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Just say ‘non’: The problem with French immersion (2015)

macleans.ca

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Re: Just say ‘non’: The problem with French immersion (2015)

#31

Post by kolanos »

simlevesque wrote: post #28
kolanos wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hardly a uniquely Canadian issue. I looked at public schools in SF and was amused to find there were Mandarin and Vietnamese only public schools that would not accept my English speaking children because they didn't speak Mandarin/Vietnamese. Again, public schools, in the USA, where English was not an option. And the English schools had long waiting lists, go figure.

> This is hardly a uniquely Canadian issue If you think you gave a good comparison, you clearly lack context. The situation is completely different... it's not really about education, it's about national unity.

You clearly haven't read my other comment in this thread. But regarding Mandarin/Vietnamese public schools in the United States, how can that not be indicative of a national unity problem?

Sure it is not on the same scale. But they're not teaching English, the national language, at all. And they don't really have a choice as their community doesn't speak English, either. So English doesn't really serve a purpose, and by extension neither does integration.

Re: Just say ‘non’: The problem with French immersion (2015)

#32

Post by ashark »

KZeillmann wrote: post #18
ashark wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of thing happens everywhere. Good school districts in the US aren't usually good because they're better funded or because the teachers are really amazing (those things may or may not be true) but because a variety of factors (including housing costs, commutes poorly served by public transit) result in much higher average teachability and lower disruptiveness in the student body. You're purchasing good peers…

Except that good school districts usually are better funded because they're paid for with property taxes.

The really bad schools receive a lot of outside money. Around here they pay substantially better than the good schools. It doesn't help much, because the money's not what's making the difference.

[EDIT] Clarification: what is making the difference is selection bias, basically. The kids in the richer districts are way the hell easier to educate. Easy-to-educate kids tend to be so for reasons (family circumstances/priorities/wealth) that also make them more likely to leave a poorly-performing district for better (more expensive to live in) districts. Effectively addressing the things that make some of the kids easy to educate and some very difficult will have very little to do with school quality/funding.

Re: Just say ‘non’: The problem with French immersion (2015)

#33

Post by nacho2sweet »

diego_moita wrote: post #13

This article is so wrong : * scarcity of French immersion programs are not widespread in Canada. In Edmonton, AB, there are enough vacancies for the interested. * the article confuses correlation and causality. French immersion students get better grades. But the simple fact that their parents want them in these programs are an indicator that these parents take more care and attention on education. And these parents…

I have a little brother in Vancouver who is 20 years younger than me. He was put in French immersion because her friend who was an elementary school teacher said she had 15 out of 24 of her students be ESL or need special help in a normal English school. French immersion here is just used for segregation.

With that many children needing special attention or not speaking the language any parent would suspect the learning environment of the classroom would be brought down and try and get their children out.

Re: Just say ‘non’: The problem with French immersion (2015)

#34

Post by bluGill »

jacobolus wrote: post #25
ashark wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being educated in classrooms where there aren't constant severe disruptions, where there's a much lower chance your kid will fall in with a crowd so bad that they end up in jail, where a higher percentage of their peers all expect/are expected to attend college, and so on, absolutely improves your child's educational (and other) prospects. Peers matter a ton . By high school peer expectations to study and maintain a…

Where “good peers” means that the other students have quiet space to do homework, enough money in the family that everyone isn’t constantly stressed about losing their house, access to office supplies and books, a comfortable bed to sleep in, access to fresh vegetables instead of highly processed food, good health insurance, are not located next to a superfund site or living in a house filled with lead paint, haven’t…

All the things you list correlate well with academic success, but which is really required? We know that in the era of lead paint plenty of kids did well in school. I can make good arguments for most of the rest that plenty of kids do well in school without them.

Re: Just say ‘non’: The problem with French immersion (2015)

#35

Post by ashark »

jacobolus wrote: post #25
ashark wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being educated in classrooms where there aren't constant severe disruptions, where there's a much lower chance your kid will fall in with a crowd so bad that they end up in jail, where a higher percentage of their peers all expect/are expected to attend college, and so on, absolutely improves your child's educational (and other) prospects. Peers matter a ton . By high school peer expectations to study and maintain a…

Where “good peers” means that the other students have quiet space to do homework, enough money in the family that everyone isn’t constantly stressed about losing their house, access to office supplies and books, a comfortable bed to sleep in, access to fresh vegetables instead of highly processed food, good health insurance, are not located next to a superfund site or living in a house filled with lead paint, haven’t…

Oh, absolutely, but the reasons aren't important if you're just trying to choose the best school for your kid. It's gonna be the one with the more privileged kids of richer parents, pretty much every time, and the fact of the kids being more privileged, with the attitudes and expectations that go along with that, will have a larger effect on educational (and other) outcomes for your kid than any other (plausibly/realistically-tuned) factor like funding levels (which will incidentally tend to be really good in rich districts, but that's way less important than the kids/families in the district) or teacher quality or anything like that.

