily be a dozen first languages. ;-)

 

[RonBee]

The idea that you need to teach children the language they learned at home is an odd one. Also, as you said, you would have to choose one to favor over the others. (The author of that piece likes Urdu, and he also mentioned Arabic.)

 

[Tdol]

Other languages should be encouraged because a linguistically diverse population is a healthy thing, but there has to be a common geographical core (which can be plural), otherwise you simply cannot have a coherent society.