Just say ‘non’: The problem with French immersion (2015) | Hacker News Reader

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

macleans.ca

25 pointswallflower44 comments

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 care is, by itself, an important reason for better grades.

* if so many parents want it and there are clear reasons to believe they're good for the children (better pay) and for the country (strengthen the cultural identity) then the problem is that there are so few, not that they shouldn't exist.

Better say: "oui, nous voulons beaucoup!"

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.

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 think learning another language is great, especially when you're young since you have plenty of time to do it at that age.

Youth is the best time to learn new languages too, they're harder to acquire later in life for some reason.

I've learned 4 languages now. English - only language my parents spoke. French - did French Immersion Finnish - spent time in Finland in my teens and learned the language German - just started picking it up 3 years ago

The main difference I see is 2 things, time & immersion. I know less German after 3 years than I did through French Immersion, but I've spent way less time doing it, never had any formal instruction, and haven't spent 7 hours every week day having to talk and listen to German. I know more German than Finnish though, simply because I didn't spend as much effort actually learning Finnish, it all came from immersion.

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 languages, it's 2017 and we have a global economy, adapt.

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.

One language. One money. One metric system. That would be great.

People are afraid that local identities would be lost. Be the reason people stopped speaking their local language is because most of them don't see a benefit in it. We need to stop the romantic tale and get real.

Global unit system prospect is looking good for the long term I think, we only have a handful of them, if only the US could get its game together on this one it'd be a done deal…

We still have way too many electrical plugs plus combos for voltage/frequency, also a pain. Just had to buy a new hair clipper this morning because my European one didn't like the US mains.

It seems the stuff that involves direct human interactions is the worst, like having around two hundred different currencies. This one is fairly stupid in hindsight, since there is very little cultural value there. But language, the one thing that we use the most to interact with one another, tops everything with thousands of non-compatible variations… sigh.

Heh, I agree in theory. In practice, people speak very broken English, and it helps to understand where they come from. Of course, that goes both ways. As someone from Montreal/Quebec, I rarely meet someone from France who spoke good English, just saying. (and I'm sure they think the same of my French, even if it's my first language ;-)

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.

I was enrolled in the French Immersion program. At my school, we had both English and French programs. One of my memories of being in French Immersion, which is likely of relevance to this article, is that I remember in the 7th and 8th grade one of my teachers (who was also the vice-principal) was concerned about the segregation between the students in the French program and the students in the English program. i.e. During recess the students French program wouldn't play with the students in the English program, vice versa. We may have had a name for students in the English program--but I can't remember it now.

The segregation in the older years wasn't as strong as younger years, but it still existed.

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 the English students, for whatever reason, didn't want French Immersion in their schools and as such there was a lot of resentment passed down. It wasn't unusual for me to have to fight my way home, being outnumbered 3-to-1 by English students who didn't want French kids in their school. Maybe they thought it was elitist, but that couldn't be further from what I observed.

I was raised in a middle-to-lower class household, the only reason I was in French Immersion was my mother was a Quebecois transplant and didn't want me to loose touch with the French-Canadian side of my family. Most of my French classmates were also on the lower end of the income spectrum, with only a few exceptions.

I never saw it as an economic issue. If anything, the biggest differentiator between the English and French kids was the involvement of their parents in their school activities. The Parent-Teacher events by the French Immersion parents were typically packed, whereas the English PT events were sparsely attended, regardless of income levels. It just seemed like the French Immersion parents took a more engaged approach to their children's education and participation in French Immersion was more correlation than causation.

I have no doubt that there are highly sought after public schools with waiting lists and such. But if anyone thinks there's some special treatment for the French Immersion students in Western Canada, then they clearly have only looked into it on the most superficial levels or have an anti-French bias. The special treatment is you have to do every class in French (except English class) and you get beat up for the privilege.

I guess parents who care about their children's education are elitist. How dare they.

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.

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.

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?

I did French immersion in English-speaking Canada, and I'm very grateful for it. Learning another language and culture introduces you to another way of thinking, and learning a 2nd language young makes learning a 3rd and 4th much easier. And it's not as though I invested any more time in school than my unilingual counterparts... Just meant we had 1 less 'required' optional course, they still had to make the time up.

In some parts of Canada (Ottawa at least), there is no shortage of French immersion programs if parents want them, and I at least haven't noticed any type of segregation.

When my son started school, we were concerned about enrolling in a French immersion program because he has had speech and language development issues. We were also worried because neither my wife nor I speak French so we weren't sure if we could help him if he had trouble. During the registration we were encouraged to try French immersion anyway and to switch later if he ran into trouble. The school board provided speech and language therapy for him and so far he is doing fine. There is an English stream at his school and the kids from both play together, go on field trips together, etc...

I should note that starting this past year, all kids entering kindergarten are taught in 50% English and 50% French. Only after two years of kindergarten do they have the option of early French immersion starting in grade one. http://www.ocdsb.ca/programs/ele/fi/Pages/default.aspx

My son is very interested in attending uOttawa because of the bilingual atmosphere of the campus and the city. We are Americans, but the mix of languages and cultures in Ottawa really make it an interesting and cosmopolitan environment, while still having a very walkable scale.

