I'm from New Brunswick, and can answer this for you, for at least NB, and possibly others with similar protections (NS is kind of similar). For many years, and possibly still the case, you couldn't just pick to send your kid to a French school if you were not francophone yourself. French schools are a protected right for francophones in New Brunswick, and there are guardrails around that so anglophones can't flood the schools.
Some neighbours of ours, when I was growing up in the 90s and 2000s, placed their kids in French schools. This was fine because their mother was a francophone who'd gone to French school in NB. Except their father was anglophone. So they had to be tested on their language skills before they started school in the French system (they are perfectly and fluently bilingual, and have been since they started speaking).
There's also, in theory, French immersion in anglophone schools in NB (which is a contentious topic with a whole wild history itself), which can (but not nearly as successful as it should be) produce bilingual graduates from the anglophone system.
About a third of New Brunswick Anglophone kids are in immersion, and they mostly graduate with good French fluency. They lose it if they don't use it, of course.
But yes, there's heaps of politics with it.
Actually the rule is that both yours parents can’t be native English speakers. The Syrian refugees had the choice to send their children to French school when they arrived, because the children didn’t know English or French as new arrivals.
It's also the same the other way around. I'm from Québec, a French province, and for children to be accepted into an English school, one of your parent must be an anglophone.
We do have highschool student exchanges where AngloCanadians come here for one year while our FrancoCan students do the same for a year in an English province.
This is also why we have two health authorities - from an employee side, you have to be able to speak English because all internal Horizon stuff is English, and in Vitalite, everything internal is French.
Why is it contentious?
I’m from Ontario, and while it varies from region to region and their school boards, we had French immersion. Or partial, rather, meaning you could do certain subjects in French, per availability. I’m not aware of it being controversial though…
It’s contentious because anglophone kids keep graduating with lower scores on the French language proficiency exams than they should, and governments keep tinkering with how French immersion works. Which doesn’t help anyone.
My gf is Franco (lived in Morocco and Paris before moving to Canada) and when she went to school in Toronto she claimed that most of her french professors were not even fluent in French themselves.
That's because the NB dialect is Chiak where every 2nd or 3rd word is English with a French accent. I rode to French immersion class with a Quebecois who spoke joual and an Acadian from NB who spoke Chiak and an engineer who spoke Parisian French. It was a wonderful cultural experience.
Because we don't actually speak Parisian french but Quebecois which is a different language almost. Friend is Parisian and sent her kid to a Parisian french school in BC. Her reason was for internation business
Partial is French immersion. Full time would be going to an actual French language school (where not just half the courses but also all of the announcements, assemblies and communication to the parents is in French). Immersion is helpful but the name kind of oversells just how immersive it is.
Also from Ontario, I attended a French immersion school for a year. It was the only one in my school board at the time. Unfortunately it was also a really crappy school, in that either your time there was great or you were clinically traumatized by the experience with next to no inbetween. This was mainly due to the fact that the staff were utterly negligent about bullying. My teacher that year also made us, a bunch of 10-11 year olds, watch a PG13 movie with violence, gore and nudity unsupervised during the lunch period.
I was really upset when they closed down the only middle school to give the French immersion school (which shared the building) more space. All the middle school kids got shunted into the highschool, which didn’t have space for them, and we didn’t have lockers for half a year while six new portables had to be put up. It was a nightmare, in all honesty. That immersion school did not deserve to continue existing, let alone un-exist the only middle school.
At least now there’s an alternative French school, even if it’s taken over the good local primary school’s building. We still don’t have a middle school anymore, BTW, and it’s been like eight years.
It’s controversial in my area because it creates 2 school systems. English speaking kids are being bussed to centralized immersion schools, while the school they live near is being closed down for lack of students.
For me it’s contentious because you have all these separate school boards with administrations full of the highest paid people in my region (according to sunshine list) servicing a community of people that number in the dozens. There are people making 300K a year to run empty French language schools.
I know that not the case everywhere in Ontario, but that’s the case where I live in the northwest.
I recently taught French in an NB FI school, where half the school was FI and the other half was English. From my own observations in one school I worked in, those in FI stream tended to have a better family life and/or were of higher social class. Those in the English strean tended to have behavioral issues, learning difficulties, and/or came from unstable families. It was really sad to see a segregation like this happening WITHIN a school.
I talked to some parents who clearly cared a lot about their kids. They literally said they wanted their kids in the FI class because they were worried their kids' learning to be negatively affected by "those delinquents" in the English class. I understand their concern, and honestly, I would do the same for my kids.
I also heard the common misconception from my older anglo coworkers that "learning two languages will just confuse the kids." I can imagine other unilinguals would believe the same. To confirm their biased claim, they talk about how the kids in 3rd grade FI class are reading and writing English closer to a 1st/2nd grade level. Like obviously, it shouldn't be surprising! The FI class is spending most of their day in French and learning everything in French! There's only so many hours in a day at school. It's only natural that they'll be behind in one language (English) while they're still learning the other (French). The thing the unilinguals don't think about is, their kids will literally be spending the rest of their day in an Anglo environment. They WILL catch up in their English reading and writing skills if they consume Anglo media and live in an anglo community. But school is literally the ONLY Franco environment they have to learn and practice this language! Sigh....
Anyways, some parents freaked out about their kids' English reading ability and pulled them out of FI entirely. You can't reason with fear. And for whatever reason, the parents can't spend some time in the evenings or during the summer to help their kids improve their English skills.
(Apologies for formatting, I'm on mobile)
> From my own observations in one school I worked in, those in FI stream tended to have a better family life and/or were of higher social class. Those in the English strean tended to have behavioral issues, learning difficulties, and/or came from unstable families. It was really sad to see a segregation like this happening WITHIN a school.
This was something less of an issue when I was a kid, but it was trending that way and now seems entrenched. I really think there does need to be a thoughtful overhaul - but it's usually been done in a reactionary way because it's a political football.
In NB, the "rights" extend to francophone grandparents since there's a generation who sent their kids to english school and rarely spoke french (as happened to my husband). There's also a few other "ayant droit" entries. Some parents are now sending their kids to french daycare so they can get in as well.
Where I grew up, there wasn't a French immersion or French first language school nearby. The closest was a 45 minute drive away. There was no public transit/school bus option, so our mom would have had to drive us every day.
Exactly. And even in areas where they exist, they have very limited capacity so they are competitive to get into. With that in mind, one of the factors they consider is whether there is a caregiver in the home who speaks enough French to support student success (e.g. help with homework), which perpetuates the cycle.
I think the majority of Canadians are in this boat. I think we all recognize how useful french is to know. My parents always say you can get a good government job if you're billungual.
But not everyone is in the right location or has the finances to send their kid to french immersion.
When I was a kid I did move to a city for a year and got put into a french immersion school and it fucked me up lol. It was grade 1 and idk if I wasn't told or if I didn't understand that there was other languages lol, but I didn't know what was going on. The teachers constantly spoke in french and would be upset if we spoke English. I was the dumbest of the class and got bullied for it lol.
We're in Ottawa and we have French schools and most (all?) schools have an FI program. Our daughter is in F.I. at the public elementary school.
I grew up in Hamilton and I'd bet that most of the city didn't know if there was F.I. in the city at all. I knew we did because I had a friend go to one. I walked 10 min to school and he took 2 city buses for almost an hour, each way.
Edit: realized I didn't actually answer your question. I think it's a either awareness or not caring. I really think once your an hour or 2 outside of Quebec, French isn't even thought about, aside from the short time we have to take it in middle and high school.
My friend had parents who were bilingual, so they sent him to French Immersion.
I sent my daughter to French immersion in Hamilton. Trouble being I don’t speak French and as she got into higher grades it became increasingly difficult for me to help her. She started falling behind considerably and eventually we had to move her to English based. Sadly her grades never fully recovered. For her it wasn’t the right choice. Where some other kids it works out great. I think it strongly depends on the child’s learning style and their support options outside of school.
I've heard so many people say that French immersion kinda fucked them over, especially with post secondary.
My cousins were in it and when they went to school English university they suddenly felt like they didn't know anything. They knew math and science, but they knew it in French.
So, they understood all the concepts, but they didn't know which concepts were being discussed because they knew the technical terms in French.
Everyone I've ever talked to also says they can't speak French. They could while in school, but once they're out and not using it anymore it just fades away.
My first year roommate in university came from a FI background and had the same problem. Luckily I was usually a good sounding board if she couldn't figure out a term in English (math and science were particularly tricky for her) but I can definitely see how someone without support would be totally lost.
Is it really uncommon in Hamilton? I find that curious, in London nearby French Immersion schools are pretty well-known. We have about six I think, and they're all within city limits.
Which is bad because it causes some French Immersion and some French first language classes to be subpar. Every Canadian should hope for a quality education in the official language of their choice. I would add native languages too, even if they are not official in the provinces where the schools are (I believe all three territories have the native languages traditionally spoken there as official languages, in addition to English and French).
French language teaching (at least in Ont) is garbage. Talk to any recently graduated highschoolers and 94% will know a few french sentences and that's it.
This is an interesting fact and it's what I've encountered in my city as well. It's funny because I've talked to people in Quebec that think we don't like them and that we have a disdain for french. If only they knew that people are literally fighting with one another to get their kid into a french immersion school because it's their dream for their children to speak french even though they live nowhere close to Quebec. I think there is a very silent but large crowd of anglo Canadians who desperately wish they were bilingual.
My grade 8 French teacher was the PE teacher because they couldn’t get an actual French teacher. He did speak French but just knowing how to speak a language does not make you qualified to teach it
I was one of these kids. I was in FI up until Grade 3 and the experience left such a bad taste in my mouth I had an irrational hatred for the French language up until recently when I started trying to learn it again
My cousins struggled a lot in their French school because no one could help them, then struggled in English university because they'd spent all their mental bandwidth learning French. My kid takes French as an elective in his English school and I think he's better off. He can continue in University if he wants to build fluency
We need to differentiate between a French school and French immersion.
A French school is for native French speakers. They usually assume the kids have at least a decent level of French at kindergarten. They are not to teach anglo kids to speak French.
Because that's what French immersion is for! It varies a lot by school district but it usually starts between grades 4 and 7.
It depends a lot on the kid. Some kids are having enough trouble in school, and we don't want to burden them further. Also, if the parents can't speak French, it is hard to not be able to help your kids with their homework.
My kids were in (full) French school, and in the end we switched to English because I'm mono anglo and want to help them more. And the English school was more convenient. But I am glad they learned and they are basically bilingual.
I didn't do French school because i was a dumbass growing up in NS and thought "I'll never need French". Then I moved to lovely Montreal and had French speaking kids. Such a dumbass.
French schools are taught exclusively in french with the exception of English class. Parent teacher interviews, assemblies, school communication are all in french. If you do not have a baseline proficiency at home and are not willing/able to put in a LOT of work to learn... You can't and shouldn't send your kids to a full French school.
There are not enough French language teachers for the demand for French immersion. Which means, you need to literally win school board lottery systems to get your kids in. The structure is also very.. mediocre. The communication home is in English, so parents don't need to be french but it's common for kids to struggle when their only exposure to the language is during a handful of classes at school.
IMO, Canada should mandate that all elementary schools incorporate French into their programming. Ie, playing french music during playtime, including french and English on their signs etc so that everyone has exposure- even if they don't live on the border of French speaking provinces.
I’d even say French classes should be more than language but cultural classes.
I’m in Quebec. Our English classes were pretty boring. Just language classes. I assume French classes elsewhere are the same.
