Nonostante l’impegno dei governi provinciali (troppo spesso altalenante) per mantenere i programmi di international languages, fra cui brilla la lingua italiana nell’extended day, siamo ancora molto indietro rispetto alle altre province. È eloquente l’articolo apparso su tvo.org.
Are Ontario schools falling behind when it comes to teaching international languages?
On Saturdays, Ryerson Community School, in the heart of Toronto’s Chinatown, transforms into a language school for kids from kindergarten to Grade 8. “We’ve occupied the whole school,” says Mona Eldardiry, the program’s coordinator.
These children are learning Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese on the weekends because they don’t have the option to study them as part of the regular curriculum. That’s because if Ontario elementary schools want to offer languages other than English or French, they have to extend the day by 30 minutes or provide instruction outside school hours. Although the province is linguistically diverse — in 2016, 3.5 million Ontarians had a mother tongue other than English or French — it hasn’t yet figured out what place international languages should have in schools. And that puts students at a disadvantage.
“At the policy level, the problem lies with Ontario’s Education Act,” says Jeff Bale, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The act permits only English- or French-language instruction during the school day. To continue click below…