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People normally think “if pupils are given space to speak another language in the classroom, that would harm their Dutch”. But research shows that is not the case, as long as it is done cleverly. And teachers do not need to master these languages themselves in order to support pupils effectively.
Practical examples include giving pupils a book to read at home in their family language after it has been studied in Dutch at school. Reading it with their parents helps children understand the text better and make the translation into Dutch more explicit.
Multilingualism can also be encouraged through classroom attitudes.
There is no special lesson or method. It is a mindset. You can show that new languages are not scary and that no language is better than another. Ask pupils to teach you a few words in their language.
Such an approach helps create an atmosphere where children are not laughed at for unfamiliar sounds or worried that classmates are gossiping in other languages.
The council also includes regional languages such as Frisian and Limburgish in its definition of multilingualism.
For now, schools decide for themselves whether to allow pupils to use other languages in class, which can lead to different rules between teachers.
Children should not be held back from speaking their home language as long as they also have opportunities to learn Dutch. The earlier children encounter other cultures and languages, the more normal it becomes. That is an added value.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/09/schools-should-embrace-multilingualism-education-council-says/
New blog article
A self-hosted solution to create unlimited private email aliases. Featuring:
https://blog.platypush.tech/article/Create-self-hosted-email-aliases-on-the-fly
@freediverx@mastodon.social @palestine@a.gup.pe quite the opposite.
Israel doesn’t have a way out of this. The only thing they see is their plan to build a genocide riviera to please the political representatives elected by the most fanatic squatting terrorists among their people, and they use Hamas as a scapegoat that justifies their own fanatical violence.
The West is increasingly divided, many are now recognizing the Palestinian State, but nobody is stepping forward to lay out how that State would look like, what kind of governance it should have, who will pay for rebuilding everything, how coexistance with the State that surrounds them would look like, etc.
This is exactly the moment to have these talks. Without concrete plans on how the near future should look like the West will be stuck on symbolic recognitions that don’t change anything on the ground.
When we say that the near future of Gaza must be reconstruction and free elections without Hamas we are pulling fuel away from the most brittle and demonizing Zionist rhetoric. If Hamas is really the reason why they’re doing this, then once Hamas is gone they must acknowledge that they have no reason for doing this.
If instead the world keeps acting by picking opposing sides in mutually exclusive “from the river to the sea” narratives, while having no vision of what should change for things to change, then there’s no way to end the conflict, no way to take fuel away from Netanyahu’s narratives and let the world see his contradictions, and no way to let Palestinians choose what kind of State they want.
@tortitude@kolektiva.social @freediverx@mastodon.social @palestine@a.gup.pe I wouldn’t call holding free elections an act of liberal counterinsurgency.
And let’s not mix the ability to run grassroot uprisings with the ability to run a State. Most of the illiberal regimes in history were born as grassroot uprisings which used their initial intentions in order to justify their permanent permanence in power.
@freediverx@mastodon.social @palestine@a.gup.pe I criticize authoritarianism and authoritarian tendencies regardless of where they happen, including the US (especially the US).
But just because democracy is endangered worldwide it doesn’t mean that we should turn a blind eye, just because nobody is the position to cast the first stone. Because that’s exactly what causes the degradation.
@freediverx@mastodon.social @palestine@a.gup.pe not all the time in these 20 years has been marked by acute conflict. They could have had a chance to plan new elections.
Of course Israel would have opposed them, as they would have further legitimized the independence of a territory that they want to occupy, but that would have just further exposed their contradictions (the democratic balward of the Middle East that opposes free elections in their neighbour’s house), all while gaining more support from other Western democracies.
They didn’t even have to successfully run the elections, if eventually the conditions didn’t permit them, but sometimes even showing the intention suffices.
Instead, by clinging onto power for so long, they have just fueled the rhetoric of their opponents who depict them as an undemocratic regime - and alienated many from their cause.
@freediverx@mastodon.social @palestine@a.gup.pe sure, but after 20 years in power all people should be allowed to get a say.
@jy4m@matapacos.dog realistically, Israel is just too powerful for any peaceful transition of power, either voluntary or enforced by the international community, to happen.
Coexistence will still translate on acts of intolerance on both sides.
Extremist fringes of Hamas can still blow things up to make Israel pay for its crimes.
Ben Gvir and his friends will still harass Muslims in mosques (and, even if he’s in jail, there’s a very sizeable share of Israel’s population that still agrees with his points).
Demographics will be a ticking bomb until it blows up - Palestinians have much higher fertility rates than Israelis, which will be seen by the most conservative Israelis as an existential threat of long-term ethnic displacement against them.
