Thread: Arson Threat Forces Kindergarten To Axe Arabic Lessons.

Article by Christie Anderson.

A Townsville kindergarten has cancelled plans to offer Arabic language lessons after an ugly backlash from racist community members. Wishing Tree Early Learning Centre cancelled the language program and hired security at the premises after receiving racist threats via social media to burn the centre down. Local leaders yesterday slammed the threats as 'gutless' and 'intolerant' while police are investigating. The centre had planned to offer Arabic language lessons next year after being named as a trail site for the federal government's $9.8 million Early Learning Languages Program. The centre's manager said the children's safety was the top priority. John Wall from Total Childcare Solutions,which manages the centre,said the owners,who are expatriate Australians living in Abu Dhabi,wanted to share Arabian culture with their Australian students. "The family understands the sensitivity around offering children language by way of Arabic," he said. "The family did not want to cause grief to any parents. That being the case,the family has asked the centre to pull the Arabic language. "We will choose another language to ensure all parents are happy."

The centre was preparing to train staff to deliver online Arabic tutorials. The one-year trial aimed to test the effectiveness of exposing preschool children to a language other than english,with Mandarin,Japanese,Indonesian,French and Arabic among the options considered. Police confirmed the matter was being investigated. The Australian Department of Education said the threats were a concern but would not say if Arabic would be withdrawn. Herbert MP Ewen Jones said the threats were "disgusting" and "gutless". I just hope the police catch them and prosecute them he said.

For the life of me i can't understand why the Government would spend such a large amount of money on teaching kids another language when they should be focusing on learning how to speak English properly. With tensions running high in society why would this kindy even consider offering Arabic lessons to kids? Absolute stupidity.

Its disgusting that there are people out there who are so biased and racist they would threaten to burn down a kindy just because some kids get the chance to learn another language. There is a deep vein of ignorant racism in this country, unfortunately. If they investigated they would find research shows that people who learn multiple languages increase the amount of their brains which are used for language, increase their vocabulary and generally are smarter. Its not a choice of one language or another - its normal to learn multiple languages. Some of my students can speak five languages. Around the world it is unusual for children to only learn one language. Most children grow up multilingual. Its monolingual people who are unusual and deprived of a broader language knowledge. So, the racists who are against those kindy kids learning Arabic are depriving those kids of the chance to increase their brainpower and language ability. Disgusting and dumb!

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