https://languageonthemove.com/the-cult-of-personal-responsibility/ Multilingualism, Intercultural communication, Consumerism, Globalization, Gender & Identity, Migration & Social Justice, Language & Tourism Fri, 25 Nov 2011 06:52:10 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://languageonthemove.com/the-cult-of-personal-responsibility/#comment-4878 Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:02:18 +0000 http://www.languageonthemove.com/?p=6485#comment-4878 […] Language on the Move, Ingrid Pillar takes issue with a campaign to encourage migrants to learn German. The campaign takes a derogatory tone and implies that “laziness” is the reason why […]

]]> https://languageonthemove.com/the-cult-of-personal-responsibility/#comment-4870 Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:50:15 +0000 http://www.languageonthemove.com/?p=6485#comment-4870 Thank you for that post. As a German, I simply hate those hypocritical campaigns that place all the responsibility on the already disadvantaged groups.
There level of hypocracy is shown clearly here:
“All you have to do is go to the campaign’s homepage. There’s a great data base and it’s easy to choose a school.”
Just for fun, I went there. The site doesn’t work in any language but German.
There are a lot of low-treshold offers and initiatives that, to go back to the German saying, “collect people where they are” instead of expecting people to find information on how to learn a language that is given exclusively in that language.
IMO, on of the most efficient means would be to make Kindergarten compulsory. I live in an area with a high percentage of people coming from eastern Europe. Almost all of their children go to the Kindergarten and speak fluent German AND Russian. Still, information is given in both languages because that is much more important than insisting on German.

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