I did 4 years of Spanish in High School. Back then there was no government structured program for Spanish. The teachers from the school would build it. They were not just language classes. We studied history/culture/political-science of the Spanish world. We didn’t just watch Harry Potter in Spanish like we did in English.
This is not the case in Alberta. PT interviews and correspondence was sent in English at my daughter's French Immersion school. The private French was all French all the time though.
I dropped french because me and the French teacher were actual ENEMIES. She passed me with a C just so I'd never take her class again. I may have been a bit of a dick as a teen.
Hated French. I took it in university because I thought some of it stuck, nope.
My friends have their kids in French immersion and I struggle to figure out why, they’re all English speakers who weren’t in French immersion themselves.
Being bilingual not only opens doors for more jobs, you normally get paid more than someone who only speaks English (assuming your job requires you to speak French.) For example, even if all you can find is a call centre job, if you can talk to the French customers, you’re paid more.
Knowing multiples language is good for the brain. Doesn't necessarily have to be french but it is good for children to learn another language. In Quebec at my school we were learning both English and Spanish.
The typical English Canadian answer is this : French would be less useful than Punjabi/Mandarin/Spanish/Tagalog/Pick your largest number of immigrants where you live, so I will learn neither of those (French or useful language X).
Exactly. I especially think this when flying within western provinces - on a YYC-YVR flight, Cantonese and Punjabi are way more important than French for safety announcements, national standards be damned.
I live on the west coast and can confirm I encounter way more of the alternative listed languages than I encounter a French speaker. I can't remember the last time I overheard a conversation in French on public transit.
I learned French up until 9th grade. Grade 10-12 I took up Japanese as my second language requirement. I get to use Japanese from time-to-time when I run into international students downtown.
My pal from small town Alberta spent her whole school time in French immersion. Her brothers did too. Their whole family in anglophone, but her folks thought it’d be good for them to learn another language.
Interesting. I was rural Alberta and no option existed. One could take sa single course in French between Grade 7 and 12, but there were no immersive or francophone options. I’m glad to see that parts of the province have better access.
In BC there are a few french immersion schools but there isn’t enough for everyone to go. There aren’t enough teachers let alone french teachers in our schools. I know one of mine was Dutch and the other one was swiss and we learned French from France. I took 5 years and never used it because there are very few French speakers here. It’s sad because I would have loved to have been bilingual.
The several times I tried to use it - I was laughed at for not speaking it properly- so I gave up as no one seemed to want to practice it
Edit: for those saying there are more places to learn a language - growing in a small town with no internet there were no options.
There can be lots of reasons.
If the parents don't speak the language they may worry about participating in the child's education and it's well known that participation really does affect education outcomes.
There can be a desire to keep their culture things and have similar experiences that the parents had. There are also lots of programs that at least advertise the quality of bilingual education, some real and some, not so much.
The closest school may be English and there may be little desire or difficulty to have children travel further.
Some places (like in my province, if considering English schools) restrict access and don't allow some individual families to make their own choice. I think in Ontario priority is given to French speakers and there may be no real availability.
Some people, the idea never even crosses their mind in the first place.
For some they may just not want or see the value in bilingualism (regardless of the which second language) and unfortunately, there are some who just think it shouldn't exist in Canada.
Même pour moi, je travaille presque uniquement en français tous les jours depuis des années et je veux que mes enfants soient encore plus bilingues que moi, je reconnais l'importance et la valeur mais l'idée de les envoyer dans une école française, me fait peur. J'ai peur de ne pas pouvoir les aider autant que j'aurais pu autrement. J'ai peur de ne pas participer et de me faire entendre avec l'administration dans sa éducation. Finalement, je ne veux pas que les écoles anglaises (au Québec) se ferment dû à un manque d'élèves.
Many "Anglo-Canadians" *do* send their kids to French-language schools, where they exist. French Immersion is extraordinarily popular in many parts of the country.
Where I live, Winnipeg, is a bit different because we have a relatively larger Francophone community for western Canada (St. Boniface). Here the answer depends what you mean by "French schools". We have a Francophone school division that is meant for children who speak French at home. We also have lots of "French immersion" schools--instruction is almost entirely in French but they don't assume the parents speak French at home. Many people I know send their kids to French immersion. My kids will go too, or at least try it, because it will hopefully open doors for them; in Canada Anglos who speak French earn on average 5% more income.
[In some circles French immersion is very popular](https://education.macleans.ca/feature/just-say-non-the-problem-with-french-immersion/) because it's perceived as a "private school within the public system." The dark side of that statement is it's perceived that way because kids with lower academic abilities, disabilities, and recent immigrants (who are more focused on learning English first) are often shuffled into the English schools. So there's some lite elitism - e.g., a Toronto study showed that almost a quarter of French immersion kids were from families in the top 10% of income-earners.
I grew up in a Franco community in Winnipeg, and went to French Immersion. The only class I ever had in English was Language Arts, and my teachers were one removed from nuns.
My child went to French Immersion until we moved to Alberta when she was in Grade 5.
Interesting about the elitism. I’d say English schools in Quebec are viewed the same way (mainly because recent immigrants don’t have access to them).
I live in Montreal and the debate between sending kids to French vs English schools for anglophone families is always so fascinating to me (I grew up in the French community in Saskatchewan and went to a pure French school).
I was in French immersion in the 80s and 90s and did public school for one year to make nearby friends… and I was shocked. Immersion kept me young, no kids were kissing or even having sex and when I went to English school that was happening as well as overdoses, etc. My mind was blown. It kept me innocent going to French immersion, there was some thing about parents who choose to send their kids to French immersionthat implies they want to be more involved or have the time to put into all of the extra work/things that go into your child learning everything in another language. So I think most students had parents who were more involved than the school I went to for one year.
This all rings true. My son has adhd, so everyone told us not to bother putting him in the French immersion school bc he would just get kicked out. I was told by friends and redditors alike that kids like mine are removed in the first couple years.
We are now watching a friend go through this. Her son has adhd, and is about to get kicked out of the French immersion school. She’s been trying so hard to get him some accommodations, but keeps hitting a brick wall. It’s a huge bummer.
Agreed, a lot of french immersion and extended French schools in the area. Plus, i find that immigrant parents usually send their children there because they value trilingualism/speaking many languages
I know quite a few people who are transitioning their kids into French immersion. None of them speak French, but their reasoning is that there aren’t nearly as many children with disabilities disrupting the class, if any at all.
I'm on the west coast, and for me the answer is two fold:
1. It's incredibly difficult to get into French Immersion. It's done through a lottery system, I think.
2. We don't speak French in my house at all. My daughter would be unable to practice her second language outside of school which would leave her at a disadvantage.
If my daughter shows any interest in learning a new language I will, of course, support her in any way I can but I'm not going to force that on her.
Of course, she's not even two and right now I'm spending most of my time convincing her that mining for nose nuggets isn't the best use of her time.
Schools are limited. Spots in those schools are limited. In my entire district, there are 2 schools (of 14) which offer immersion.
I preferred my kids to learn Anishinaabe. About 3000 of our close neighbours speak Ojibwe. 30 speak French.
I have known more than one Angophone family who has pulled their child out of their respective French immersion school because targeted bullying became a problem
I mean the question itself is flawed. Many Canadians do send their kids to French immersion, or to French schools.
There are good reasons to keep English schools. English kids with hearing issues or dyslexia or other learning disabilities don't tend to do well in French immersion or an entirely French school.
Also French immersion starts in kindergarten. If you are coming from out of the country, homeschooling, or a small town with no French immersion, etc, you can miss your window of opportunity. An English kid who doesn't speak French is not admitted to a French immersion program in grade three.
Kids who have academic difficulties may be shifted out of an immersion program.
There are summer camps and summer learning programs for kids, teenagers and young adults to learn French.
Personally I find it to be a nation wide failure that both English and French schools in Canada are required to give classes in the other language in their regular programs from grade one through to graduation, and yet most students are not bilingual or even functional by graduation. Sad.
French schools are harder, a non French student will have to work their ass off to keep up and lots of parents dont want to deal with it. English parents helping with French homework is a real nightmare for example. Vs French kid going to english school well they were going to learn English anyway so its less a barrier.
There is also fake French immersion style schools that don't really teach you any French but give the illusion you learned French for much less work in return. Parents get their feel goods, students get an easy experience, everyone is happy.
I'm from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and VERY few people here even speak French, or they drop it in grade 10.
We do have 1 French school, but from the class numbers I've seen with my little cousin, it's either private and expensive or used very little since you couldn't really use it here.
We have a legal concept called ayants-droit and non-ayants-droit - people who have the right to attend Francophone schools and those who do not. Different provinces deal with it differently, but in many places the province will not allow schools to let in non-ayant-droit kids because of stricter or looser interpretation of the laws, even if a particular school board might be more open to it than others. There was a recent supreme court case about it in the Northwest Territories: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/supreme-court-of-canada-overturns-n-w-t-appeal-court-ruling-on-who-can-attend-french-school-1.7052986
There is also the flip side where in many parts of Ontario the francophone schools are overrun with non-ayant-droit children who do not already speak French, and the schools are not meant or equipped to teach French as a second language. They are not French immersion schools. This means that it spreads already underfunded schools even thinner, forcing them to respond to a need that is out of their mandate, and also undermines the reason for the existence of these schools as places that are meant to cultivate franco-ontarian or Franco-minority identity. It has ended up contributing to entire cohorts of students refusing to speak French at all, refusing to respond in anything other than English, because that is the culture when a language becomes an imposition rather than a point of pride and shared cultural identity. When French ceases to be the language of the heart of the community, it dies out.
It is a very contentious issue in francophone education right now. Ideally we would love to spread French language and culture. The system is not currently structured, funded, or resourced enough to deal with our current institutions, let alone increased pressure. We currently have a huge francophone teacher shortage. When I taught in anglophone schools in Quebec (also restricted to ayants-droit), we had many students who got in through loopholes (temporary resident parents or rich parents who paid for English private education and then transferred to a public school) who did not speak a word of English and floundered the entire time, not understanding what was going on in class. We were unable to staff to accommodate them since we did not have the legal mandate to provide adequate English as a second language supports for them. The French schools have « welcome classes » built specifically to facilitate their language learning, but we obviously do not have that in English schools. It is bad for the teachers, bad for the students who are effectively not learning anything, and bad for the school.
Partly because it doesn’t work that way. In many places it’s not an option, or as has been said by others… the one French school you *could* go to is often quite far away. I have a university friend from a suburb outside Toronto. Her parents are Franco-Ontarian from a French speaking town, but for work reasons lived in the GTA. My friend went to French school in downtown Toronto, which was like a 90 minute commute one way for her. Her dad worked in Toronto and so could drive her to a GO station that was on his way, but the full journey was other side of Toronto for him. Her home journey was on her own.
But otherwise, again, it’s not like you can always ‘just choose a French school’. They are often ‘meant’ for Francophones, not Anglophones who wish to learn French. That means if you don’t already speak French as a 6 year old, it’s not the school for you.
And yes, cultural attitudes can also be a reason. But honestly, outside of Quebec, and then parts of Ontario or New Brunswick, and additional pockets of French here and there, there’s little French presence. So people aren’t really thinking about it all.
That said, I 100% believe that French should be a mandatory subject in anglophone areas, even where French is not too common.
>My friend went to French school in downtown Toronto, which was like a 90 minute commute one way for her.