Re: Just say ‘non’: The problem with French immersion (2015)

#36

Post by danielvf »

KZeillmann wrote: post #18
ashark wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of thing happens everywhere. Good school districts in the US aren't usually good because they're better funded or because the teachers are really amazing (those things may or may not be true) but because a variety of factors (including housing costs, commutes poorly served by public transit) result in much higher average teachability and lower disruptiveness in the student body. You're purchasing good peers…

Except that good school districts usually are better funded because they're paid for with property taxes.

That's commonly said, but I checked my cities budget numbers and it's actually the opposite. The city average per pupil is $9,215 per year. The school system as a whole is funded citywide, then funding is allocated by the school system with extra money and teachers sent into "bad" schools. The "bad schools" have more teachers per student, more money per student, and smaller schools, and average between $12,000 and $14,000 per pupil.

However, if you move out of the city, across the state line, to the richer bedrooms community with the really good public schools, you will find that they spend even less per student than the average city school. The best school system in the metro area spends $7,600 per student.

Parents matter far more than the amount of money spent on the school system.

Re: Just say ‘non’: The problem with French immersion (2015)

#37

Post by snrplfth »

simlevesque wrote: post #21
kolanos wrote: post #17

I attended two French Immersion schools in B.C. between 1988-1996 and this article doesn't line up at all with my (admittedly anecdotal) experience. I'm not your typical French Immersion defender, I hated French Immersion as a kid. I attended hybrid schools where only maybe 1/4th of the school was French Immersion and the rest were English and it made me and my French classmates targets for bullying. The parents of t…

I just think it's nonsense that Canada has two official languages... and that's from a quebecer. Two countries with each their own language would save everyone involved so much money. Also, bilingualism to me is divide and conquer: how can we (as in the people) change anything if we can't even understand each other ? The status quo can't go on forever.

Firstly, why have any official languages at all? Aside from government documents and the like (which are routinely translated into 10+ languages anyways), why does any language need to be "the official one"?

Also, what does it actually mean "can't even understand each other"? Understand the actual words? Understand as people? Sympathize with?

And I'd like to see how the status quo is supposed to be transformed into "two countries with each their own language". Will you slice off chunks of Eastern Ontario? Have enclaves on Montreal Island? Balkanize New Brunswick?

Re: Just say ‘non’: The problem with French immersion (2015)

#38

Post by dpc59 »

hamstercat wrote: post #6

It's funny, because the reverse issue exists within Quebec. I can't say how much better (or worse) it got recently recently, but I know that 15 years ago English classes in primary and high school were very, very underwhelming. I'm lucky enough that my school had an advanced curriculum available, but I have friends that didn't have this chance and even today they wouldn't be able to have a basic conversion in English…

I graduated high school in Montréal in 2013. I never had an actually challenging English class, I learnt more watching south park, going to america and reading than I did in school. My friends that only relied on school didn't have the best English either, they perfected it by travelling.

A lot of people go to Cégep in English for this reason too, and it works out pretty well. English is a language you can just catch and learn through immersion, even more in North America where you're surrounded by it. I honestly don't think school is a good place to learn a language. You need to be fully immersed and for it to be a necessity. I learned more spending a weekend in an american household at 8 years old than in a year of English classes in elementary school.

Re: Just say ‘non’: The problem with French immersion (2015)

#40

Post by jobigoud »

mgbmtl wrote: post #30
simlevesque wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billinguism is a lie we've been fed for so long. So much money wasted, so many missed opportunities, no way to unite as a whole to change anything since the vast majority of canadians on either side of the fence just listens to his own language's media. The only issue is, you might not like my solution out of it.

I think you're confusing with having a united Canadian identity/culture/nation (à-la-PE Trudeau). Also, nowadays, you probably want to speak more than two languages, or at least have some understanding of more than two languages. I'm always amazed by how many people in the US speak either French or Spanish or both (although, sure I have a very biased experience, being in tech circles). Tear down walls, speak multiple…

Why exactly would you want to speak several languages, if your interlocutor speaks English?

I'm French and I'm not religious about the French language itself. Everything would be so much simpler, including sharing cultural differences if all of humanity just spoke the same language.

English is the interop layer of human communication. It has imperfections but one imperfect standard is better than hundred or thousand of them.

Our common global culture is mostly shared in English. I wish the next generation, or the one after that, all speak English, maybe dialects incorporating local cultural differences. Then we could move forward as a species.

I don't think the friction brought by having so many different languages is worth it.

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