To expect my white dd not to be an ethnic minority in her own country

[squatchette]

First of all i would like to make it clear that i am in no way racist.My childrens father is half asian (although he is also an irish catholic too).
Anyway today i was late dropping DD2 at pre school and i got to see her whole class for the first time.This is when i was shocked to realise that she is the only white child in her class.
I think i was shocked as we don't live in a particularly ethnic area or so i thought.I read in the schools ofsted report that 40 % of the kids in the school speak English as a second language.
At first i thought it would be good that she can mix with children of different races and i am all for a diverse society.However something about the fact that she is the minority has worried me.AIBU?

you are wrong.

Lots of immigrants. Lots of people saying that we have to carve up our beautiful country to make houses.

Shit loads of PC spunk. Shit loads of people who won't watch the Last Night of the Proms because it's embarrassing

Shit loads of people who can only have suffered very bad history lessons, from very bad teachers, to arrive at the conclusions they do.

I am proud to be British.

here

And are Faith schools paid for out of taxes like comprehensive schools or out of voluntary aid? I notice they say 'Voluntary Aided', does this relate to the monetary aspect or just that the teachers are not from the usual NUT brigade?

ucm, there are someislamic schools in london and birmingham.
however, i wouldnt send my dc to them. various reasons.
too far away
not beenopen long enough to show me they acheive good results
very very into the whole 'islamic' thing. prescribing hijab as part of the school uniform even to infants/juniors
not a wide mix of children.
parents who compete with each other to see how much more religious than each other they can be. (no different tbh than the cliques in state schools, just about religion rather than fashion, houseing, cars etc

Slightly off-topic, but this thread reminded me of an article I read the other day by Nirpal Dhaliwal (that tosser who was married to Liz Jones). Sadly it was in the Evening Standard so not available online. The thing is, he was saying at the grand old age of 30-something he has only just begun to understand 'the English' despite being born and bred here. Because he grew up in a Punjabi neighbourhood with Punjabi friends and had never really been enmeshed in wider British culture until he went to university. And despite marrying a white English woman he still hadn't really come to grips with, what he described as Englishness. Admittedly, this was a piece of confessional journalism by a columnist, on the topic of a particular film, so he will have been trying to create an effect, but it was still a striking thought.

what each type of school means

ruddynnorah, that is beautiful
now if only we can get the rest of the 6 billion people on this planet to live in peace with each other.
the prophet muhammad, and the qurn teach muslisms tobe not only tolerant, but respectful of other religions. but for osme reason, most people forget or ignore this

good to see it working in some small par t somewhere in the world.

fwiw, in pakistan, religion isnt really taught in schools because of the fear of igniting problems with different sects of muslims. but evolution is!

RuddyNorah, I still wouldn't want my child growing up thinking it's normal to say Bokatov as a greeting. Simple really. In England we say Good Morning. That is how you build a countries identity. Children should be taught the way all oher children are taught. How else will they be able to identify with their peers? Its inclusionary and it creates communities which have little to do with each other. Look to Burnley as a good example of this, where different ethnic groups hardly interact at all. REinforcing this by teaching children different cultures and values means we will never move on as a society together

oops, Quran obviously

"In England we say Good Morning. That is how you build a countries identity."

as they do in America, Australia, New Zealand and numerous other countries around the world that have English as an offical language - so I hardly thinking everyone saying "good morning" makes them more British !

"Lots of immigrants. Lots of people saying that we have to carve up our beautiful country to make houses. "

Yeah, Britain is full of immigrants! it always have been, it all started long before the vikings and the Romans hit the shores.

Yeah, but they use English and say Good Morning as part of the inheritance of Empire, QoQ. It started here! Just because they play cricket in Pakistan doesn't make cricket in this country less English.

Queen of Quotes, yes an apt name, as that was taken out of context and twisted to prove what? hat all those countrie you stated have been colonised by the - wait for it - British!

That's rather harsh, Bunsen, I don't think there was anything nasty in what QoQ posted.

England did win the cricket today and the Rugby and the football.

since when did a sport "belong" to a particular country - there is a theory that cricket actually originated from the Indian Subcontinent and was broight here by the merchants......

And who cares if children say hello to each other in different languages?? What's wrong with being bi/tri lingual??

Ha ha Late at night! Didn't mean to sound nasty, just don't like being misquoted and found her name ironic. Sorry to QoQ, reread and didn't mean it to sound so harsh!

yes but we played VERY badly in the Rugby - if we continue like that we'll be out at the end of the group stages

ruddynorah - great story, I particularly liked this bit:

"At Eid, the Muslim children are wished Eid Mubarak in assembly, and all year round, if they wish, can wear a kufi (hat). Amazingly, dozens of the Muslim children choose instead to wear the Jewish kipah."

Sorry, yesterday.

I can't be arsed to get into a row about this whole stuff right now.

But I know what I want from my childrens schooling and that is that they learn about God, Jesus & stuff.

I do not want my kids to learn about another religion as it's not what we do.

As parents, church on Sunday occasionally, when my shifts allow.

This is the only reason I want my child to go to a faith school.

However, I do have a choice. There is a perfectly good non faith school down the road.

So he may end up there after nursery as he isn't a catholic so possibly wont get a place.

Des- not being at all sarky when I say I'm glad you're proud to be British. Honestly.

But what qualifies as British to you?
Who are these nefarious immigrants?
Shall we stop the English from moving abroad, kick all of the Brits out of the Algarve et al?
What are the bad history lessons taught by bad, bad teachers?

but the proms are cool. Why not?

QoQ, I certainly didn't say that it did, just that England won all three games today.

Next week, I doubt the results will be the same.

one thing i promised myself i would never ever do, was to support the english cricket team.
in fact dh and i have never ever discussed cricket, he supports england, [shock horror] but then he wasborn and brought up here. i wasnt.
i'm perfectly happy to support england in football, but in cricket. that would be sacrilege

but recently i saw that bloke, sajjad mahmood, and (rather quitely) fancy him a bit. so now not quite so dead set against english cricket.

did no one find my story about the terrorists fromtipton funny?

Speaking many languages is a talent as I have already said, but to adopt a language as if it was the first, that is counter productive as an intergration tool, is it not? English is the first language of this country. If we moved to France, I would not put my child in an English speaking school, if they exist, or expect my child to have the class greeted with 'Good Morning'. It would send the message out to my child that it is okay to converse in English. You speak the mother tongue of the country you live in. That is the way it should be.