科目試験の結果

次回のレポート締め切りが三月三日なので、
ぼちほち前回の科目試験の結果が出る頃だと思っていた。

普段はほとんど意識していない郵便受けが気になり始めた。
案の定、今日見慣れた封筒が送られてきた。

結果は三勝三敗だった。なんだか微妙な結果である。

西洋史特殊Ⅲ→A　日米比較文化論→B　西洋史特殊Ⅰ→C

教育学　英語Ⅶ　教育社会学はDだった。

持ち込み可の西洋史特殊ⅢがAなのは当然としても、Ⅰが合格だったのは驚いた。
いつかも書いたが、知っていることのすべて（ごく僅か）と、ほとんど「想像」で書いた。

寝る前に、ベッドのなかで古代エジプトに関する本を読んでいるのだが・・
今日から読む本を変えるべきだろうか？

教育学は正直言ってガッカリした。今までの中で、一番よく書けたし少し自信もあった。
諦めると言いながら、未練たらしく引きずってきたが、これで終わりにしよう。

英語は運が良ければ？と期待していたが・・そうは甘くないらしい。

そんなわけで英語の最後の章です。

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6  Reactions of other people

'At the time when I was trying to bring up my children with two
languages, I usually met with resistance from the people around me
and their advice would be to stop confusing my children. In due course
I did give up talking Dutch to them and consequently my children
can only speak Greek. Nowadays people again offer their opinion, but
this time they will say, "Why on earth didn't you teach your children
your own language ?" '
This is the experience of Anke, the Dutch friend who wrote to me
from Greece. It demonstrates that, whatever decision parents have
made with respect to the bilingual upbringing of their children, it
never seems right in the eyes of the outside world. A few parents told
me that in their view there is a general lack of interest in this subject.
Others were convinced that people don't care what language you speak
at home, providing you keep it private. But my main impression is
that Anke's experience is fairly typical. For most parents agree that
there is an almost constant stream of comments, advice, criticism,
and warnings, which are bound to affect them in some way or other.

Who are they?
What do other people know about bilingual children? It appears that
this is one of those subjects about which a lot of people think they
know something. Moreover, they are always volunteering this knowl-
edge. One of the mothers I talked to complained:
 'There are many self-appointed experts around, but the advice people

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give you is never very helpful, even if it is only meant to reassure you
that there needn't be any problems.'
Let us have a closer look at who those people are and at the things
they are telling parents. First of all, the category of 'other people' is
too wide and therefore it makes sense to distinguish between neigh-
bours, acquaintances, friends, relatives, and schoolteachers. They all
play a part in parents' lives and they all have their different reasons
for commenting on a particular course of action in the bilingual
situation.
Neighbours and acquaintances usually do not have a personal interest
in the bilingual development of one's children, while relatives and
schoolteachers have. I will talk about the last two groups later, but
first we will have a look at the comments parents regularly get from
local people. And at the end of this chapter I will discuss the reactions
of friends.

It's never right
When someone overhears you talking a foreign language to your child,
he or she often gets curious and asks you what language you are
speaking and whether the child is bilingual. Especially when children
are small, it is often thought to be rather endearing that they speak
a foreign language. And it isn't threatening yet, for a conversation
with small children is more or less the same in any language and people
can often guess what you are saying to your child. Even so, reactions
aren't favourable all of the time.
  David is English and his wife comes from the French-speaking part
of Belgium. They live in Holland and they have two small girls.
David wrote:

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'Most people think it's rather good that we have a child who seems
to have little problem with two languages. One person was against
it for ideological/social reasons (didn't think it would work in terms
of the child being socially accepted), but has since changed her opinion
when these problems don't seem to have arisen.'

  But he also stated:
 'Some people, chance acquaintances usually, have attitudes bordering
on the aggressive about how these kids of ours will have trouble fitting
in later—at school etc'
  Things tend to get more serious when the children are no longer
toddlers and are approaching school age. All of a sudden, people
around you can start making comments with far-reaching implications,
although they themselves might not quite realize this. Jonneke and her
husband are both Dutch and they live near London.  She recalled:
 'People who live locally have been telling me that I should be speaking
English to my children instead of Dutch. But if I ask them whether
they would speak French to their children if they moved to France,
they react with an indignant "no, of course not".'
 If one keeps a record of all the questions and comments, one soon
discovers a curious dichotomy. The opinion held in general seems to
be that it is very easy for young children to learn a second language.
At the same time, people are very ready to point out that children get
confused very quickly and that bilingual children don't learn either
language very well.