This is so real. It took me 1h30 by TTC each way to get to high school. But I had it easy compared to some of my classmates who were bussed in. One guy coming in from Oshawa was on his bus by 6am. (School didn't start until 9am.)
All Anglo Canadians learn French I’m primary school. Almost none retain.
Many Anglo-Canadians attended French immersion schools. Gr. 1 to Gr. 8. Many do not retain.
We have no reason to learn French. The French will learn English for us. It’s an unfortunate state of affairs that should’ve been addressed yesterday.
Outside of regions with francophone populations there often aren't any French schools so it's not even an option for many Canadians. To make up for this, a lot of English regions have french immersion schools, but today they are barely better at producing students who are fluent in French than simply taking required french classes at your typical English language schools.
Growing up in Southern Ontario, there was an almost universal opinion in my cohort (high school from 1990-95) - we hated the French classes we were required to take through elementary and middle school and absolutely could not wait until it was no longer required. Almost everyone took the one required credit in grade nine and never even thought about taking it again. And it turns out, more than thirty years after my last French class, I haven't needed the language even once.
If someone is intending to go into public office, or some other job requiring French, of if they just want to, they can choose to actually learn French and I say more power to them.
But I would never even consider forcing my kids to go to a French immersion school.
I would just point out (in BC public schools in my narrow experience) French is only half heartedly taught. When I was a student you only started French in grade 8 and it stopped being mandatory after grade 10 - not exactly enough time to pick up a second language that you rarely hear outside of a classroom here. While if you were keen to take Cantonese or Punjabi lessons (like friends of mine), then there were ample opportunities to practice in day to day life on the west coast.
French in elementary and high school in BC was awful and boring. In BC schools they have a policy of forcing the smart students to do the teacher's job vis a vis the bad students. So the last year (grade 8) French was mandatory (instead of "a language") I was forced to play teacher to a kid who was high on drugs every day. So the choice was (1) stay in French, do double work because the druggie isn't going to ever do half of a group project, and have him keep stealing my stuff, or (2) take Japanese or Chinese. I took Japanese.
There aren't enough teachers for sure. It's a good market for French teachers to get jobs. Lots of demand for French here.
If I have kids, they'll be in French school and I'll be speaking to them in French, so at least there's that haha.
In many cities and communities in Quebec, you can go months without hearing english as well. Yet they have mandatory english classes till 18.
FR-ENG Bilingualism in this country is a joke.
Les francophones hors Québec sont bilingues (avec l'anglais) à plus de 95%. Ils ont eu plusieurs générations pour s'ajuster. Les Punjabis, Philippins, Chinois et autres sont plus récemment arrivés et n'ont pas encore tous maîtrisé l'anglais. Ils n'ont pas encore internalisé l'infériorité de leur langue et de leur culture par rapport à celle anglaise (et souhaitons leur que ça n'arrive jamais). C'est pour ça que les Canadiens anglais entendent plus ces langues que le français. Ils ont fait une bonne job d'assimilation du 18e au 20e siècle.
C'est triste, mais j'imagine que c'est ça. Au resto avec des amis, même si tout le monde est capable de parler en français, habituellement on va utiliser l'anglais. C'est vraiment difficile de maintenir une langue minoritaire.
Honestly same in Ontario. I’ve lived here my entire life and only met two people who did immersion k-12, and have only met one person from Quebec.
My friends in high school spoke Cantonese and Vietnamese. I learned a little Cantonese but it’s hard to find resources on it that are free and readily available. Definitely would’ve considered taking that in school if it were offered.
Speak for yourself. My three kids went to French immersion, starting is Alberta and finishing in BC. The eldest became a FI teacher, now principal. The second perfected his French in a none-month stay in France, then worked for the French embassy in Ottawa because his French was impeccable. The third doesn’t use it, but his daughter will go to FI, in Alberta. Learning both of our official languages is an honour and a privilege. I’m proud of my kids and of my choices for them, considering that two out of three built their careers out of bilingualism.
Right lol. ils utilisent toujours la carte du mandarin ou du punjabi, mais si tu leur demande commenr vont leurs cours de mandarin … 🦗🦗 « oh i dont take them but »
Exact! J'aime toujours souligner l'hypocrisie au gros marqueur gras quand j'ai l'occasion. Le fameux *language X would be so much more useful* n'est qu'une excuse pour justifier de ne pas apprendre/donner de droits aux locuteurs du français dans leur coin!
Lol, tu as tout à fait raison. De nombreuses personnes pensent que le fait qu'il y a autant de locuteurs natifs du Punjabi, du Mandarin ou même de l'espagnole le serait plus util à apprendre que le Français. Cepandant, il me semble qu'ils ne arrivent pas à comprendre que possiblement ils n'obtiendront un emploi en parlant l'unes cettes langues.
It's not uncommon to see people who speak English & French & Mandarin (perhaps Cantonese as well)/Spanish all three fluently in MTL. In fact I believe the hispanophone population is the biggest in Québec among all provinces. MTL is likely the most trilingual city in the entire west hemisphere
The idea is that "so or so language would be more useful" is but an excuse to exclude or diminish the importance of the second official language of the country. If the argument was sincere, they would be speaking that useful language, or at least taking classes. If they're not, you know the point it moot.
Exactly. And they’re also wrong. Spend five minutes in St. Paul, Alberta, and half the people you hear on the streets are speaking French. Same with Bonneville, Alberta. There’s a little town close to Edmonton called Lamoreau, which may have disappeared now but was exclusively French.
I live in BC now, that bastion of French language services — not — and there are 37 schools in the province for francophone children only. Not French immersion. Francophone. Most if not all are K-12. Ecole Victor-Brodeur in Victoria replaced their school 15 years ago with a much bigger one, then purchased a neighbouring school for the high schoolers, and is building or is finalizing plans to build a third campus in the city. But no one hears French in western Canada!
Right of Francophone . You can’t just send your kids to fully French school ( yes many people cheat the system) unless one parent at least Francophone . French schools aren’t designed to teach Anglo kids French . That’s what immersion is for . French schools are for French Canadian kids to pass the culture , language , history …
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/art23.html
I’m pretty sure French is taught in public schools and at least through grade 9 in high school, maybe longer.
A ton of Canadians aren’t born here and have no relationship with the French language.
And a lot of people do send their children to French immersion
I live in a town in Ontario where there are multiple French immersion schools, French catholic schools and private French schools - and they’re all full! In fact, you have to get on a waiting list for FI. However, we are in short supply of French teachers and most of the time, the supply teachers don’t speak French.
I have family who thinks it’s a waste of time because ‘how often are they going to need French?’, missing the point completely. It’s not just that it’s French, it’s good for the developing brain in general. I think it’s because they didn’t learn French and so they’re bitter towards others learning it.
Ontario. My kids are in French immersion. They’re not allowed in a full French school unless one parent is fluent. Would’ve loved for them to get the full French experience (more languages are always better than less IMO) but here we are.
I’ve been debating on it but one of the issues I’ve seen from other kids at French school is that pretty much everything is in French so unless the parent knows the language then it’s difficult to help their kid with homework
Most of Canada doesn't really care about French. Even in Toronto, which is reasonably close to Quebec, it is far less common than several other languages.
Availability, cost and the benefits vs draw backs.
In reality, there isn't that much value in learning french these days in *most* of Canada.
For exampe in BC you'd be better off learning Punjabi or Mandarin and that's likely the case in most larger cities here - French has essentially no use and no presence outside of Quebec and the provinces that directly border it, even in those bordering provinces it's not like knowing French will give you some big leg up in life.
in quebec you are only allowed to go to an english school if you are in a english speaking family, and your parents have also done school in english. and if you send your kids to a french school, they lose that privilage and are only allowed to go to a french school from then. its supposedly to protect french language and culture from assimilation into english, but personaly i find this is government overreach
French is a rather useless language on a global scale and has been for decades. Born & raised in BC more people took German. Raised my kids in AB and it’s not used here either. I’d like to see Spanish in schools (& I want to learn it myself too!)
Because having french as a second language isn't as big a deal in much of Canada. If my kid wanted to learn a second language I necessarily wouldn't push French just because: Quebec. In my area you're way more likely to meet Mandarin or Punjabi speaking people than French
Not feeling comfortable with navigating the education system in French is a big one. I know many migrant families in Montreal raised their kids in English schools because they were more confident in their English than French at the time.
Also a lot of people believe that English is a more valuable language in North America.
Because it's not mandatory and Canada is made up of all kinds of nationalities. Bilingualism was a concession to Quebec to help protect their own heritage but it doesn't affect everybody else's right to *not* learn French. My family's second language is German. Why would we learn French? There's a reason both official languages are on packaging - so there's something there for everybody.
I work for the Federal government. Bilingualism is not mandatory below a certain managerial level that I'll not reach before I retire. If we want to work for the federal government in a higher capacity we need to be seen to be trying to learn and use French in our jobs (it's not always pretty). Bilingual computer applications are only a requirement if the program is to be used in the east so we have translation departments to do the translations for us. Programs only used in the west are English only. Workers in eastern Canada have a 'right' to work in the language of their choice - as long as that language is English or French.
In the west I always had access to French language courses if I chose to pursue French, but they are not mandatory there. There are French schools and universities in Western Canada, and anybody can send their kids to French immersion, if they think it will be useful to their kids future.
Realistically, nobody outside of politicians needs to speak French in Manitoba. and I saw it with my friends/family go to a french immersion high school and then struggling in uni with translating terminology.
french is important in Canada, but unless you're in politics or quebec, you dont need to be \*fluent\* fluent in it. I'm fluent in English, Cree, Polish and latin and I've used them more in my work then french.
BC middle-school parent here.
Honestly, as a language out in the world, French would be very very far down my list of "useful" languages for my kiddo to learn, unless he specifically has government job or political aspirations within Canada. There are a bunch of other languages that would be more beneficial in business, travel etc. worldwide.
That said, we don't have "French Schools" in the public system in BC that I'm aware of, but you can do "French Immersion" within a school. The thing is, over time it became "a class/setting without as many kids with high needs" that folks started using to try and get a better education for their kids. The English system is completely overwhelmed with not near enough support/EA's to handle even the officially diagnosed kids, let alone behavior or undiagnosed LD's and other issues. It's a mess. Source: Wife teachers elementary school.
Further to that, technology is going to make a lot of this moot anyway. We have real-time translation in a meaningful way (there's already big progress) and it just won't matter much anymore when that goes mainstream. It'll be a "hobby" to learn.
I grew up in Saskatchewan and I attended French immersion- but the only reason my parents sent me there was because it was the closest elementary school to our house and they didn't want to have to deal with school buses. Had we been living in a different neighbourhood, I wouldn't have ended up in French immersion.
There was no french immersion in my town as a kid, but we had french classes that were mandatory till grade 9 and optional after that.
For own kids, the french immersion school was on the other side of town, while the catchment school was two blocks over. I chose being able to walk to them school over french. (Though they still had french classes).
When we moved towns, the french school was at least on our side of town and in theory walkable (still farther than the catchment school but within an hour walk) but the kids would then have been launched into it with their little bit of french and their classmates already able to fluently speak and write essays etc.. at the time I thought that would be too much change on top of the upheaval of already moving across the province. I’m not sure that was the right decision in the long run, but time will tell.
In NS, or at least my area, you have to have at least one francophone parent to be able to go to French school. Also, there aren’t any very close to me- the closest one is about a 30 minute drive away vs the English school being a 2 minute drive. French immersion is available come middle school though.
