Spunti etici nell’educazione linguistica di alunni figli di migranti = Ethical ideas in the linguistic education of pupils children of migrants

Abstract

Ethical ideas in the linguistic education of pupils children of migrants. Nowadays modern societies have to copy with the multiculturality and the problem of inclusion of foreign people. Migrants are by now a steady presence in our towns and, consequently, also in our schools. So it is not more possible to put the cultural, social and political debates concerning their condition off. But what is ‘good’ in language instruction for students coming from abroad or whose parents were migrants? And how can we set up educational approaches (together with methods and practices of language teaching/learning), whose aim is the pursuit of ‘good’ for this specific target and, consequently, for the entire welcoming and inclusive community? Being engaged in this ethical evaluation is not obvious nor even simple. It is first necessary to clearly explicate language instruction in order to identify its key elements and their specific object of study. A theoretical and a practical reflection on language instruction implies thus the definition of the sustainability of the language teaching system. Teaching and learning in a ethically sustainable way means giving the appropriate value to each single element of the language instruction process: the subject (mainly the student/the class-group), the object (mainly the language/the culture) and the agent (mainly the teacher/language book). So, among the issues concerning the educational inclusion of the children learning a not-native language, the improvement of the L2 (second language) knowledge becomes a real integration strategy for their full inclusion in the native community and also the prelude of a process leading to the collective ‘well-being’, that is the common good.