Leuven school makes Arabic a compulsory part of its curriculum

The reasons behind this move are varying

The Holy Trinity College (HDC) in Leuven will be the first school in Belgium to offer the study of Arabic as a compulsory subject in its curriculum in the new academic year. The language will be part of the programme for sixth-graders and it comes as a means of an effort to modernize the education at the Catholic school.

Reportedly, there are different reasons behind the implementation of this change, as reported by Flemish media outlets.

For one, there will be a reduction in the number of hours for the study of Latin, economics, science and mathematics. That frees up space for the addition of a new subject.

Why Arabic language?

According to Frank Baeyens, director of Holy Trinity College in Leuven, Arabic was picked due to several benefits that the educational experts thought it could bring to students.

Being a non-Indo-European language it presents an interesting challenge for learners as it shows that a language can have a different type of construction, orthography and syntax and therefore a different logic.

Learning Arabic does not focus on learning to speak the language fluently, but rather on a cultural and philosophical approach that helps students broaden their horizons.

In that respect, other languages, such as Hungarian and Chinese had also been considered but it was finally decided that Arabic held a larger social significance in Belgium given the large resident population with immigrant backgrounds from Arabophone countries.

What’s more, the school director is of the opinion that teaching Arabic would present a good example to students from such background since it would require hiring a native teacher from a similar background.

“This offers students the opportunity to identify with someone who has a successful social position and has studied further. Unfortunately, there are currently too few teachers with a migration background in education,” adds Frank Baeyens, quoted by Leuven Actueel.