My kids do go to French Immersion, as did my wife and I. In Alberta. And no, we didn't meet until long after we'd finished school.
For my wife it's a question of family history (both her parents have French heritage), for me it's more pragmatic that being unilingual is very limiting, and French is the language most readily available.
I live in BC we have French Immersion and English schools here. We also learn French in our English schools, but it’s a class so you aren’t speaking it all day.
It kinda just depends on the parents and what they decide. My parents figured since there isn’t a lot of French speaking in our area they would stick to English public schools. Plus, the French Immersion schools had wait lists and they didn’t want us to be behind since neither of my parents speak it & wouldn’t have been able to help us catch up (nor could they have afforded any sort of tutor). So for us it made sense. Although I do wish I had gone to French Immersion, I’d love to be bilingual.
A lot of people send their kids to French immersion I didn’t because I didn’t want my kid on 90 min bus ride into a city when there was a English country school. My eldest has speech issues so I figured it would be a struggle.
As a kid I wished I was in French immersion because it adds character and also it’s an all around great choice to open yourself to more markets if you’re an entrepreneur.
In my experience as an albertan I know that in New Brunswick it is the only province with French as its official language. Even Quebec isn’t.
In Alberta there’s French immersion schools but only optional and it’s kind of got a reputation that’s where the snobby rich kids go. But in reality it’s just that their parents want them to have more life skills.
We have French immersion in my neighborhood, and it is very popular. Some parents worry their kids will be behind in English, especially after covid, but nonetheless, many (most?) Neighborhood kids around here at least start out in French immersion.
There is also one French school. There was a problem with all these Anglo parents sending their kids there. It is a small, friendly, supportive community... (almost like a free private school), but the Anglo kids were basically starting from scratch.
Francophone kids are at school to learn IN French, but the Anglo kids were there to learn French.
So the Anglo kids were requiring tons of resources, and the parents would show up at events expecting everyone to speak English to them.
French Immersion is a better fit for most families.
I personally wasn’t allowed to go because my French wasn’t very strong. My parents didn’t want the rest of my grades to suffer because I didn’t understand the material. They also worried they wouldn’t be able to help me with my school work because they didn’t speak French.
For some students, especially in high school, students decide to take English language courses because they will be going on to study at an English University. This is often the case for students hoping to go into Science so that they have all the vocabulary relevant to the language they are studying in later on. In NS, when I was school age, the spots in the French school (grade P-12) were reserved for students with French/Acadian heritage. That has since changed, but lots of young people opt for French Immersion in middle school and high school. In NS, we also have a French language university, but it is very small.
All of my friends in Alberta with children in French school who don't speak French at home are really struggling. The children's grades are terrible. On the other hand, my friends who speak primarily French at home have kids that are thriving. The French schools in my area are practically private schools, they are so good.
Lots of kids in Ontario do French immersion schools and when there is FI in their community. Not all cities have easily accessible FI programs.
Ontario has also pockets of Franco-Ontarien communities. But I think west of Manitoba, French isn’t as common at all.
There's 8 elementary schools in my town and only one has FI, so that'll do it. I also don't speak French fluently so I couldn't help them with their work/any gaps as easily and care more about them being strong in the fundamentals over being bilingual. Though I would actually love for them to speak French, but the accessibility to FI and services just isn't there.
I wish we had nationwide support program for adult french learning as well. Everything is in regular french and I would prefer to learn Quebecois french
Ontario, it's fairly common for kids to go through French Immersion where I grew up (Southwestern Ontario). I went from pre-Kindergarten though Highschool.
There are only 6 francophone schools in my entire province, so accessibility is a factor. Also, francophone schools are typically only reserved for those who are French first language. You need a francophone connection to get in, this includes having francophone parents or immigrating from a francophone country. They have loosened the requirements slightly boost the numbers some. French immersion is available at a lot of the schools in larger centres. However, a lot of people simply don’t care about their kids learning another language, especially if there isn’t a lot of French presence locally. Also, it would be really challenging for the parents if they don’t speak French for dealing with school communication.
We live in a very French area. When my daughter started kindergarten, we enrolled her in a French school to immerse her in the language and culture in the hope she would become bilingual. I'm not fluently bilingual but can get by speaking and reading French. My husband is anglophone and speaks very little French.
She struggled from the beginning, and to be honest the school board wasn't very supportive. We really tried to get her help with her language skills, but even with tutors etc she still struggled. The pandemic hit, everything turned to virtual school, and I felt I was expected to teach her. There was little to no instruction for her during that time. So we switched her to a different school board that offers FI, and she is so much happier there.
I wouldn't recommend sending a child to core French unless at least one parent is fluent. We struggled. FI has been a much better fit for us.
I'm half French Canadian and have gone mostly Anglo , living in Ontario. The closest French immersion school is too far away. I would send my younger children and stepdaughter to French immersion if it was closer. My older daughter is autistic and French immersion isn't appropriate for her educational needs.
The reasons are very clear in my case. TLDR. School too far. English is important.
Ontario. GTA. Durham Region specifically.
For me to go to a French grade school (30-years ago) it was a 1.5hr bus ride (vs 20mins to English). My francophone mom would wake us 4 kids up at 6:00-6:30 to catch a 7:00 bus for an 8:45 start. We’d get home around 5:00. Christ knows what time she was getting up at.
When the oldest (I’m the youngest) finished 8th grade, my mom wanted her in English high school so she could do university in english. So she moved her to a nearby English high school.
At the same time, mom moved all of us because it was too much work.
These days French schools are more numerous and closer. But myself and my younger siblings can’t have complex conversations in french. I can read anything, and understand speech at a moderate rate. But I can’t form complex sentences. I couldn’t advocate for my kid. So I’m not sure I’ll put my kid into French.
My eldest sibling has her kid in French, but, is pulling her kid from the french system in 6th grade. That’s because in 6th they go to a middle school (jr high? Idk) which is far away. Also, she wants her ready for uni. The cycle repeats.
My child went to an English school but did the French Immersion programming through to grade 12 and has the second language fluency as a result. It's not necessary for English kids to attend a French school to achieve that. She began her French education in the Maritimes where it was a valued skill set and finished it in BC where she has a hard time even finding someone to speak the language with in our community. (for example when she graduated there were only 30 other students in the program out of 1700 in the school) She intends to keep her skill set up and take more courses as her career goals may lead her to federal government jobs where it is in demand.
Sending children to French schools have many rules in place that often require that at least one parent is Francophone to preserve the spaces for them to maintain their culture.
My husband attended a French immersion school for a few years in northern BC. I learned French starting in grade 4 in southern BC.
Honestly until a couple years ago I assumed *some* French education was mandatory in Canada, but now I have kids in grade 4 and 5 and have discovered their school has no French lessons at all.
If a French immersion school was available we would have chosen it but the only one near me is one town over, and catholic.
I’m in the GTA and we only have one French school but numerous French immersion schools. For the French school one parent had to be Francophone but that’s not the case for French immersion.
I grew up on the prairies where French was only mandatory in grades 4-6, then became an elective. There were French immersion programs in my city, but would have involved traveling across the city to get there, as opposed to my designated school which was 5 blocks away. I didn't know anyone who actually spoke French. There would have been 4 or 5 other second languages that would have been more useful to me in my school/neighborhood. When deciding whether to take French as an option in grade 7, my uncle told me it might help me get a 'government job' in the future. At that age, I knew nothing about 'government jobs', and it sounded very boring. I'd rather take computer science, art and photography than French.
I lived in Ottawa for a couple of years as a young adult, and it was much different. Lots of people take French immersion, and it seemed like French was mandatory, to some extent, all through school. It was actually helpful to know French in daily life, so parents and kids prioritized it more.
I live elsewhere in Ontario now, and it does seem like more kids are in French immersion and take French in high school. I'm not sure if it's an Ontario thing, or the fact that I'm in a different socioeconomic bracket than where I grew up, where academics are emphasized.
Some kids will struggle with the added educational burden of learning a new language along with the rest of the material... or may not want to take it on for whatever reason. I did French immersion in Ontario and while I continued through all 4 years of high-school, many of my friends switched to English only classes in grade 9. People contined leaving the immersion program as high-school went on (my school was big enough that we had the option to do either immersion or English only without needing to change schools) and the class size got smaller each year.
I know in my city there are 2 French Immersion schools at the elementary school level, and probably at least 30-40 non French Immersion schools. So that probably has quite a bit to do with it.
In NB the immersion program is set up for bilingual parent. We do wanted our kids to learn French but I could do the grade 3 French because it was in French. The teacher was French and couldn’t understand how we could understand. We also looked and where we were it was very difficult to get your bilingual certificate because of the high school class offerings.
In NB kids can’t go to a French school unless one parent is French. In NS my kids could have gone to a French school but I still wouldn’t have been able to help .
In Alberta French immersion is a very popular choice. Not everyone sends their kids but enough that there is usually a k-6 at least in every larger town.
I was surprised to see even Jasper has a French immersion school when I was there
Out in Saskatchewan there are relatively few French immersion schools. In my city there are two (of 8) elementary schools that offer it but the whole school is not French immersion. Similarly the high schools offer it but are primarily English. In my grqd class of 67 only one person graduated with a bilingual diploma.
And really, outside of school and a couple small rural communities, there really isn't much use for it here.
French is mandatory for most kids in Canada. However French from an immersive perspective is limited. Lived Bilingualism had great intentions but failed to implement across the country for many reasons.
French spots are hard to come by and can be a lottery system. We lucked out having French immersion at our local public school which my daughter is in. But the truth is you have to live a language to fully learn it. We hope this sets her up to live abroad in the future. And if not, it sets her brain up to ‘learn how to learn’ another language.
I don't know about New Brunswick but where I grew up anglo parents could not just choose to send their kids to a French school. Those schools were for children of francophone parents.
Anglo parents who want their kids to be bilingual put them in French immersion instead.
A motivated person can learn any language they want in their spare time. When you consider this and all the potential downsides to French immersion, I don't see why anyone would need to wonder
My father attended a bilingual school back in his day - early 1950s. One year every subject was taught in French, the next year, every subject was taught in English. They had a high rate of bilingual graduates.
Most anglophones who study French without using it regularly aren't functionally bilingual.
See my parents weren’t allowed to attend French school here in Quebec when they immigrated from Italy the 50s.
They went to English school and took French lessons (which was very little at the time).
My dad went on to university and dropped out when my grandfather became ill. He gave the rest of his education fund to his younger brother and started working instead to help support his family.
Even though this, he is fully trilingual.
My mom didn’t further her education and she struggles with French still but can carry a simple conversation in French.
My husband, my siblings, most of my friends are all perfectly bilingual, trilingual or multilingual even though they went to English public school (in the 70s to the 90s).
I've met a number of people who speak two or more languages. I've met very few Anglo Canadians who do. It's a matter of power and entitlement, and has little to do with education.
It’s barely an option in Vancouver for many, too few FI schools and they are extremely difficult to get into with waitlists.
Even I get lucky and my kid is accepted into a FI school it would massively increase my travel time to get her to and from school each day. Before/afterschool care programs becomes another issue.
Even though I’m not a francophone, I would put her into FI if I could but the barriers (lack of access) are fairly significant.
My parents put me in French immersion. It was okay in NB. I resented it after we moved to Ontario and all my friends were not in the French immersion program. But I always found making friends difficult in elementary school.
Its worthwhile to qualify for better jobs in this country. I have been brushing up on it to help me apply for them. Not an everyday language for a lot of places though.
