From: ryyti@jyu.fi (Jarmo Ryyti)
Subject: Re: Keskustelua suomalaisten asemasta Ruotsissa
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 10:39:30 GMT

Tor Lillqvist (tml@tik.vtt.fi) wrote:
: In article <1992Nov17.111034.14483@jyu.fi> ryyti@jyu.fi (Jarmo Ryyti) writes:
: 
:    By our policy, in this is that arabic is his mothertongue and it is
:    in his diploma too.  Finnish is just finnish.  So a pupil going to
:    a school in Finland and has for instance arabic as a mother tongue
:    studies arabic as a mother tongue, it is called his mother tongue
:    in our byrocracy not a home language.
: 
: Oh come on Jarmo, do you really believe this?  You claim that:
: 
: - if a pupil in Finnish "peruskoulu" has Arabic as mother tongue
: - she gets education in this language instead of Finnish or Swedish
: - her diploma says "mother tongue: x", referring to Arabic?

In the curriculum the definition the mother tongue is the same
for all in that respect that all the languages are called the same way.
An  arabic pupil studies her/his own languege under a definition
of mother language, his/her lectures in finnish are called finnish
lectures.
In Sweden the policy is to call non-swedish language education
home-language education by us mother tongue education.
It seems being a game of the words but knowing the attitudes of the Finns
in Sweden, reading articles about the topic there lies more in it.
In Finland we have not such a policy that all the other languages had been
given a status home-language in school bureucracy&education
 besides one, finnish.

: 
: Of course this is not the case. I am also quite sure that if you ask
: immigrants in Finland and Sweden (whose mother tongue is not Swedish
: or Finnish) to compare which country provides better education in the
: immigrant children's mother tongue, the answer is Sweden. After all,
: Sweden has so many more immigrants for such a long time that this
: matter has had to been taken care of (the "home language" education).

So you compare Sweden with the Third World countries and Sweden is better.
Very interesting.
: 
Well I compare Finland and Sweden. Why there are so many so called
halvspr}kiga in Sweden? A result of the education policy. It is proved
in many ways that the policy Sweden has towards the immigtants in
education  harmful because it produces halvspr}kiga people. 
Halvspr}kiga:persons who cannot neither swedish nor their own mother tongue.
The problem is big among the finns especially and thus much spoken.
When you take as an example that just few years ago the first finnish
speaking secondary school started to work in Stockholm with the aid
of Finland, on the area where there lives c. 100 000 Finns where there
has been for centuries a finnish minority. You should start thinking
what have the authorities done or not-done  in Stockhom area.

Stockholms town was against the school but after a long fight
 the Finns got the 
right to start that school but on their own cost. At the same time there
was a french , english etc. schools  aided by Stockholm City authorities.
This thing was quite a topic of discussion in finnish circles in Sweden.
The Finns pay the same taxes as the swedes but
the authorities want them not to start own educational systems, besides
on their own cost, one can say that certainly something is wrong.
I call it Fennofobia.

: What about a pupil in a Finnish school who has English as mother
: tongue (but knows Finnish also, so she can take part in the
: education). To her "English" is taught as a "foreign language" Gack!
: Or even worse, maybe because she known English already, she won't even
: choose English as a "Foreign Language".  Now the British and Americans
: will start comparing Finland to Nazi Germany! Finnish schools call all
: other languages than Finnish or Swedish "Foreign"! Wer have been
: exposed!
: --
Cmon,in Finland does not exist such a definition like home-language.
That is the main thing. A pupil studies, as a mother tongue english
if he/she wants or finnish if she/he wants. Then he/she just studies
an other of them as a foreign language. No language is not given
such a derogatrory status like "home-language" which is Swedish model
which is considered very bad. It does not rise the self esteem of the non
swedish pupils
when they notice that their own language is called in stead of mother
tongue a home language and only the language of their swedish class mates
is called a mother tongue. Little children understand very well what it
is , their language is "lower". In that way Swedish policy is rasist.
It is opposed in the Finnish circles very much, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas
has made research on the topic, but because the whole thing is very
language -political and bound with the ethno-centric thinking of the
swedes nothing has happened.

I do not like that the discussion is going on just between the researchers
and some finnish activists in an inside story but I use this arena
as a method to take this topic into the day-light. Out of the Swedenfinnish
"ghetto", because you never see this in public actually.
Speaking about the educational system of Sweden , one can argue if Sweden
has a good system, I do not think so.

But you know I compare with Finland, with whom Tor Lillquist compares,
he compares Swedish educational system with the Third World.
Terveisi{,
Jarmo Ryyti



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