  All parents who live with the bilingual experience have come across
  these varying opinions. But some parents come in for more criticism
  than others. Take for instance those parents who try to keep up a
  language with their children that is not regarded as being very 'useful',
 
 [71]
such as Norwegian or Dutch. They are regarded with far more
suspicion than parents who have created a bilingual French-English
situation. So, if parents insist on a bilingual upbringing for their
children, the languages involved had better be useful ones, for other-
wise the parents are not infrequently considered to be selfish.
  A distinction is also made between parents in mixed-language marriages
and couples who have migrated together. In the latter case
people are more willing to accept that parents want to keep up their
own language, even if they will regularly remind those parents that
the children should have sufficient chance to assimilate the local lan-
guage. Parents in a mixed-language marriage, where one or both
parents speak a foreign language with their children, are more often
looked upon as striving after peculiar ideals. Why would they want
to make their children different from the others? What's good enough
for the rest—to know only one language—should be good enough for
them.
　 But, in whatever situation one lives, or whatever choice one has
made with regard to the bilingual upbringing of one's children, people
love to comment. Ulla comes from Germany, but both her children
were born and raised in England and have an English father. She
had this to say about it:
　　'Whenever people ask me whether I have taught my children to
speak German, and I say "No!", they will say "What a shame!" or "
My god, you missed a chance!" With time I have learned to reply
with "I think that's debatable", and then leave the matter at that.'
There is one group of parents who may expect more reassuring
comments from the people around them than any other group, at least
for a while. Those are the parents who have recently migrated to a

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new country with their children, a position we used to be in ourselves.

'When ice came to England, Hedda and Gideon were eighteen months
and almost three years old. After a few months, when the hustle of
moving house and settling in a neiv country had died down a bit,
people began to enquire how the children were learning to speak
English. And invariably we were assured by everyone around us that
from now on their English would develop quickly and naturally.
  But, as a matter of fact, it didn't, and when it still didn't after more
than a year, those remarks that were meant to be kind and reassuring
—"All young children learn a new language quickly and easily."—
began to have the opposite effect.'

 No doubt, parents learn to live with the comments and criticisms of
the people around them. But I'm sure they all agree with Judy, who
said:
  'The only people who know what it takes to bring up your children
with two languages are the ones who have actually gone through the
process themselves. All the others just haven't got a clue.'

Schools and schoolteachers
Although unsolicited advice from neighbours and other local people
isn't always welcome or helpful, it doesn't need to bother or influence
parents too much in what they do. It starts to matter, though, when
parents receive comments from the schools to which they are sending
their children.

'One month after ice had arrived in London, I dutifully ivent around

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the corner with, three-year-old Gideon to put his name on the waiting-
list of the local school. "You'd better make sure he is speaking
English by the time he starts here", was the remark I was to bring
home with me. "Yes, of course", I answered, but I immediately
wondered what they would do if he didn't.'

  The point about schools is that parents are so dependent on them
as to how they treat their bilingual children. Nowadays there are
many schools and schoolteachers with some experience of children who
speak a different language at home. It often seems that the actual
experience of having had to teach children who either did well or did
not do well as a result of their bilingualism determines the school-
teacher's attitude towards new pupils. This is in itself not too surpris-
ing, but it shows that there is no general rule or consensus on how to
deal with bilingual children. And another result of this is that as a
parent one never knows what to expect.
  Many parents actually report that their children have absolutely
no difficulties at school. In some cases they tell me that teachers had
even encouraged them to practise reading and writing in the other
language at home, as it was thought that it would enhance the
children's language awareness. If, on the other hand, the child shows
even one sign of being slightly behind, the blame is all too easily put
on the bilingual situation. Marie-Luce remembered the following
example:
  'Maxime appeared to have problems with reading at school and
just before the Christmas holidays the teacher told us to stop speaking
French to him at home. Of course we didn't, but we did sit down with him
to read in English. When he went back after the holidays, it soon

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became clear that he had caught up with the rest of his class. The
teacher triumphantly told us that apparently her remedy had worked.'
Schoolteachers can't always be blamed for not knowing how to
cope with bilingual children, for it seems to me that they suffer from
the same lack of information as everybody else. Lack of information
needn't be an excuse for a lack of common sense though. Judy said
she became rather angry at what she thought was bad conduct on
behalf of the teacher. She told me:
'At home we speak English and it has taken Sarah a long time to
learn Dutch. She is a bit shy and doesn't always communicate easily
with other people. One day I fetched her from nursery school and
overheard the teacher say to her "You won't get this back unless you
ask for it in Dutch." That same teacher had spoken both English
and Dutch to her ever since Sarah started there. I thought it was in
rather bad taste and even cruel that all of a sudden a rule was set for

a small child that didn't seem to apply to the teacher herself.'