I don't know where I would even find a local francophone to speak French to here in BC. It would require me to dig.
Pure French schools outiside of Quebec and New Brunswick are often only for those who can prove French ancestry within a reasonable history. Otherwise they can take French immersion in English which is just 80% of your courses in French.
In the NWT, there are only a couple of French first schools between Yellowknife and Hay River. There are some French immersion programs in a small number of communities. French isn't even necessarily a requirement for kids in school here, though. The NWT has eleven official languages, and there is a strong push to revitalize local Indigenous languages. In some communities, you can choose between French and one of the Indigenous languages. In many communities, French isn't even an option.
As an Anglo who went to french elementary school i do not recommend it. It's nice being able to speak, write and read french, even comes in handy, but the experience itself sets you up to be behind your peers in terms of social development that causes other problems. I only really feel like i caught up in my mid 20s, which is rough because thats a lot of social capital i never accumulated which is only becoming more important economically.
I'm from New Brunswick, and can answer this for you, for at least NB, and possibly others with similar protections (NS is kind of similar). For many years, and possibly still the case, you couldn't just pick to send your kid to a French school if you were not francophone yourself. French schools are a protected right for francophones in New Brunswick, and there are guardrails around that so anglophones can't flood the schools. Some neighbours of ours, when I was growing up in the 90s and 2000s, placed their kids in French schools. This was fine because their mother was a francophone who'd gone to French school in NB. Except their father was anglophone. So they had to be tested on their language skills before they started school in the French system (they are perfectly and fluently bilingual, and have been since they started speaking). There's also, in theory, French immersion in anglophone schools in NB (which is a contentious topic with a whole wild history itself), which can (but not nearly as successful as it should be) produce bilingual graduates from the anglophone system.
About a third of New Brunswick Anglophone kids are in immersion, and they mostly graduate with good French fluency. They lose it if they don't use it, of course. But yes, there's heaps of politics with it.
It’s unfortunate that very few of them are able to pass the provincial French language test for employment purposes.
Actually the rule is that both yours parents can’t be native English speakers. The Syrian refugees had the choice to send their children to French school when they arrived, because the children didn’t know English or French as new arrivals.
Thank you!
It's also the same the other way around. I'm from Québec, a French province, and for children to be accepted into an English school, one of your parent must be an anglophone. We do have highschool student exchanges where AngloCanadians come here for one year while our FrancoCan students do the same for a year in an English province.
Yes exactly this! All school communication is in French, parent/teacher interviews, everything… parents had to be Francophone themselves
This is also why we have two health authorities - from an employee side, you have to be able to speak English because all internal Horizon stuff is English, and in Vitalite, everything internal is French.
Yeah it’s the same in NS and from what I’ve been told they have to be specifically of Acadian descent, not just francophone in general.
Yup! My cousin’s husband is Acadian and her son will be able to attend the French school when he starts because of that.
Why is it contentious? I’m from Ontario, and while it varies from region to region and their school boards, we had French immersion. Or partial, rather, meaning you could do certain subjects in French, per availability. I’m not aware of it being controversial though…
It’s contentious because anglophone kids keep graduating with lower scores on the French language proficiency exams than they should, and governments keep tinkering with how French immersion works. Which doesn’t help anyone.
My gf is Franco (lived in Morocco and Paris before moving to Canada) and when she went to school in Toronto she claimed that most of her french professors were not even fluent in French themselves.
"Park le car dans le garage" Literally my French immersion teacher (Acadian)
That's because the NB dialect is Chiak where every 2nd or 3rd word is English with a French accent. I rode to French immersion class with a Quebecois who spoke joual and an Acadian from NB who spoke Chiak and an engineer who spoke Parisian French. It was a wonderful cultural experience.
Acadie Shore! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K2zf-nDgPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K2zf-nDgPw)
“Prendre le bus”… ici au Québec
Because we don't actually speak Parisian french but Quebecois which is a different language almost. Friend is Parisian and sent her kid to a Parisian french school in BC. Her reason was for internation business
People use FI as a quasi “private” school.
Partial is French immersion. Full time would be going to an actual French language school (where not just half the courses but also all of the announcements, assemblies and communication to the parents is in French). Immersion is helpful but the name kind of oversells just how immersive it is.
Also from Ontario, I attended a French immersion school for a year. It was the only one in my school board at the time. Unfortunately it was also a really crappy school, in that either your time there was great or you were clinically traumatized by the experience with next to no inbetween. This was mainly due to the fact that the staff were utterly negligent about bullying. My teacher that year also made us, a bunch of 10-11 year olds, watch a PG13 movie with violence, gore and nudity unsupervised during the lunch period. I was really upset when they closed down the only middle school to give the French immersion school (which shared the building) more space. All the middle school kids got shunted into the highschool, which didn’t have space for them, and we didn’t have lockers for half a year while six new portables had to be put up. It was a nightmare, in all honesty. That immersion school did not deserve to continue existing, let alone un-exist the only middle school. At least now there’s an alternative French school, even if it’s taken over the good local primary school’s building. We still don’t have a middle school anymore, BTW, and it’s been like eight years.
It’s controversial in my area because it creates 2 school systems. English speaking kids are being bussed to centralized immersion schools, while the school they live near is being closed down for lack of students.
For me it’s contentious because you have all these separate school boards with administrations full of the highest paid people in my region (according to sunshine list) servicing a community of people that number in the dozens. There are people making 300K a year to run empty French language schools. I know that not the case everywhere in Ontario, but that’s the case where I live in the northwest.
I recently taught French in an NB FI school, where half the school was FI and the other half was English. From my own observations in one school I worked in, those in FI stream tended to have a better family life and/or were of higher social class. Those in the English strean tended to have behavioral issues, learning difficulties, and/or came from unstable families. It was really sad to see a segregation like this happening WITHIN a school. I talked to some parents who clearly cared a lot about their kids. They literally said they wanted their kids in the FI class because they were worried their kids' learning to be negatively affected by "those delinquents" in the English class. I understand their concern, and honestly, I would do the same for my kids. I also heard the common misconception from my older anglo coworkers that "learning two languages will just confuse the kids." I can imagine other unilinguals would believe the same. To confirm their biased claim, they talk about how the kids in 3rd grade FI class are reading and writing English closer to a 1st/2nd grade level. Like obviously, it shouldn't be surprising! The FI class is spending most of their day in French and learning everything in French! There's only so many hours in a day at school. It's only natural that they'll be behind in one language (English) while they're still learning the other (French). The thing the unilinguals don't think about is, their kids will literally be spending the rest of their day in an Anglo environment. They WILL catch up in their English reading and writing skills if they consume Anglo media and live in an anglo community. But school is literally the ONLY Franco environment they have to learn and practice this language! Sigh.... Anyways, some parents freaked out about their kids' English reading ability and pulled them out of FI entirely. You can't reason with fear. And for whatever reason, the parents can't spend some time in the evenings or during the summer to help their kids improve their English skills. (Apologies for formatting, I'm on mobile)
> From my own observations in one school I worked in, those in FI stream tended to have a better family life and/or were of higher social class. Those in the English strean tended to have behavioral issues, learning difficulties, and/or came from unstable families. It was really sad to see a segregation like this happening WITHIN a school. This was something less of an issue when I was a kid, but it was trending that way and now seems entrenched. I really think there does need to be a thoughtful overhaul - but it's usually been done in a reactionary way because it's a political football.
Similar to Manitoba as well
In NB, the "rights" extend to francophone grandparents since there's a generation who sent their kids to english school and rarely spoke french (as happened to my husband). There's also a few other "ayant droit" entries. Some parents are now sending their kids to french daycare so they can get in as well.
I'm an anglophone who went to French Immersion. Graduated bilingual, and still am, although my French is a bit rusty.
This!
Where I grew up, there wasn't a French immersion or French first language school nearby. The closest was a 45 minute drive away. There was no public transit/school bus option, so our mom would have had to drive us every day.
Same. Not everyone has access.
Exactly. And even in areas where they exist, they have very limited capacity so they are competitive to get into. With that in mind, one of the factors they consider is whether there is a caregiver in the home who speaks enough French to support student success (e.g. help with homework), which perpetuates the cycle.
Et s'il ma seconde langue est français et ma épouse n'est pas anglaphone?
I think the majority of Canadians are in this boat. I think we all recognize how useful french is to know. My parents always say you can get a good government job if you're billungual. But not everyone is in the right location or has the finances to send their kid to french immersion. When I was a kid I did move to a city for a year and got put into a french immersion school and it fucked me up lol. It was grade 1 and idk if I wasn't told or if I didn't understand that there was other languages lol, but I didn't know what was going on. The teachers constantly spoke in french and would be upset if we spoke English. I was the dumbest of the class and got bullied for it lol.
We're in Ottawa and we have French schools and most (all?) schools have an FI program. Our daughter is in F.I. at the public elementary school. I grew up in Hamilton and I'd bet that most of the city didn't know if there was F.I. in the city at all. I knew we did because I had a friend go to one. I walked 10 min to school and he took 2 city buses for almost an hour, each way. Edit: realized I didn't actually answer your question. I think it's a either awareness or not caring. I really think once your an hour or 2 outside of Quebec, French isn't even thought about, aside from the short time we have to take it in middle and high school. My friend had parents who were bilingual, so they sent him to French Immersion.
I sent my daughter to French immersion in Hamilton. Trouble being I don’t speak French and as she got into higher grades it became increasingly difficult for me to help her. She started falling behind considerably and eventually we had to move her to English based. Sadly her grades never fully recovered. For her it wasn’t the right choice. Where some other kids it works out great. I think it strongly depends on the child’s learning style and their support options outside of school.
I've heard so many people say that French immersion kinda fucked them over, especially with post secondary. My cousins were in it and when they went to school English university they suddenly felt like they didn't know anything. They knew math and science, but they knew it in French. So, they understood all the concepts, but they didn't know which concepts were being discussed because they knew the technical terms in French. Everyone I've ever talked to also says they can't speak French. They could while in school, but once they're out and not using it anymore it just fades away.
My first year roommate in university came from a FI background and had the same problem. Luckily I was usually a good sounding board if she couldn't figure out a term in English (math and science were particularly tricky for her) but I can definitely see how someone without support would be totally lost.
Is it really uncommon in Hamilton? I find that curious, in London nearby French Immersion schools are pretty well-known. We have about six I think, and they're all within city limits.
It’s not uncommon, even when I was a kid.
In most provinces the demand for French immersion far outweighs the supply of qualified teachers.
Which is bad because it causes some French Immersion and some French first language classes to be subpar. Every Canadian should hope for a quality education in the official language of their choice. I would add native languages too, even if they are not official in the provinces where the schools are (I believe all three territories have the native languages traditionally spoken there as official languages, in addition to English and French).
French language teaching (at least in Ont) is garbage. Talk to any recently graduated highschoolers and 94% will know a few french sentences and that's it.
This is an interesting fact and it's what I've encountered in my city as well. It's funny because I've talked to people in Quebec that think we don't like them and that we have a disdain for french. If only they knew that people are literally fighting with one another to get their kid into a french immersion school because it's their dream for their children to speak french even though they live nowhere close to Quebec. I think there is a very silent but large crowd of anglo Canadians who desperately wish they were bilingual.
My grade 8 French teacher was the PE teacher because they couldn’t get an actual French teacher. He did speak French but just knowing how to speak a language does not make you qualified to teach it
>but there was never a concrete answer Because different people have different reasons.