The prejudice that many Israelis still hold against non-Jews in their land is still there and alive, and it can translate into large-scale episodes of discrimination that can flare things up.
And I’m only scratching the surface of the medium and long term issues here.
In a nutshell, if you try and put those two people in the same peace of land, you won’t have political and social stability in that piece of land for decades to come.
The two-State solution isn’t easy either (the main question is how to practically connect a State composed of two separate enclaves), but a two-State solution that agrees on the areas assigned by the UN to the respective people in 1967, and confirmed by the Oslo accords, is still the most practical one.
Note that any such deal also means that any settlements built by Israel in those areas are illegal and its occupants must vacate them and give them back to Palestinians. Such a condition may not heal all the wounds, but at least it’d give Palestinians the right to build their State in their assigned territory without fears of being evicted overnight by a lunatic Zionist.
@mechanomon@tweesecake.social I’m not talking about the past 2 years, I’m talking about the past 20 years.
Not all the time in these two decades has been marked by acute conflict.
Hamas had chances to organize new elections, but they never did.
And it’s actually a diplomatic card that they failed to play.
The 2006 elections were scheduled after Israel was forced to retreat from those territories. They were a way of legitimizing Gaza as its own independent thing.
New elections would have surely been met with indignation by the Israeli regime, which would have seen them as a further way of legitimizing the independence of Gaza.
Which would have forced Israel to show all of its contradictions to the world - it claims to be the balward of democracy in the region, but then it would have opposed democratic elections that would have further legitimized the independency of the territory that it wanted to occupy.
Instead, by not scheduling new elections and staying in power indefinitely, they have simply given fuel to Netanyahu’s propaganda that Hamas is a terrorist and undemocratic regime.
@jy4m@matapacos.dog
in what respect is Iran a terrorist regime?
It has played a role in basically every single act of regional destabilization in the past 40 years in order to assert its Shia hegemony (just like Israel has done, usually supporting the groups on the opposite side).
It has invested a lot in a nuclear program in order to assert its power.
Plus it’s ruled by a decrepit theocratic class that is well aware that it won’t last long, and it tries to constrain the population as much as it can in the process in order to assert whatever crumble of authority it has left.
The only hope for peace in Palestine is a single, multiethnic state with equal rights for all.
Yeah, I wish that could be the case. But as long as 100-year-old grudge rooted in blood exists on both sides I don’t see that happen. You see how the Arab (and even Christian) minorities are treated in Israel right now, a country where, outside of a short exception, has been ruled by the same Zionist far-right for two decades.
Any prospect of a multiethnic State where the butcher and the victim leave together, and where each other is suspicious of the other gaining too much political and social power, is a pipe dream as of now.
There must be two States, at least for now. And the security of the Palestinian State must be guaranteed by the international community (I would say “by the UN”, if only the role of the UN hadn’t become so increasingly meaningless).
I usually agree with Francesca Albanese, but I feel like dissociating from her statements about Hamas.
She’s right when she says that Hamas, as the de facto authority in Gaza, has built and maintained schools, hospitals and infrastructure.
And she’s also right when she says that it won the 2006 elections, which were considered fair by all international standards.
But she doesn’t mention that no elections have been held since then. Nearly 20 years ago. A whole generation has grown without even knowing what voting means.
Israel is wrong to say that Gaza=Hamas, not only because not everyone who lives there voted for Hamas in 2006 (it won with 44.4% of the votes), but also because nobody has bothered to ask those in Gaza what kind of government they would like for the past 20 years. Hamas has all the interest to stay in power indefinitely, and Netanyahu has all the interests for it to stay in power - otherwise his brittle Gaza=Hamas equality that justifies his process of dehumanization of a whole ethnic group and the imperialist goals of the post-Kahanist terrorists in his government would crumble.
And Albanese doesn’t mention that, just because you’ve got the Zionist terrorist regime bombing you, it doesn’t mean that you’re allowed to make deals with the Iranian terrorist regime. Nor kidnap civilians to make your point. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
And she doesn’t mention that any “from the river to the sea” rhetoric that doesn’t take into account the two-people, two-States solution advised by the UN (her employer) sits at odds with any peace process, regardless of the party that upholds it.
And she doesn’t go as far as saying that any future peace in that corner of the world must happen both without Netanyahu and without Hamas, that the end of this conflict must be marked by fair and free elections on both sides, and that none of those who has blood on their hands is allowed to participate. The representatives of the governments on both sides need to be in jail while someone else fixes the mess that they’ve made.
Just because you’ve built schools and hospitals it doesn’t mean that you should keep doing your job.