Challenges in immigrant education and integration
“Mummy, I’m not made of chocolate”, said my indignant firstborn 25 years ago. We had been called to his kindergarten to pick him up early as ‘something’ had happened. The something was that the kids had been licking him thinking he was made of chocolate! He stood there with a disgusted expression on his face with arms outstretched while the personnel explained what had happened. Our son sat in the car with his arms still stretched until we put him in a bath on our return home! Cute tale – I can almost see people smiling on reading this. But, as a first generation parent, who had birthed a second generation child and ‘sentenced’ him to such an identity in my 'adopted' country - The Faroe Islands, far from South Indian shores, I was in a dilemma. We were parents who were keen on retaining our respective L1 in our communication with our first-born, who then would have Faroese as his L3 and Danish as L4. Little did we know that our lives were going to be complicated! Our son le