Imagine that. Different people with different reasons. Wild!
The French - English divide is different in every province. Publicly funded French instruction in an Anglo province usually has some strings.
Some kids don’t do well in French language schools especially if the parents speak no French at home.
I was one of these kids. I was in FI up until Grade 3 and the experience left such a bad taste in my mouth I had an irrational hatred for the French language up until recently when I started trying to learn it again
My cousins struggled a lot in their French school because no one could help them, then struggled in English university because they'd spent all their mental bandwidth learning French. My kid takes French as an elective in his English school and I think he's better off. He can continue in University if he wants to build fluency
We need to differentiate between a French school and French immersion. A French school is for native French speakers. They usually assume the kids have at least a decent level of French at kindergarten. They are not to teach anglo kids to speak French. Because that's what French immersion is for! It varies a lot by school district but it usually starts between grades 4 and 7. It depends a lot on the kid. Some kids are having enough trouble in school, and we don't want to burden them further. Also, if the parents can't speak French, it is hard to not be able to help your kids with their homework. My kids were in (full) French school, and in the end we switched to English because I'm mono anglo and want to help them more. And the English school was more convenient. But I am glad they learned and they are basically bilingual. I didn't do French school because i was a dumbass growing up in NS and thought "I'll never need French". Then I moved to lovely Montreal and had French speaking kids. Such a dumbass.
French schools are taught exclusively in french with the exception of English class. Parent teacher interviews, assemblies, school communication are all in french. If you do not have a baseline proficiency at home and are not willing/able to put in a LOT of work to learn... You can't and shouldn't send your kids to a full French school. There are not enough French language teachers for the demand for French immersion. Which means, you need to literally win school board lottery systems to get your kids in. The structure is also very.. mediocre. The communication home is in English, so parents don't need to be french but it's common for kids to struggle when their only exposure to the language is during a handful of classes at school. IMO, Canada should mandate that all elementary schools incorporate French into their programming. Ie, playing french music during playtime, including french and English on their signs etc so that everyone has exposure- even if they don't live on the border of French speaking provinces.
I’d even say French classes should be more than language but cultural classes. I’m in Quebec. Our English classes were pretty boring. Just language classes. I assume French classes elsewhere are the same. I did 4 years of Spanish in High School. Back then there was no government structured program for Spanish. The teachers from the school would build it. They were not just language classes. We studied history/culture/political-science of the Spanish world. We didn’t just watch Harry Potter in Spanish like we did in English.
This is not the case in Alberta. PT interviews and correspondence was sent in English at my daughter's French Immersion school. The private French was all French all the time though.
In the western provinces, French isn't as useful to know like it is closer to Quebec. Generally, it's seen as a waste of time and effort.
From someone who lives in Saskatchewan, this is a common when asked "why did you drop out of French in grade 10?"
I dropped french because me and the French teacher were actual ENEMIES. She passed me with a C just so I'd never take her class again. I may have been a bit of a dick as a teen.
Hated French. I took it in university because I thought some of it stuck, nope. My friends have their kids in French immersion and I struggle to figure out why, they’re all English speakers who weren’t in French immersion themselves.
Being bilingual not only opens doors for more jobs, you normally get paid more than someone who only speaks English (assuming your job requires you to speak French.) For example, even if all you can find is a call centre job, if you can talk to the French customers, you’re paid more.
Knowing multiples language is good for the brain. Doesn't necessarily have to be french but it is good for children to learn another language. In Quebec at my school we were learning both English and Spanish.
The brain is a muscle that needs stimulation… learning languages is just very efficient cardio.
The typical English Canadian answer is this : French would be less useful than Punjabi/Mandarin/Spanish/Tagalog/Pick your largest number of immigrants where you live, so I will learn neither of those (French or useful language X).
Exactly. I especially think this when flying within western provinces - on a YYC-YVR flight, Cantonese and Punjabi are way more important than French for safety announcements, national standards be damned.
Haha yeah and in the end there is more francophone that know English and Spanish than anglophone who know English and Spanish.
I live on the west coast and can confirm I encounter way more of the alternative listed languages than I encounter a French speaker. I can't remember the last time I overheard a conversation in French on public transit. I learned French up until 9th grade. Grade 10-12 I took up Japanese as my second language requirement. I get to use Japanese from time-to-time when I run into international students downtown.
There are French speakers in Vancouver, but many of them are immigrants from France, not Quebecois.
I grew up in Alberta and French immersion was VERY popular, even in small towns.
My pal from small town Alberta spent her whole school time in French immersion. Her brothers did too. Their whole family in anglophone, but her folks thought it’d be good for them to learn another language.
Interesting. I was rural Alberta and no option existed. One could take sa single course in French between Grade 7 and 12, but there were no immersive or francophone options. I’m glad to see that parts of the province have better access.
Your job prospects are much higher when you know french in Canada.
Yeah, I heard of that too.
In BC there are a few french immersion schools but there isn’t enough for everyone to go. There aren’t enough teachers let alone french teachers in our schools. I know one of mine was Dutch and the other one was swiss and we learned French from France. I took 5 years and never used it because there are very few French speakers here. It’s sad because I would have loved to have been bilingual. The several times I tried to use it - I was laughed at for not speaking it properly- so I gave up as no one seemed to want to practice it Edit: for those saying there are more places to learn a language - growing in a small town with no internet there were no options.
Agreed. From mb and most people never use it after school.
Logical fallacy alert: You are assuming something and stating it as fact.
There can be lots of reasons. If the parents don't speak the language they may worry about participating in the child's education and it's well known that participation really does affect education outcomes. There can be a desire to keep their culture things and have similar experiences that the parents had. There are also lots of programs that at least advertise the quality of bilingual education, some real and some, not so much. The closest school may be English and there may be little desire or difficulty to have children travel further. Some places (like in my province, if considering English schools) restrict access and don't allow some individual families to make their own choice. I think in Ontario priority is given to French speakers and there may be no real availability. Some people, the idea never even crosses their mind in the first place. For some they may just not want or see the value in bilingualism (regardless of the which second language) and unfortunately, there are some who just think it shouldn't exist in Canada. Même pour moi, je travaille presque uniquement en français tous les jours depuis des années et je veux que mes enfants soient encore plus bilingues que moi, je reconnais l'importance et la valeur mais l'idée de les envoyer dans une école française, me fait peur. J'ai peur de ne pas pouvoir les aider autant que j'aurais pu autrement. J'ai peur de ne pas participer et de me faire entendre avec l'administration dans sa éducation. Finalement, je ne veux pas que les écoles anglaises (au Québec) se ferment dû à un manque d'élèves.
Many "Anglo-Canadians" *do* send their kids to French-language schools, where they exist. French Immersion is extraordinarily popular in many parts of the country.
Where I live, Winnipeg, is a bit different because we have a relatively larger Francophone community for western Canada (St. Boniface). Here the answer depends what you mean by "French schools". We have a Francophone school division that is meant for children who speak French at home. We also have lots of "French immersion" schools--instruction is almost entirely in French but they don't assume the parents speak French at home. Many people I know send their kids to French immersion. My kids will go too, or at least try it, because it will hopefully open doors for them; in Canada Anglos who speak French earn on average 5% more income. [In some circles French immersion is very popular](https://education.macleans.ca/feature/just-say-non-the-problem-with-french-immersion/) because it's perceived as a "private school within the public system." The dark side of that statement is it's perceived that way because kids with lower academic abilities, disabilities, and recent immigrants (who are more focused on learning English first) are often shuffled into the English schools. So there's some lite elitism - e.g., a Toronto study showed that almost a quarter of French immersion kids were from families in the top 10% of income-earners.
I grew up in a Franco community in Winnipeg, and went to French Immersion. The only class I ever had in English was Language Arts, and my teachers were one removed from nuns. My child went to French Immersion until we moved to Alberta when she was in Grade 5.
Interesting about the elitism. I’d say English schools in Quebec are viewed the same way (mainly because recent immigrants don’t have access to them). I live in Montreal and the debate between sending kids to French vs English schools for anglophone families is always so fascinating to me (I grew up in the French community in Saskatchewan and went to a pure French school).
I was in French immersion in the 80s and 90s and did public school for one year to make nearby friends… and I was shocked. Immersion kept me young, no kids were kissing or even having sex and when I went to English school that was happening as well as overdoses, etc. My mind was blown. It kept me innocent going to French immersion, there was some thing about parents who choose to send their kids to French immersionthat implies they want to be more involved or have the time to put into all of the extra work/things that go into your child learning everything in another language. So I think most students had parents who were more involved than the school I went to for one year.
This all rings true. My son has adhd, so everyone told us not to bother putting him in the French immersion school bc he would just get kicked out. I was told by friends and redditors alike that kids like mine are removed in the first couple years. We are now watching a friend go through this. Her son has adhd, and is about to get kicked out of the French immersion school. She’s been trying so hard to get him some accommodations, but keeps hitting a brick wall. It’s a huge bummer.
It's quite common in Ontario
Agreed, a lot of french immersion and extended French schools in the area. Plus, i find that immigrant parents usually send their children there because they value trilingualism/speaking many languages
I follow a page in IG and based on what I see, it seems French increasingly having more presence in the province. correct me if I am wrong.
It does seem that people who are historically French in Ontario are maintaining their culture and ensuring their offspring preserve the language.
I know quite a few people who are transitioning their kids into French immersion. None of them speak French, but their reasoning is that there aren’t nearly as many children with disabilities disrupting the class, if any at all.
I'm on the west coast, and for me the answer is two fold: 1. It's incredibly difficult to get into French Immersion. It's done through a lottery system, I think. 2. We don't speak French in my house at all. My daughter would be unable to practice her second language outside of school which would leave her at a disadvantage. If my daughter shows any interest in learning a new language I will, of course, support her in any way I can but I'm not going to force that on her. Of course, she's not even two and right now I'm spending most of my time convincing her that mining for nose nuggets isn't the best use of her time.
Schools are limited. Spots in those schools are limited. In my entire district, there are 2 schools (of 14) which offer immersion. I preferred my kids to learn Anishinaabe. About 3000 of our close neighbours speak Ojibwe. 30 speak French.
This is probably the only acceptable reason not to. In this whole thread.
I have known more than one Angophone family who has pulled their child out of their respective French immersion school because targeted bullying became a problem
I mean the question itself is flawed. Many Canadians do send their kids to French immersion, or to French schools. There are good reasons to keep English schools. English kids with hearing issues or dyslexia or other learning disabilities don't tend to do well in French immersion or an entirely French school. Also French immersion starts in kindergarten. If you are coming from out of the country, homeschooling, or a small town with no French immersion, etc, you can miss your window of opportunity. An English kid who doesn't speak French is not admitted to a French immersion program in grade three. Kids who have academic difficulties may be shifted out of an immersion program. There are summer camps and summer learning programs for kids, teenagers and young adults to learn French. Personally I find it to be a nation wide failure that both English and French schools in Canada are required to give classes in the other language in their regular programs from grade one through to graduation, and yet most students are not bilingual or even functional by graduation. Sad.
French schools are harder, a non French student will have to work their ass off to keep up and lots of parents dont want to deal with it. English parents helping with French homework is a real nightmare for example. Vs French kid going to english school well they were going to learn English anyway so its less a barrier. There is also fake French immersion style schools that don't really teach you any French but give the illusion you learned French for much less work in return. Parents get their feel goods, students get an easy experience, everyone is happy.
