URGENT APPEAL FOR PETITION SIGNATURES
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/111879/sponsors/qJz7T9VHYT2KzyPwo9
[UK only]
I work for an organisation called Routes Into Languages, which carries out language outreach work for second school students across the UK. Many universities are involved, implementing undergraduate languages students in local schools to encourage language study. Tens of thousands of students participated in a foreign language spelling bee, and my university alone has run events on The Spanish-Speaking World, and the Tour de France. Earlier this year, Routes funded the work of myself and a colleague, where we visited a local school to give workshops on Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. After that workshop, a student came up to me and said she now wanted to study Asian languages at University.
However, the good work done by everyone at Routes is about to be stopped, if intervention doesn’t occur.
The UK government has announced that they will end funding for the project next year.
The UK has a horrific reputation for languages, with recent uptake of language degrees falling by TWENTY-FIVE percent IN THE LAST YEAR, and multiple university language departments closures, as well as cuts to non-european language GCSEs. Fewer and fewer people are studying languages in the UK, with a perpetual decline in funding from the government. This is an urgent issue as the UK spirals further into Euroscepticism and xenophobia, and being one of the few overtly monolingual counties in Europe.
Facing this crisis, a fellow Routes colleague has set up an official petition to try and get the government to reconsider.
I urge, nay beg any of my UK-based followers to sign the petition, and to help keep language study alive in the UK.
I’ve seen personally the great work that Routes does, and how it as influenced so many students, and its closure would be the another nail in coffin for UK language learning.
To help us out, please click the link at the top of this post, confirm your UK citizenship, input your email, then click on the link in the confirmation e-mail (it might be in your spam folder). It’s an official petition to the UK government, if we get 10,000 signatures then they HAVE to consider it.
3,600!! Please share!
