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| Fleeing the ghettos of state-run education | |
Two short years ago local Leftists were running around
bleating they were ashamed to be Australian, that
Australia's treatment of asylum seekers had
shamed us before the rest of the world, and they held up northern European
nations of examples of success in tolerance and multiculturalism. It seems that facade is gently collapsing, if a report by SBS's Dateline
program, 'White
Flight' is any indication. It claims that Dutch parents are abandoning the state-run school system in
droves, and sending their children to private schools with high education
standards, which just coincidently happen to be almost exclusively native
Dutch. The private schools are referred to as 'white' schools, and the
remaining high-ethnic state schools are referred to as 'black' schools, and the
phenomena is being called 'white flight'. The Dutch population has gotten a good education about the delights of
multiculturalism over the past few decades - they have realized that the
experiment has failed and they are quietly voting with their cheque-books. The
middle classes have found a no-fuss free-market solution to buy out of the
problems they have created. Needless to say, the ever shrinking group of hand-wringing apologists are
labeling this 'Apartheid' and calling for government imposed racial quotas in
all schools. Clearly these people have no understanding of choice. Choosing
your child's school is an action of free choice, which parents
themselves choose and pay for. Apartheid was a system of government force
imposed upon people based on their race - not unlike the system the
hand-wringing apologists are screaming for. But the unusually frank SBS program gave other useful insights too. It
featured some woman with a bag
over her head saying:
AMAL FAKHOR (Translation): 'We're told "Learn Dutch so you can understand us" we
hear that all the time "Learn Dutch really well, get to know our culture", But
they forget that they should understand our culture. We can't live together if
you don't understand me. It's not enough if I understand you but you don't
understand me. Multiculturalism means that you understand me, and I understand
you.' This gives a powerful insight into the mindset of these immigrants, and also the
fact that they have been totally unable to adapt to their rapidly changing politically situation. There
is no attempt to deny that the immigrants have failed to understand Dutch
culture, but there is still the demand that the native Dutch understand them.
Turkish migrants have tried to have Turkish letters officially adopted into the
Dutch alphabet, as well as the compulsory teaching of Turkish as a second
language in Dutch schools. These demands would have attracted considerable sympathy in the wildly PC 1980s, and
even into the 1990s, but populations in 2004 are a little bit more
cynical. Some people think that immigrants have an obligation to culturally assimilate with
their chosen nation, others think they don't. But how many people in the 21st
century think that citizens in the host nation have an obligation to assimilate
to the immigrants? Walking into someone else's house and ordering them to rearrange the furniture
is frowned on by most people - except those doing the ordering, of course.
Hardly surprisingly, the Dutch population are a little miffed at their new
guests making these kinds of demands, and have made gentle moves towards their
repatriation. In February, the government introduced a plan to force around
25,000 failed asylum seekers back to their own countries. So much for Australia becoming a pariah state for adopting the same policy.
Australia just got there first.
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