A Critical Examination of the Beliefs about Learning a Foreign Language at Primary School

Introduction

In the year 2000 the current moratorium on changes to the primary and
secondary school curriculum for England and Wales will come to an end and a
new curriculum for a new millennium will be launched. What exactly the future
holds for the children in primary schools is not yet clear. While it might well be
the case that, more than ever, people will need a higher level of knowledge and
skills than they have needed in the past and while it might be true that the days
ofthe uneducated worker and jobs for life might be gone, the questions of what
education is for and what it means to be educated largely remain unanswered.

What sort of curriculum will be needed to equip children with the understanding,
knowledge and skills necessary to play a full role in society? What should its
content be, what subjects or aspects of subjects should it include? Devlin and
Warnock argue that a child's life should be better for having learned a subject:

"The test, we have said, of whether something should have a place in the
curriculum is whether a child's life will be better after leaving school for having
learned it. Curriculum planners have tried to ensure that school either
prepares a child for life or that the child has fulfilled his potential. Ideally, one
would argue, they have aimed at both." (Devlin and Warnock, 1977: 63)

Few would question the primacy of literacy and numeracy skills in the English
primary school curriculum as these are a prerequisite for all successful learning
but what about a foreign language?

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