Holy Trinity College in Leuven has included Arabic in the curriculum for its sixth-form modern languages course this academic year, as reported by Mediahuis newspapers.
The change largely stems from a modernisation of secondary education, allowing schools to offer modern language programmes with a limited number of hours dedicated to Latin, economics, science or mathematics, providing greater scope for schools to diversify their course offerings.
"We didn’t want to spoon-feed our students, but instead challenge them intellectually with a language outside the Indo-European group," explains Headmaster Frank Baeyens.
"We aim to illustrate how a language can possess a completely different structure, script and symbols. It isn’t our intention for the students to become fluent in Arabic. Our focus is more on language philosophy and culture, broadening their horizons."
Baeyens also points to the societal importance of such a move. "A group of students have Arabic as their first language. If we could bring in a teacher of Arabic descent, it would add tremendous value to our school and serve as a role model to these students. Students could identify with someone who has achieved a certain social standing, pursued higher education and found it fulfilling. Today, there are too few teachers with a migrant background."
Currently there are no known other schools incorporating Arabic into their curriculum. Within Catholic education, several schools in the past have taught Korean or Swedish.
