Sunday, September 9, 2012

Being multi-lingual?


The end of another busy school week in our new place has come and gone. So much to think about and plan for. Together with the rest of the leadership team, we joined with the Board in a day and a half’s retreat, which was very well facilitated by consultant David Chojnacki. I love these things! Time to “chew the fat” and work out where we are all heading.
An interesting topic came up in that when the Board members were asked about what competencies they would want their children to have mastered by the end of compulsory schooling, one of those listed was the ability to work in a language which is not their native tongue. This is new for me, coming from basically a monolingual country such as New Zealand, but as I looked around the room at a collection of highly skillful and intelligent adults who all work on a world where speaking two or three languages competently enough to function successfully is the norm.
I would have to agree with them—in this part of the world speaking only English is certainly not enough? Will being multi-lingual be a requirement for our children’s future?

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