In response to a recent article. Globe readers share their own stories about why they did or didn’t enroll their children in French immersion programs.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
The Globe and Mail recently published an article about how French immersion programs in schools across Canada are creating divisions within classes and communities.
Reporters Dakshana Bascaramurty and Caroline Alphonso found that affluent white families are driving demand for French immersion programs, while at the same time, immigrant diasporas are urging schools to teach in other languages. This has created a landscape where officials and parents are struggling to redefine what equitable education looks like.
In response to the article, we heard from dozens of readers in our comment section about their experiences with French immersion programs as parents and educators. Globe readers shared their own stories about why they did or didn’t enroll their children in French immersion programs, and their feelings more generally about Canada’s education system. Here’s a collection of these responses. (Spelling and grammar have been edited for ease of reading where applicable.)
Parents on the benefits of French immersion
“We enrolled our kid in a full-day French immersion program in grades six to nine. He's now bilingual (tri-lingual if we add our mother-tongue), conversant in French culture, history and literature and fluent enough in French to be able to travel to France, and argue a case in French (he's a lawyer). If this is not a compelling argument for French - or any other language - immersion then I don't know what else is.”
From Globe commenter GettingReal2:
“My kids went through French Immersion in British Columbia and did well. My son chose to not continue with French immersion in high school but he still speaks decent French. My daughter continued and is basically fluent. It's good for a lot of kids, but not all. Do your research before you commit and be prepared to change if it's not working out. At the end of the day, every child is different, and what really makes the difference long-term is if they are happy and confident in whatever education program they are in.”
From Globe commenter I_Hate_David_Miller:
“We recently chose to send our two kids to French immersion in the York Region Public School Board as my wife grew up in Northern Ontario and is bilingual and sees the value of our kids being the same. One thing that we have noticed is that while class sizes in our area in both the English and French streams are the same size, within the French stream our children are getting a far greater level of one-on-one instruction with the teacher versus when they were in the English stream. This could be a result of having better teachers, or more likely, the 'behavioural' children not being able to cut it in the French stream and moving back to the English stream so you now have a French stream of more academically-minded children.”
From Globe commenter app_73907158:
“My kids went through French Immersion in Ontario. Added in Spanish as well when they hit high school and university. Thing is, many of their school friends already spoke two languages. So English plus Spanish, Arabic, or one of the Indian languages. Friends from Africa quite often spoke more than two. These were often new Canadians, not high income by any means, but their parents already understood the benefit of communicating beyond their native tongue – not just professional or employment benefits but of belonging and deeper understanding of those whose language you were learning.”
“In French immersion, my eldest son struggled in grades one and two to the point where the expert school board psychologist suggested that we hold him back a year and put him into English-only classes. His teacher on the other hand told us that he was just a late bloomer and asked that we give it one more year, much to the chagrin of the psychologist. By the next year, my son was a totally different person. Not only did his reading skill go from well below expectation to consistently exceeding expectation, he finished grade 12 with a bilingual diploma and is still (many years later) an avid reader.”
From Globe commenter shotfire:
“In our part of Ontario, the French immersion school my kids attend as kids with an Asian background, has almost no white kids. Most kids are Iranian and Chinese. Anyone who's within the 'catchment' area can choose to send their kids to immersion. It's just a choice, just like many other choices we make as parents to provide for our kids. I'm completely at a loss how this is being blamed on white families. If white families leave it's ‘white flight.’ If they move in, it's ‘gentrification.’ To me this has nothing to do with the colour of the student's skin. My kids have friends of all different skin colours in that school. As it should be.”
Parents’ criticism of French immersion
From Globe commenter The Irrational Knot:
“We went into French immersion with so much hope and enthusiasm, but it was eight years of revolving French-speaking teachers, confusion, and inconsistency until we couldn’t take it anymore. One of my biggest parental regrets. Fabulous idea, but a big failure in execution.”
“I have very mixed feelings about having put my daughter in French immersion. She is continuing it in grade nine, and from what I can see, if not fully fluent, she is pretty close and can speak French much better than I could at her age. It was a lot of work on our end though with extra French tutoring over the years. Half a day of French on its own is not enough to end up bilingual. My takeaway is that French immersion is not a slam dunk positive experience for everyone.”
The division in French immersion
From Globe commenter JeffSpooner:
“Call it for what it is: ‘Streaming,’ as parents wanted their children to be with the ‘better children.’ However the major point is that unless you are in total immersion from elementary school right through high school, these children were never going to become bilingual. For the last 22 years the bilingual rate in Canada has been stable at around 18 per cent, despite the fact that during this time hundreds of thousands of children have gone through an immersion program. They may have developed a smattering of vocabulary but it is quickly forgotten if not in regular use. A nice idea, but the idea that hundreds of thousands of kids learned a second language should be put to bed.”
From Globe commenter Terry_Mathews14:
“In Oakville, where our experience with French immersion occurred, it was readily apparent that many parents were using it to ensure their kids were in classes with kids ‘like’' their own. Private school, publicly funded, very few kids with behavioural or learning challenges, a higher percentage of like-minded parents leaving the mainstream classes with all of these issues greatly magnified with the French immersion stream realizing the benefits. Fifteen years on, very few maintained any French whatsoever. Public educational system well-gamed!”
From Globe commenter CognitiveDissonance:
“As an educator for 30 years, I’ve watched the growth of the French immersion stream and all of its misguided ideas. On the West Coast, French immersion was immediately identified by wealthy immigrant families as the 'private within public' stream and created a phenomenon of people coming to Canada who could not speak English enrolling their non-anglophone children into French immersion. Been going on for at least three decades.”