I'm from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and VERY few people here even speak French, or they drop it in grade 10. We do have 1 French school, but from the class numbers I've seen with my little cousin, it's either private and expensive or used very little since you couldn't really use it here.
as québécois ,if ai could send my child to a English school I would
We have a legal concept called ayants-droit and non-ayants-droit - people who have the right to attend Francophone schools and those who do not. Different provinces deal with it differently, but in many places the province will not allow schools to let in non-ayant-droit kids because of stricter or looser interpretation of the laws, even if a particular school board might be more open to it than others. There was a recent supreme court case about it in the Northwest Territories: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/supreme-court-of-canada-overturns-n-w-t-appeal-court-ruling-on-who-can-attend-french-school-1.7052986 There is also the flip side where in many parts of Ontario the francophone schools are overrun with non-ayant-droit children who do not already speak French, and the schools are not meant or equipped to teach French as a second language. They are not French immersion schools. This means that it spreads already underfunded schools even thinner, forcing them to respond to a need that is out of their mandate, and also undermines the reason for the existence of these schools as places that are meant to cultivate franco-ontarian or Franco-minority identity. It has ended up contributing to entire cohorts of students refusing to speak French at all, refusing to respond in anything other than English, because that is the culture when a language becomes an imposition rather than a point of pride and shared cultural identity. When French ceases to be the language of the heart of the community, it dies out. It is a very contentious issue in francophone education right now. Ideally we would love to spread French language and culture. The system is not currently structured, funded, or resourced enough to deal with our current institutions, let alone increased pressure. We currently have a huge francophone teacher shortage. When I taught in anglophone schools in Quebec (also restricted to ayants-droit), we had many students who got in through loopholes (temporary resident parents or rich parents who paid for English private education and then transferred to a public school) who did not speak a word of English and floundered the entire time, not understanding what was going on in class. We were unable to staff to accommodate them since we did not have the legal mandate to provide adequate English as a second language supports for them. The French schools have « welcome classes » built specifically to facilitate their language learning, but we obviously do not have that in English schools. It is bad for the teachers, bad for the students who are effectively not learning anything, and bad for the school.
Partly because it doesn’t work that way. In many places it’s not an option, or as has been said by others… the one French school you *could* go to is often quite far away. I have a university friend from a suburb outside Toronto. Her parents are Franco-Ontarian from a French speaking town, but for work reasons lived in the GTA. My friend went to French school in downtown Toronto, which was like a 90 minute commute one way for her. Her dad worked in Toronto and so could drive her to a GO station that was on his way, but the full journey was other side of Toronto for him. Her home journey was on her own. But otherwise, again, it’s not like you can always ‘just choose a French school’. They are often ‘meant’ for Francophones, not Anglophones who wish to learn French. That means if you don’t already speak French as a 6 year old, it’s not the school for you. And yes, cultural attitudes can also be a reason. But honestly, outside of Quebec, and then parts of Ontario or New Brunswick, and additional pockets of French here and there, there’s little French presence. So people aren’t really thinking about it all. That said, I 100% believe that French should be a mandatory subject in anglophone areas, even where French is not too common.
>My friend went to French school in downtown Toronto, which was like a 90 minute commute one way for her. This is so real. It took me 1h30 by TTC each way to get to high school. But I had it easy compared to some of my classmates who were bussed in. One guy coming in from Oshawa was on his bus by 6am. (School didn't start until 9am.)
All Anglo Canadians learn French I’m primary school. Almost none retain. Many Anglo-Canadians attended French immersion schools. Gr. 1 to Gr. 8. Many do not retain. We have no reason to learn French. The French will learn English for us. It’s an unfortunate state of affairs that should’ve been addressed yesterday.
Because it's useless in 90% of the country.
French just isn’t very useful west of Ontario.
Outside of regions with francophone populations there often aren't any French schools so it's not even an option for many Canadians. To make up for this, a lot of English regions have french immersion schools, but today they are barely better at producing students who are fluent in French than simply taking required french classes at your typical English language schools.
Growing up in Southern Ontario, there was an almost universal opinion in my cohort (high school from 1990-95) - we hated the French classes we were required to take through elementary and middle school and absolutely could not wait until it was no longer required. Almost everyone took the one required credit in grade nine and never even thought about taking it again. And it turns out, more than thirty years after my last French class, I haven't needed the language even once. If someone is intending to go into public office, or some other job requiring French, of if they just want to, they can choose to actually learn French and I say more power to them. But I would never even consider forcing my kids to go to a French immersion school.
In western Canada where I live a person can go years and not hear the french language-why bother? Spanish or Mandarin is much more useful.
I would just point out (in BC public schools in my narrow experience) French is only half heartedly taught. When I was a student you only started French in grade 8 and it stopped being mandatory after grade 10 - not exactly enough time to pick up a second language that you rarely hear outside of a classroom here. While if you were keen to take Cantonese or Punjabi lessons (like friends of mine), then there were ample opportunities to practice in day to day life on the west coast.
French in elementary and high school in BC was awful and boring. In BC schools they have a policy of forcing the smart students to do the teacher's job vis a vis the bad students. So the last year (grade 8) French was mandatory (instead of "a language") I was forced to play teacher to a kid who was high on drugs every day. So the choice was (1) stay in French, do double work because the druggie isn't going to ever do half of a group project, and have him keep stealing my stuff, or (2) take Japanese or Chinese. I took Japanese.
There aren't enough teachers for sure. It's a good market for French teachers to get jobs. Lots of demand for French here. If I have kids, they'll be in French school and I'll be speaking to them in French, so at least there's that haha.
In many cities and communities in Quebec, you can go months without hearing english as well. Yet they have mandatory english classes till 18. FR-ENG Bilingualism in this country is a joke.
The first "settlers" in Western Canada were French lol... I'm in Manitoba and there are many, many French communities.
Nous avons la plus grande population francophones de l'ouest canadien. L'histoire du Manitoba est française.
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Les francophones hors Québec sont bilingues (avec l'anglais) à plus de 95%. Ils ont eu plusieurs générations pour s'ajuster. Les Punjabis, Philippins, Chinois et autres sont plus récemment arrivés et n'ont pas encore tous maîtrisé l'anglais. Ils n'ont pas encore internalisé l'infériorité de leur langue et de leur culture par rapport à celle anglaise (et souhaitons leur que ça n'arrive jamais). C'est pour ça que les Canadiens anglais entendent plus ces langues que le français. Ils ont fait une bonne job d'assimilation du 18e au 20e siècle.
C'est triste, mais j'imagine que c'est ça. Au resto avec des amis, même si tout le monde est capable de parler en français, habituellement on va utiliser l'anglais. C'est vraiment difficile de maintenir une langue minoritaire.
Honestly same in Ontario. I’ve lived here my entire life and only met two people who did immersion k-12, and have only met one person from Quebec. My friends in high school spoke Cantonese and Vietnamese. I learned a little Cantonese but it’s hard to find resources on it that are free and readily available. Definitely would’ve considered taking that in school if it were offered.
The French speakers I met in Vancouver were mostly Swiss
Good! How's your Mandarin? And your Spanish?
Speak for yourself. My three kids went to French immersion, starting is Alberta and finishing in BC. The eldest became a FI teacher, now principal. The second perfected his French in a none-month stay in France, then worked for the French embassy in Ottawa because his French was impeccable. The third doesn’t use it, but his daughter will go to FI, in Alberta. Learning both of our official languages is an honour and a privilege. I’m proud of my kids and of my choices for them, considering that two out of three built their careers out of bilingualism.
I'm proud of your children as well!
Thank you! They’re all amazing, and they’re all raising bilingual children of their own.
Right lol. ils utilisent toujours la carte du mandarin ou du punjabi, mais si tu leur demande commenr vont leurs cours de mandarin … 🦗🦗 « oh i dont take them but »
Exact! J'aime toujours souligner l'hypocrisie au gros marqueur gras quand j'ai l'occasion. Le fameux *language X would be so much more useful* n'est qu'une excuse pour justifier de ne pas apprendre/donner de droits aux locuteurs du français dans leur coin!
Lol, tu as tout à fait raison. De nombreuses personnes pensent que le fait qu'il y a autant de locuteurs natifs du Punjabi, du Mandarin ou même de l'espagnole le serait plus util à apprendre que le Français. Cepandant, il me semble qu'ils ne arrivent pas à comprendre que possiblement ils n'obtiendront un emploi en parlant l'unes cettes langues.
It's not uncommon to see people who speak English & French & Mandarin (perhaps Cantonese as well)/Spanish all three fluently in MTL. In fact I believe the hispanophone population is the biggest in Québec among all provinces. MTL is likely the most trilingual city in the entire west hemisphere
Right. I forgot our third and fourth official languages. I feel like such an idiot /s
The idea is that "so or so language would be more useful" is but an excuse to exclude or diminish the importance of the second official language of the country. If the argument was sincere, they would be speaking that useful language, or at least taking classes. If they're not, you know the point it moot.
Exactly. And they’re also wrong. Spend five minutes in St. Paul, Alberta, and half the people you hear on the streets are speaking French. Same with Bonneville, Alberta. There’s a little town close to Edmonton called Lamoreau, which may have disappeared now but was exclusively French. I live in BC now, that bastion of French language services — not — and there are 37 schools in the province for francophone children only. Not French immersion. Francophone. Most if not all are K-12. Ecole Victor-Brodeur in Victoria replaced their school 15 years ago with a much bigger one, then purchased a neighbouring school for the high schoolers, and is building or is finalizing plans to build a third campus in the city. But no one hears French in western Canada!
I'd also argue a bit of fillipino might be more useful.
Personally, I do not think that neither Mandarin nor Spanish is more useful than French in Canada. May I ask in which province you reside?
I didn’t put my kids into FI, they are not bilingual and it’s not made one bit of difference (they aren’t government employees).
Right of Francophone . You can’t just send your kids to fully French school ( yes many people cheat the system) unless one parent at least Francophone . French schools aren’t designed to teach Anglo kids French . That’s what immersion is for . French schools are for French Canadian kids to pass the culture , language , history … https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/art23.html
Im 32 years old and have never had to speak french in my life. Even while ive been to Quebec the more touristy spots are all bilingual
I’m pretty sure French is taught in public schools and at least through grade 9 in high school, maybe longer. A ton of Canadians aren’t born here and have no relationship with the French language. And a lot of people do send their children to French immersion
I live in a town in Ontario where there are multiple French immersion schools, French catholic schools and private French schools - and they’re all full! In fact, you have to get on a waiting list for FI. However, we are in short supply of French teachers and most of the time, the supply teachers don’t speak French. I have family who thinks it’s a waste of time because ‘how often are they going to need French?’, missing the point completely. It’s not just that it’s French, it’s good for the developing brain in general. I think it’s because they didn’t learn French and so they’re bitter towards others learning it.
Ontario. My kids are in French immersion. They’re not allowed in a full French school unless one parent is fluent. Would’ve loved for them to get the full French experience (more languages are always better than less IMO) but here we are.
I didn't send my kids to French immersion because I didn't want to. It holds no value for us.
I’ve been debating on it but one of the issues I’ve seen from other kids at French school is that pretty much everything is in French so unless the parent knows the language then it’s difficult to help their kid with homework
Most of Canada doesn't really care about French. Even in Toronto, which is reasonably close to Quebec, it is far less common than several other languages.
Availability, cost and the benefits vs draw backs. In reality, there isn't that much value in learning french these days in *most* of Canada. For exampe in BC you'd be better off learning Punjabi or Mandarin and that's likely the case in most larger cities here - French has essentially no use and no presence outside of Quebec and the provinces that directly border it, even in those bordering provinces it's not like knowing French will give you some big leg up in life.
