Originally Posted by scilly

I know, but a lot depends on the individual parent and/or the realtor's perception.

I understand that in Vancouver the schools are much more equal than parents believe .......... and it is not always the "favoured" ones that produce graduates who do well in further education due to the way they have been taught.

The secondary school that is our local one is always being touted as a desirable advantage. I would not consider sending a child of mine there now. I might have done 30 or 40 years ago .......... neighbours' children came out with good marks, and a good education, were well spoken, etc, and did well no matter what they did after graduation (post-secondary, trade, etc)


Why? Because for the last 20 or so years the school's mandate has been to teach to the Asian parental expectations of rote learning.

The kids get high marks, and get into university ............ but have little idea of expanding ideas or doing anything like the old "compare and contrast". They read a university exam question, but often seem unable to understand the "in 6 lines or less", and will literally write down everything that might have to do with the question.

Some years ago, OH had the high school winner of a Lieutenant-Governor's Gold Medal in a class, from one of the schools that teaches this rote learning method and therefore loved by Asian parents .......... he set a short test exam in which one question asked for one aspect of a topic to be answered in 1 short paragraph. The person wrote 9 pages

It was the first "test" exam so OH was very good, and read all 9 pages trying to know how much the person knew. He discovered that everything known on the topic had been put down, but they had been unable to even get near answering the question as asked. I think he found 1 mark to give .... out of the possible 10


Interestingly, I note that the neighbourhoods and the schools that serve them that get the highest ratings are a) the most expensive areas in which to buy houses /condos / apartments and b) it is the private schools that get recommended.


Vancouver may be a little bit different though, because a parent has been able to request that a child cross school lines to attend a different school IF the desired school has room to accept a child from outside of its catchment area. That used to apply only to secondary schools, but some years ago was extended to elementary ones.

Some secondary schools have been set up to specialise in special areas .............. one lays a great emphasis on the arts and children reaching a high level in ballet or music; another might make accommodations for kids involved in high levels of sport. Time can be taken off to work with the personal coaches or their hockey / soccer teams, while the school's teachers set work that can be done off-site.


In Vancouver and other areas of BC, you have to know the code words used to appreciate the type of teaching done by any particular school. I don't know about other provinces.

Originally Posted by dbd33

I don't believe this to be true.

Originally Posted by DandNHill

I'm bilingual. It's good to be bilingual in a bilingual country!

Originally Posted by Steve_

The main purpose of Bill 101 was to make kids learn French in school, the only exemption is if one of the parents is Canadian and was taught in English in Canada. This is what led to so many people moving to Ontario back in the 1970s. Down around Sherbrooke it is still mainly English speaking, so you get immigrants from English-speaking countries moving there but they have to send their kids to French school.

Originally Posted by BritishManMontrealWife

yes, loading kids up with language skills throughout their early life has always been a priority. my wife speaks to them in quebecois french, so that's what they know.

adding spanish to their language portfolio should be a doddle. And i agree @Scilly adding chinese would be smart as well.

in the long run, i think they will have a good base to explore exciting careers, and i think their outlook will be beyond a job in a Quebec province. i have introduced them to robotics, A.I. and Space so IMHO those are pretty exciting jobs of the future. I just need to add speaking Martian to the list :-)

thanks for list of schools. LCC, St Georges, Selwyn are on the list, and they have replied saying that due to to my wife's education, my kids (boy for above school) would have to adhere to the language policy.

that's something i find strange. that even if i pay for thme to go to private schooling, i cant' choose which one due to the langauge law. I was private schooled in scotland from aged 7, and never had stipulations.

i think it is something to do with the fact that even if we select and he getss accepted into a private school, the quebec government make some form of contribution, which gives them jurisdiction to impose the mother tongue stipulation.

i'd never thought much about that phrase before 'mother tongue'. now it makes more sense. literally. they have to go what the tongue was of their mum's education .

good replies, great discussion. happy sunday from a sunny italy. (will miss the 10 months of heat and sunshine, but will keep our home here for holidays by the sea)

Originally Posted by morpeth

Adding Spanish I can see as a great help, which should be easier after speaking Italian. What was the impression of Italian schools ? ( I have one child who may be switching to an Italian school).

Learning Chinese I cant really see- tough learn fluently, and in most cases involving China language of communication would still be English.

Originally Posted by scilly

If you live in western Canada, especially BC, the ability to speak Chinese is very important ............. lots and lots of trade with China, a large proportion of the population is Chinese, businesses are opening branches in China, etc etc

Originally Posted by morpeth

I am curious. I am international business, and see people all over the world doing business with China- few to do so speak Chinese and even those who try to learn Chinese very very rarely learn enough to be fluent or easily communicate without making so many mistakes everything has to be confirmed in English.

Is there something different about BC than the rest of the world I am missing ?

Originally Posted by dbd33

At the moment I'm in Italy with two of my educated-in-French-in-Canada daughters. One lives in Vancouver where she's obtained a job with benefits (she's on maternity leave at the moment) on the strength of being bilingual English/French. I asked, would speaking Chinese have helped her? She thought not at the expenses of French and besides, "you can't learn it well enough that you're not better off speaking in English".

One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is the degree to which one can manage in the GTA without speaking English. England, I hear, is flooded with immigrants and certainly the staff at Gatwick are from all over, but what they have in common is workable English. The security staff, restaurant staff, minor administrators and janitors at the Toronto airport don't typically have enough English to able to understand the desired format of a customer's coffee and neither do many people working in the GTA. Note that I cite people in customer facing junior roles because those are the immigrants to the UK I've spoken to this week. I don't imply that only people in such jobs in the GTA are illiterate, lots of graduates of the University of Waterloo can't write a shopping list in English and they'll be making a living wage.

I think that if children are educated in French with some English classes and they are taxed to use English properly at home, then they'll easily be competitive in the Canadian job market. It doesn't matter which language was the primary one for schooling.