Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Affirmitive Action is government policy to advance the interests of one section of the population ahead of the rest of the population. Such policies are intended to reverse the impact of systemic discrimination in the past. An example might be the current South African and Malaysian governments' requirements that company boards include people of specific ethnicities. In Canada such policies exist to benefit Catholics, francophones and aboriginal people.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

I don't know about that. It seems to me that there's something a bit dubious about aspiring to a position that allows one to, for example, take a lot of time off. It's not professional and it smacks of "I'm alright Jack". One cannot respect someone who works for, say, Canada Post.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Er, have you looked at a census recently? Catholics are not exactly a minority in Canada.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

I don't think I claimed them to be a minority, just a beneficiary of an affirmitive action program.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Does it count as affirmative action when it concerns the largest single religious group in the country?

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

I'd say that "Affirmitive Action" covers any policy aimed at promoting the interests of one ethnic or cultural group over another. For example, apartheid was a pro-white affirmitive action policy. It's NuSpeak, of course, but cheerier than saying that the Government of Ontario discriminates against all non-Catholics

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

My wife went through French Immersion schooling and now her young brothers are doing the same. Even though we all live in a part of Ontario with fairly few French speakers it definitely appears to be a useful skill to be bilingual when you enter the workforce.

As mentioned we rarely encounter french in our day to day lives but my wife said she'll never "forget" how to speak french because of the quality of the education.

I might be wrong but it appears that French Immersion schools appear to generally have higher standards as a whole.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

I dont think its necessarily the schools that have higher standards, its more like natural selection. FI parents are perhaps more likely to support and take an active interest in their kids education which can only have positive effects, and to some extent its the brighter or better motivated kids that sucessfully manage to make the shift to learning in a second language, those that struggle often go back to the other stream. There is definitely a culling effect due to FI.

If I had a kid that was struggling I would definitely think long and hard before subjecting them to the additional strain of starting FI in G4... thats one reason that starting at JK or SK seems a better way to do it.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

I'd be surprised if it were true that there a few French speakers in and around Guelph (compared to the rest of Ontario). Guelph and K-W are centres for insurance. The insurance companies were once based in Montreal but moved to Ontario in response to bill 401. They brought many of their staff. I suppose I hear someone speaking French once a week. Most recently, yesterday, an African woman shouting into a phone. Appropriately, she was in the Quebec Street Mall.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

For Guelph I believe it's less than 2% speaking French as first language and less than 10% bilingual. Even by Ontario standards it's on the lower end I think.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

1% vs. nearly 4% for Ontario as a whole:

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-re...B1=All&Custom=

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

You can't "easily" dismantle the official language policy, but with some constitutional lawyers and political will it could be done. My point was that Chinese continues to grow as a third language (and there's no reason it won't considering vast pool of Chinese speakers who might happen to find Canada as conducive to a new life as their predecessors) there will one day come a point when Chinese speakers outnumber French speakers, and there will be a case for a third official language or a dismantling of second official language provision.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Actually, my question was more about what affirmative action policies exist in Canada (rather than the definition). I can imagine there are policies with respect to aboriginals, but I don't know if I would construe bilingualism as AA, and wonder if there is something else. I am also a bit sceptical of Catholics being included as beneficiaries of AA , but am happy to be enlightened.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

The Government of Ontario funds four school systems, Catholic English, Catholic French, Everyone English, Everyone French. Attendance at Catholic schools, membership of the boards of administration, teaching positions are (with some odd exceptions) open only to Catholics. Participation in the Everyone school system is open to, well, everyone, including Catholics. It's as simple a discrimination as anyone could ask. Such arrangements once prevailed in Newfoundland, Quebec, Northern Ireland and, I imagine other places, only Ontario, to my knowledge, maintains this particular AA program.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

This is not entirely true. Exactly because it's funded by the government, any child can go to a Catholic school. They do need to fill out an extra form if they are not baptized Catholic, but that's pretty much it. I know many children who come from non-Catholic families and are attending a Catholic school, because their parents happen to believe it's the one that offers the best education. There is some religion left at school, but it's minimal, and I have never heard these kids complain about having to hear about God.

I believe this might be different when it comes to working at a Catholic School though, and I agree that the board hiring policies might be considered discriminatory. However, Catholic religion being part of the school culture, I can see how the board could conclude that a teacher should be familiar with it. It's somewhat similar to requiring that a teacher in a French Immersion school be fluent in French, even though it's part of the English board. Yes, it discriminates against teachers who don't speak French, but they would clearly be unfit. I understand that knowledge of a particular language is a skill, while religion is a personal choice and there is a difference between the two, but I can see how it might be slightly relevant.

The other thing is that one gets to choose which board to support when paying property taxes, and in most cases it comes down to supporting the board where your kids or grandkids go...

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

AA based on religion is a very slippery slope. Racial equality or language preservation is one thing, but preferring one religion over another (or none) is very divisive. In my opinion, faith schools have no place in modern society.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

I'm not sure it's as simple as all that. What would the form say? I foresake my religion for a bowl of soup and a lesson in sums?

In any case, there's no such form at ordinary schools and Catholic chidren don't have to sign one so it's a discriminatory system. It ought not to be funded by the government. (Religious schools ought not to exist but that's another argument).

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Agreed. It's doubly iniquitous for the State to fund the schools of one religion and not all the others.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Actually, the problem is best defined as funding schools of any religion, because opening up funding to any faith ("faith equality" as Tony Blair did) creates a completely fractured education system with each faith vying to indoctrinate its young.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

In any case, there's never going to be money to fund every possible set of superstitions ao it's not appropriate to fund any of them.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

No, basically it says that you are going to a Catholic school even though you are not of Catholic faith.

