>Hi All, but esp. Dragan and Terry.
>
>In my Dutch newspaper of today there is the story of a French teacher (a teacher of French, not a Frenchman) who is currently sueing an employer for not wanting to hire him. The employer is a private, commercial school where adults can learn various foreign languages. The employer only wants native speakers as teacher. This person is a Dutchman who claims to have a better knowledge of current French than many of the employed native French speakers. He claims to know 28.000 French sentences by head, to know all current developments in that language, that many of those native speakers may have been born over there, but may have left their home country more than 20 years ago. She, the employer, feels 'insulted' by him because he says she discriminates him.
>
>So, what's your opinion guys.

I vote for this being discrimination. Any hiring for any job should be done (in the main) on the basis of qualifications. I suppose the best way in this particular case would be to run a competition (a test) where the top 5 or whatever candidates get to be first in line. The rest stay on standby. After being interviewed, each would be hired or tossed as the case may be. I might well be that the best French speaker may be somebody who a) can't teach worth a damn, or b) is impossible to get along with.

But the pool should be limited by ability first, not by birthplace.