For a USA-ian, it is interesting to see similar issues for language immersion (in Canada) and US voucher-based charter schools, each relative to the local traditional schools, with a tendency for students from higher-income families to attend immersion (in Canada) or voucher-based charter schools (in the US), and for traditional schools to retain students from lower-income families, allophone/ESL students, and a higher proportion of students with special needs.

While I'm in favor of exploring innovation in education, it seems like there are intrinsic challenges to equity here, and a situation that cries out for methods to equitably balance access to effective education.

[edited to clarify which schools in which country]

FWIW, not all immersion programs in the US are charter based. Our kids went to a public non-charter Spanish immersion school K-8 here in San Jose, and entry into the school was split equally between native English and native Spanish speakers. That meant there was good diversity in socio-economic backgrounds without any direct "racial profiling". (Note there were also some upper-income native Spanish speakers in the program, mostly kids of immigrants from Spain and South America.)

Sorry, I did not intend to conflate immersion with charter (and voucher) in the US, and have edited to reflect that.

The United States of America declared independence in 1776, becoming the first independent, foreign-recognized nation in the Americas. This is why we are called "Americans", despite the many subsequent independent countries also residing in the Americas. Every country has a unique name for their nationality, that is ours.

See, whats funny to me about this, is that you've gone and given yourself the title of "Americans", whereas the people who were there before you, and had established civilizations, are given the title "Native Americans". That doesn't make any sense. How about instead, Native Americans can drop the Native qualifier and Americans can start calling themselves "Foreign Americans". That's much more logical, and historically consistent.

(Also, "independent, foreign-recognized nation in the Americas"? What about the Six Nations? They were certainly recognized as nations by the British)

> The United States of America declared independence in 1776, becoming the first independent, foreign-recognized nation in the Americas

Quite a number of native nations were recognized by each other and even European powers. The US was the first post-colonial, recognized independent state, but the post-colonial part is significant.

Just a warning to readers that MacLean's is fairly anti-french/Quebec so take this article with a grain of salt.

It also glosses over the main issue which is streaming. If a group of children is smarter than their peers is it right to force them to learn at the same pace as their slower peers and vice-versa. French immersion in English speaking Canada is a streaming tool to get around the fact that classes are not streamed and parents want their kids to get ahead and don't want "dumb" kids slowing them down. Many other countries like France and Germany IIRC are highly streamed and the article points to Europe as a place where leaning additional languages in childhood has been quite successful.

Taken from Wikipedia: "Since lower socioeconomic groups and children with learning and behavioral problems have lower rates of participation in French immersion, a situation has developed in which ambitious families might prefer French immersion for its effective streaming than for the bilingual skills it gives to students."

I don't see how this is a problem, as you've noted it.

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 for your kids when you buy/rent housing in a good district, above all else.

> 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

Good school districts are generally good because they have a higher proportion of students with educated parents who can positively model intellectual engagement, and provide educational opportunities and resources.

It's not necessarily that the reachability of the students is better any more that the teaching is better, it's that the students in those districts are likely to be both being taught and learning independently outside of school, which gives better results.

Better school districts don't make your kid perform better, so much as your ability to afford to get into a better school district is correlated with features which would result in your kid doing better anywhere.

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 certain level of academic seriousness will be 100x more effective than anything a parent can do or say—and so would peer behavior and attitudes going the other direction.

But yes, the kids are better (less disruptive, more teachable) peers mostly due to their home lives.

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 had their fathers dragged off to prison for small-time drug offenses, don’t need to be taking care of younger siblings because their single mother works 2 jobs, don’t get treated suspiciously by shopkeepers, aren’t harassed by the police all the time, don’t need to go through metal detectors every day on the way into school, have the resources to pay for extracurricular music lessons and private math tutoring, go to a school where the teacher turnover is low and the school can afford to maintain the facilities and provide materials, .....

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is not the case in Canada where this article takes its data from.

Yep. "The line ups might come back". The reason there's no line up this year isn't because there aren't enough students, it's because BC has done away with first come first serve, and is now doing a lottery system.

This website is unreadable on chrome for iOS. Content appears for the seconds and completely disappears for 15 once you scroll.

>Hannah Spencer isn’t the kind of mom who leaves anything to chance.

So already we start off with a control freak who tries to defy the (random) nature of reality.

>rentice arrived at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, three days before registration opened, and was the seventh parent in line for the 17 kindergarten openings.

My goodness, that is like apple store, but with schools. Hipsterism, planted right into the brain of your child!

>Outside Quebec, bilingual men earn on average 3.8 per cent more than their unilingual counterparts, according to a 2010 study out of the University of Guelph.

Worth sacrificing your childhood for.

Every day when I read about schools, I am so damn grateful I am an adult and out of this insane institution.

> Worth sacrificing your childhood for.

Is that specific to French immersion? I don't see what that has to do with the quoted text. If your child is already spending their childhood in school, you should at least try to help them get the most out of it...

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