New Brunswick: Language debate takes an ironic turn

[Harold Schiffman]

Language debate takes an ironic turn
 TheStar.com - Columnist - Language debate takes an ironic turn

April 07, 2008
Chantal Hébert

OTTAWA — Under the watchful eye of every other provincial government,
the play book on language politics is being rewritten in New Brunswick
these days. Canada's only officially bilingual province has decided to
scrap the early French immersion program in favour of intensive
French-language training starting in Grade 5. According to the
province, a side effect of the current program has been to stream
gifted students out of regular classes to the detriment of the
English-language elementary school system.

New Brunswick students routinely score poorly in national literacy
tests.  The government apparently feels that putting the immersion
students back in the general mix will raise the reading and writing
skills of its student body. It also argues that the early immersion
program has an excessive dropout rate. Under the new program, French
would become part of the secondary school core curriculum.

But parents who for decades have been told by experts that earlier is
better when it comes to learning a second language are not buying it.
They see the move as a retreat from the front of bilingualism; they
fear it will lead to a significant drop in the number of bilingual
anglophone New Brunswickers. The new policy has triggered
demonstrations and petitions and attracted criticism from outside of
the province.  Prompted by complaints that a future generation of
bilingual New Brunswickers is about to be sacrificed, provincial
ombudsman Bernard Richard took the unusual step of launching an
inquiry into the decision last week.

It will be interesting to read what he has to say about the fairness
of keeping back gifted children in the name of the greater good.
Even before he reports his findings, there is much to say about the
awkward timing of the New Brunswick decision.  It comes at the very
time when a bilingual political class is finally coming of age across
Canada, after decades of a virtual Quebec monopoly on bilingual
leadership. Stephen Harper did not plan it that way, but his success
in francophone Quebec has made him a poster boy for the benefits of
becoming bilingual.

The Prime Minister is just one of a growing number of leading
bilingual politicians from outside Quebec; many are the product of the
very kind of immersion program that New Brunswick has decided to axe.
It is the first time that a government outside Quebec is faced with a
vocal anglophone groundswell for more French rather than a backlash
over a perceived excess of it. New Brunswick is not the only province
where the dynamics of the language debate have been undergoing a
dramatic change.

In Quebec, some of the more recent challenges to the language law have
involved francophone families who wanted their children to have an
English-language education. They are a minority, but there is no
denying the fact that the bulk of Quebec francophone parents want the
French school system to do a better job of making their kids fluently
bilingual.  Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois has been finding
that out the hard way.  Since she became leader, Marois' uncertain
English has made her the butt of merciless sketches in the French
media.  Last fall, she set out to kick-start a debate over the future
of the French language in Quebec and ended up agreeing that improving
the teaching of English as a second language had to be a provincial
priority.



Chantal Hébert's national affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.


http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/410910


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