Grandparents and other relatives
When we think about relatives and their reactions to the bilingual
situation in which we live, the grandparents come first to mind. To
them, of course, it is of great importance to be able to communicate
with their grandchildren. Not that all grandparents can be or want
to be around all that often. It depends on age, health, travelling dis-
tance, money, the overall number of grandchildren, and what have you.
But provided there is regular contact with the grandparents, language
will undoubtedly play a role.
  In the case of mixed-language marriages, the grandparents on either
side will anxiously watch which language or languages will be spoken

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by the grandchildren. And in the case of couples who have migrated
together, the issue at stake for the grandparents is how long will the
original mother tongue be preserved.
  Grandparents, like any other people, have their information on the
subject, or lack of it, and this will influence their reactions. They
may be afraid that the children will become confused, or they think
it all ought to be a matter of course, or they are disappointed in the
results.
  In all those cases where the parents have come from a bilingual
background, the grandparents obviously have some personal experience
in the matter. This fact may make the grandparents more under-
standing or more demanding, but either way they are relying on
memories which may have become unreliable with time. Being in the
middle of a situation is always different from looking back on it, and
circumstances are never the same anyhow.
  There are also grandparents who will try to find out more about
the subject of bilingual children, for their own sake or at their
children's request, as was pointed out to me by my own mother. She
used to work in a large public library in Amsterdam and she told me
that on several occasions she had had the following request for in-
formation: 'My daughter lives abroad and now that she has a baby
she wonders what language she should speak with the child. She wrote
me a letter asking me to buy a book about this subject, but as they
couldn't help me in the bookshop, I decided to come to the library.'
And, at the time, my mother always had to tell these people that there
was no such book available for parents—or for grandparents— who
have to cope with a bilingual situation.
  I found that many of the parents I talked to had brothers and sisters

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who had also got married to someone from abroad or who had moved
abroad themselves. One would suppose that it would be nice to share
one's experiences with such close relatives, but the respective situa-
tions often differ a lot, and so do the opinions.
  Theresa is English, while she lives in France and has a French
husband. She wrote:
  'My brother is married to an Italian and their children were brought
up in Italy and learnt English only at school. He invariably pleads
that fathers don't spend enough time with their children, so it's not
worthwhile bringing them up to be bilingual—unless they hope to
return to their homeland with their family. Nevertheless, he finds it
quite normal to be able to communicate with my children in English.'

Old and new friends
And now we come to the reactions of friends. Unlike relatives or
schoolteachers, they do not have a personal stake in the bilingual
development of one's children. But they are certainly more inclined
to be genuinely interested in the matter than mere acquaintances.
  Friends come in all sorts. If you live in a foreign country, you
could make a distinction between old friends 'back home' and new
local friends. The latter category can then be divided into people who
are born and raised in the country where you are living now and
people who are foreigners themselves. These three groups of friends
tend to react differently to the way parents choose to bring up their
children as far as language is concerned.
  Life-long friends back home are usually most supportive. If your
children are bilingual, they think it is great. If you give up or haven't
even tried, they will also understand. One reason for their tolerance

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might be that if they are capable of understanding and speaking one
or two foreign languages themselves, they may quite like practising
these languages in conversations with their friends' children!
  Also, having friends who live in a foreign country may supply a
nice excuse for going there on a holiday or for sending one's children
to learn the other language. In the latter case, a successful bilingual
upbringing may even spoil some of the fun. The following observation
came from Francoise:
'Now that the children are getting somewhat older, we have ex-
changes with the children of my friends in France. But the French
children who come to stay with us in London don't practice their
English enough really, for my own children will just as easily converse
with them in French.'
  New friends whom one meets among local people are often not more
than superficially interested in one's struggle with languages. The
subject is always good for some small talk, and in the best of cases
one is admired for the effort, but soon the conversation will continue
along more interesting lines. In general, the way to bring up children
is an inexhaustible topic for parents, but, as far as children's language
development is concerned, families who live in a monolingual situation
have little in common with those who live in a bilingual setting.

A common interest
The third category of friends are those who are foreigners themselves.
Bilingual families are bound to meet other bilingual families who
happen to live nearby. Whether or not parents are actively looking
for other parents who come from abroad, sooner or later their paths will
cross. Some of the other expatriates will become friends, and a common
 
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interest will be the bilingual upbringing of the children. However, a
common interest needn't imply a common policy, as Tjitske told me.
She and her husband came from Holland to live near London some five
years ago. According to her:
  'It all depends on who is considered to be the "expert". Parents with
younger children will sometimes ask me how I cope. Other mothers
regard themselves as more successful in keeping up both languages
and tell me I'm not strict enough. We all draw our lines differently
and we all have very much our own way of dealing with the bilingual
situation.'
  Still, I believe that parents living with children in a bilingual situa-
tion should share their experiences. This is easier for those who live
in a large metropolitan area, where there are bound to be more expa-
triates, than for those who live in smaller, more secluded communities.
Yet, a sense of isolation—the feeling that one is the only person with
this particular problem—may at times be experienced by any parent or
child, wherever the family live.
  I hope that this book will help parents and children feel less isolated,
and that it will make them realize that to be or to become bilingual is
in fact a common interest to many millions of people all over the world.