Quote:
Originally Posted by harls
Not really true for the ROC. I started in grade 6, and had the option to take French or Home-Ec in grade 10. I stuck with French. This was in a public school on the prairies.
Nowadays I think it starts in grade 4.
Of course, it doesn't prepare you at all, if you can't actually practice it. My niece in MB says duolingo is more efficient than her French class.
Agreed.
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Interesting, because I spent my entire elementary school career in Manitoba, and I swear I remember us having French learning as early as kindergarten or grade 1... I was in the Saint Boniface School Division, which might have played a role?
A really funny story is that my father tried to put me in Saint Boniface School, a French public school, and the closest school to where we lived. They basically denied me because neither of my parents were fluent in French, though my Dad grew up in Montreal, and he argued that "my wife has a French surname"
The school said they would have to accept me if my parents insisted, but that I would come home every day crying, because the other students would have all spoken French as their first language, and I didn't. I still don't understand why he went through all that effort, and then didn't enrol me in French immersion.
I'd totally believe that French language education is lagging behind or even regressed from when I was in school, which is really sad, considering how far language learning, and translation innovations have come. I firmly believe if they did a better job teaching French in Canadian public school, high school graduates will be set up to succeed in continuing to learn French once they graduate.
Here in New Brunswick, I still can't believe the general response to former premier Blaine Higgs's somewhat recent proposal to turn the Anglophone school system into a bilingual school system (leaving the Francophone System untouched) was met with such virulent opposition from both Anglophone and Francophones, and the all influential SANB, as some sort of ploy from Higgs to ruin French Immersion education in New Brunswick.
The really crazy thing, is that French Immersion in New Brunswick, Canada's only bilingual province, now starts in grade 3, while it starts in kindergarten and grade one elsewhere in Canada. Higgs wanted to get rid of the French immersion program from the Anglophone system, and make the whole Anglophone system a bilingual system, like basically what is offered in Montreal, but he was attacked from all sides for the mere suggestion, and just gave up. . . I think he was a terrible premier all around, but that was possibly his
one great idea.
In general, if Canadian students are given better French language learning in public schools, they will be set up to succeed in learning the language further once they exit the public school system... there's so many new resources out there to learn languages now that didn't exist a decade ago, and there will continue to be innovations into the future. Yet, for such a no brainer idea, there's seemingly very little support for increasing French learning in public schools across Canada.
It's almost as if some people in Canada prefer the situation as it is, and don't want more Anglophones learning French. In New Brunswick, that's absolutely how it feels like to me.
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Makes SPM look like a tropical paradise.
lol
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