I really don't have any strong feelings about it. My kids are going to a Catholic school, simply because it's in my opinion the best school in town. We tried the public French immersion first, but it was absurdly mediocre. We lasted a month and gave up, never looked back. I do get a weird question about God every now and then (Easter and Christmas usually, they seem to step up the religion a bit those times of year), but other than that I just see how much my kid is growing and how well she is doing academically.

I do wonder how Catholics got the public funding deal, but it doesn't keep me up at night.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

How they got it is less interesting than how they still have it.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Are you, or the children's Mother, Catholic?

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

That's a shame as I was rather hoping to set up a Jedi Knight Academy and hoping to get public funding.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Interesting point, as up-thread the FI system (in BC) has been described as de facto grammar school. What did you find mediocre at the one your kids tried?

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Let's just say that colouring books all day (we were REQUIRED to provide a new colouring book EACH MONTH for our child) is not my idea of education for a 5 year old. She already knew how to write and read, and now she wasn't allowed to bring "reading" books- only colouring was considered an acceptable activity. The day we pulled her out of the school was when she asked her (French Immersion) teacher how to say "tree" in French and was told to sit down and colour. She never had any homework, and every afternoon when we asked what she had learned we were told "nothing". Sadly, this was true. The only French word she learned in all of September was Bonjour. We moved her at the end of September, and by Christmas she was able to have simple conversations in French with our Francophone friends.

I since then have met a few teachers from the public school, some of them took a year of French before teaching there. That's the extent of their French. At the Catholic school, most of the teachers are from Francophone families, and speaking English is not allowed at all in the classroom. Kids have homework every day, even in kindergarten. Everything is just better structured and worked out.

Obviously, this is not going to be the case everywhere, but in our city the Catholic school seems to provide a better education than the public one. And we are glad that there is a choice, even if it comes with some added religion.

Full disclosure: one of us is Catholic. In name mostly, but it's all the same to the system. The other one is quite anti-Catholic, and that's why we tried the public school first. But at the end of the day, we agreed that is doesn't matter as much who runs the school, if it's well run. We never found religion to be pushed a lot. As I said, there is quite a few kids that are not Catholic, and it doesn't seem to bother them.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Not true. Some of my relatives here attend a catholic school and they're from a Protestant background.

In Northern Ireland "Controlled schools", operated and funded by the state, are Protestant. "Catholic Maintained schools" are operated by the Catholic church and receive some government funding. There are the usual scattering of private schools and also some "Integrated" schools which are usually neither. It should be noted Northern Ireland is generally regarded to have the finest education system in the British Isles in terms of results.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Another point to Catholic schools. My son is at a Catholic school but only because our local one was full and the Catholic one has a good reputation and a good Frazer report (and yes I know the Frazer reports get a bad rep in themselves but we don't have anything else to go in as newcomers). I was asked at Enrollment whether we were Catholic and as I was brought up Catholic I said yes (no longer practise at all).

They asked for a baptismal certificate which I couldn't give as it was in England and had to get my parents to apply for another one. (Which they did and sent over).

I haven't been asked to send it in so really if you have the balls you could lie to get your kid into a Catholic school if that is what you really want. (Well you could in my school).

The beauty of a Catholic school (which in hindsight has worked out well for us) is that we can live anywhere in the city quadrant we are in) and he can still go - catchment is much wider. :)

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Isn't that covered by "some odd exceptions". It's a disciminatory and immoral system, yes or no?

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Baptist friends of mine send their kids to the catholic school, on the grounds that some god is better than no god.

Our experience of the catholic school was that there wasnt as much churchyness as we expected.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

No Protestants on the rack? No massacres of Muslims?

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Not in Belleville in our experience.;) Not much in the way of prayers or catechism or prep for 1st Communion either.


You do have some strange ideas about the nature of religion in Canada... TBH you seem less tolerant of other views than most of the religionists...

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

I don't think religion is any different in Canada than elsewhere. Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine stand out as religious communities. Utah and Saudi Arabia too but they're relatively peaceful.

It's irrelevant though, how foolish and dangerous I think religion is, there's no case for the government to support one band of loonies against the others.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

+1. Religion is divisive. The state has no business in facilitating it, unless of course it is a religious state (which would avoid divisiveness by banning any other religion).

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

Bounce for Moving to Toronto April.

Re: French Immersion - comments please
 

We moved to Ontario last year end of March and our daughters then 6 (year 1) started on the French immersion program in the local Catholic school it's the best move we could have made for them. In fact it was one of our top 10 reasons for coming to Canada.

The advantages a second language gives are enormous, in Canada and Europe. From a work perspective the recruiter view is that a bi-lingual person can earn 20-40% more and they have more opportunities for employment in most white-collar working enviroments. My sister, BIL and nieces lived in Spain for 6 years and have just returned to the UK. Both are about to take GSCE's in Spanish - the youngest is 12 (they moved to Spain when she was 5) and she just got 100% in her mock exam :thumbsup:

We are lucky enough to have a great teacher, great school and two very bright little girls who have caught up with their classmates who started FI in JK within 10 months.

We did have a meeting with the Principal, Head of the French language programme and their teacher at the outset and set parameters for how we would judge whether they would be able to catch up, measure progress and if they were struggling how they would transfer to the English programme. This really helped us as non-French parents with knowing what we needed to do to help them.

They now regularly switch in and out of French and English and we have been learning French ourselves just to keep up and make sure they're not up to mischief!!

Go for it, it's much harder to get them into the programme than it is to get them out if you feel it's not for them. Good luck with your move :)