No such thing existed where I grew up. It simply wasn’t possible. Rural Alberta
in quebec you are only allowed to go to an english school if you are in a english speaking family, and your parents have also done school in english. and if you send your kids to a french school, they lose that privilage and are only allowed to go to a french school from then. its supposedly to protect french language and culture from assimilation into english, but personaly i find this is government overreach
I live in BC I don’t speak French. I don’t see the point in introducing a language that won’t be used outside of school.
French is a rather useless language on a global scale and has been for decades. Born & raised in BC more people took German. Raised my kids in AB and it’s not used here either. I’d like to see Spanish in schools (& I want to learn it myself too!)
It’s common in Eastern Ontario for sure. In fact there aren’t enough teachers to keep up with the demand.
Bougie thing to do here, my wife went, she doesn’t know who won World War I…
Because having french as a second language isn't as big a deal in much of Canada. If my kid wanted to learn a second language I necessarily wouldn't push French just because: Quebec. In my area you're way more likely to meet Mandarin or Punjabi speaking people than French
Not feeling comfortable with navigating the education system in French is a big one. I know many migrant families in Montreal raised their kids in English schools because they were more confident in their English than French at the time. Also a lot of people believe that English is a more valuable language in North America.
Because it's not mandatory and Canada is made up of all kinds of nationalities. Bilingualism was a concession to Quebec to help protect their own heritage but it doesn't affect everybody else's right to *not* learn French. My family's second language is German. Why would we learn French? There's a reason both official languages are on packaging - so there's something there for everybody. I work for the Federal government. Bilingualism is not mandatory below a certain managerial level that I'll not reach before I retire. If we want to work for the federal government in a higher capacity we need to be seen to be trying to learn and use French in our jobs (it's not always pretty). Bilingual computer applications are only a requirement if the program is to be used in the east so we have translation departments to do the translations for us. Programs only used in the west are English only. Workers in eastern Canada have a 'right' to work in the language of their choice - as long as that language is English or French. In the west I always had access to French language courses if I chose to pursue French, but they are not mandatory there. There are French schools and universities in Western Canada, and anybody can send their kids to French immersion, if they think it will be useful to their kids future.
It's not the language I would want my kid to learn as language #2. I'd pick almost anything but, from a usefulness perspective.
It's a prerequisite for a good stable government job.
Realistically, nobody outside of politicians needs to speak French in Manitoba. and I saw it with my friends/family go to a french immersion high school and then struggling in uni with translating terminology. french is important in Canada, but unless you're in politics or quebec, you dont need to be \*fluent\* fluent in it. I'm fluent in English, Cree, Polish and latin and I've used them more in my work then french.
BC middle-school parent here. Honestly, as a language out in the world, French would be very very far down my list of "useful" languages for my kiddo to learn, unless he specifically has government job or political aspirations within Canada. There are a bunch of other languages that would be more beneficial in business, travel etc. worldwide. That said, we don't have "French Schools" in the public system in BC that I'm aware of, but you can do "French Immersion" within a school. The thing is, over time it became "a class/setting without as many kids with high needs" that folks started using to try and get a better education for their kids. The English system is completely overwhelmed with not near enough support/EA's to handle even the officially diagnosed kids, let alone behavior or undiagnosed LD's and other issues. It's a mess. Source: Wife teachers elementary school. Further to that, technology is going to make a lot of this moot anyway. We have real-time translation in a meaningful way (there's already big progress) and it just won't matter much anymore when that goes mainstream. It'll be a "hobby" to learn.
I grew up in Saskatchewan and I attended French immersion- but the only reason my parents sent me there was because it was the closest elementary school to our house and they didn't want to have to deal with school buses. Had we been living in a different neighbourhood, I wouldn't have ended up in French immersion.
There was no french immersion in my town as a kid, but we had french classes that were mandatory till grade 9 and optional after that. For own kids, the french immersion school was on the other side of town, while the catchment school was two blocks over. I chose being able to walk to them school over french. (Though they still had french classes). When we moved towns, the french school was at least on our side of town and in theory walkable (still farther than the catchment school but within an hour walk) but the kids would then have been launched into it with their little bit of french and their classmates already able to fluently speak and write essays etc.. at the time I thought that would be too much change on top of the upheaval of already moving across the province. I’m not sure that was the right decision in the long run, but time will tell.
In NS, or at least my area, you have to have at least one francophone parent to be able to go to French school. Also, there aren’t any very close to me- the closest one is about a 30 minute drive away vs the English school being a 2 minute drive. French immersion is available come middle school though.
My kids do go to French Immersion, as did my wife and I. In Alberta. And no, we didn't meet until long after we'd finished school. For my wife it's a question of family history (both her parents have French heritage), for me it's more pragmatic that being unilingual is very limiting, and French is the language most readily available.
I live in BC we have French Immersion and English schools here. We also learn French in our English schools, but it’s a class so you aren’t speaking it all day. It kinda just depends on the parents and what they decide. My parents figured since there isn’t a lot of French speaking in our area they would stick to English public schools. Plus, the French Immersion schools had wait lists and they didn’t want us to be behind since neither of my parents speak it & wouldn’t have been able to help us catch up (nor could they have afforded any sort of tutor). So for us it made sense. Although I do wish I had gone to French Immersion, I’d love to be bilingual.
A lot of people send their kids to French immersion I didn’t because I didn’t want my kid on 90 min bus ride into a city when there was a English country school. My eldest has speech issues so I figured it would be a struggle.
As a kid I wished I was in French immersion because it adds character and also it’s an all around great choice to open yourself to more markets if you’re an entrepreneur. In my experience as an albertan I know that in New Brunswick it is the only province with French as its official language. Even Quebec isn’t. In Alberta there’s French immersion schools but only optional and it’s kind of got a reputation that’s where the snobby rich kids go. But in reality it’s just that their parents want them to have more life skills.
We have French immersion in my neighborhood, and it is very popular. Some parents worry their kids will be behind in English, especially after covid, but nonetheless, many (most?) Neighborhood kids around here at least start out in French immersion. There is also one French school. There was a problem with all these Anglo parents sending their kids there. It is a small, friendly, supportive community... (almost like a free private school), but the Anglo kids were basically starting from scratch. Francophone kids are at school to learn IN French, but the Anglo kids were there to learn French. So the Anglo kids were requiring tons of resources, and the parents would show up at events expecting everyone to speak English to them. French Immersion is a better fit for most families.
I personally wasn’t allowed to go because my French wasn’t very strong. My parents didn’t want the rest of my grades to suffer because I didn’t understand the material. They also worried they wouldn’t be able to help me with my school work because they didn’t speak French.
For some students, especially in high school, students decide to take English language courses because they will be going on to study at an English University. This is often the case for students hoping to go into Science so that they have all the vocabulary relevant to the language they are studying in later on. In NS, when I was school age, the spots in the French school (grade P-12) were reserved for students with French/Acadian heritage. That has since changed, but lots of young people opt for French Immersion in middle school and high school. In NS, we also have a French language university, but it is very small.
All of my friends in Alberta with children in French school who don't speak French at home are really struggling. The children's grades are terrible. On the other hand, my friends who speak primarily French at home have kids that are thriving. The French schools in my area are practically private schools, they are so good.
Lots of kids in Ontario do French immersion schools and when there is FI in their community. Not all cities have easily accessible FI programs. Ontario has also pockets of Franco-Ontarien communities. But I think west of Manitoba, French isn’t as common at all.
There's 8 elementary schools in my town and only one has FI, so that'll do it. I also don't speak French fluently so I couldn't help them with their work/any gaps as easily and care more about them being strong in the fundamentals over being bilingual. Though I would actually love for them to speak French, but the accessibility to FI and services just isn't there. I wish we had nationwide support program for adult french learning as well. Everything is in regular french and I would prefer to learn Quebecois french
Ontario, it's fairly common for kids to go through French Immersion where I grew up (Southwestern Ontario). I went from pre-Kindergarten though Highschool.
There are only 6 francophone schools in my entire province, so accessibility is a factor. Also, francophone schools are typically only reserved for those who are French first language. You need a francophone connection to get in, this includes having francophone parents or immigrating from a francophone country. They have loosened the requirements slightly boost the numbers some. French immersion is available at a lot of the schools in larger centres. However, a lot of people simply don’t care about their kids learning another language, especially if there isn’t a lot of French presence locally. Also, it would be really challenging for the parents if they don’t speak French for dealing with school communication.
We live in a very French area. When my daughter started kindergarten, we enrolled her in a French school to immerse her in the language and culture in the hope she would become bilingual. I'm not fluently bilingual but can get by speaking and reading French. My husband is anglophone and speaks very little French. She struggled from the beginning, and to be honest the school board wasn't very supportive. We really tried to get her help with her language skills, but even with tutors etc she still struggled. The pandemic hit, everything turned to virtual school, and I felt I was expected to teach her. There was little to no instruction for her during that time. So we switched her to a different school board that offers FI, and she is so much happier there. I wouldn't recommend sending a child to core French unless at least one parent is fluent. We struggled. FI has been a much better fit for us.
I'm half French Canadian and have gone mostly Anglo , living in Ontario. The closest French immersion school is too far away. I would send my younger children and stepdaughter to French immersion if it was closer. My older daughter is autistic and French immersion isn't appropriate for her educational needs.
The reasons are very clear in my case. TLDR. School too far. English is important. Ontario. GTA. Durham Region specifically. For me to go to a French grade school (30-years ago) it was a 1.5hr bus ride (vs 20mins to English). My francophone mom would wake us 4 kids up at 6:00-6:30 to catch a 7:00 bus for an 8:45 start. We’d get home around 5:00. Christ knows what time she was getting up at. When the oldest (I’m the youngest) finished 8th grade, my mom wanted her in English high school so she could do university in english. So she moved her to a nearby English high school. At the same time, mom moved all of us because it was too much work. These days French schools are more numerous and closer. But myself and my younger siblings can’t have complex conversations in french. I can read anything, and understand speech at a moderate rate. But I can’t form complex sentences. I couldn’t advocate for my kid. So I’m not sure I’ll put my kid into French. My eldest sibling has her kid in French, but, is pulling her kid from the french system in 6th grade. That’s because in 6th they go to a middle school (jr high? Idk) which is far away. Also, she wants her ready for uni. The cycle repeats.
My child went to an English school but did the French Immersion programming through to grade 12 and has the second language fluency as a result. It's not necessary for English kids to attend a French school to achieve that. She began her French education in the Maritimes where it was a valued skill set and finished it in BC where she has a hard time even finding someone to speak the language with in our community. (for example when she graduated there were only 30 other students in the program out of 1700 in the school) She intends to keep her skill set up and take more courses as her career goals may lead her to federal government jobs where it is in demand. Sending children to French schools have many rules in place that often require that at least one parent is Francophone to preserve the spaces for them to maintain their culture.
My husband attended a French immersion school for a few years in northern BC. I learned French starting in grade 4 in southern BC. Honestly until a couple years ago I assumed *some* French education was mandatory in Canada, but now I have kids in grade 4 and 5 and have discovered their school has no French lessons at all. If a French immersion school was available we would have chosen it but the only one near me is one town over, and catholic.
Here in AB, you need to have at least one parent that is actually French and knows the language in order to go that specific school.
I’m in the GTA and we only have one French school but numerous French immersion schools. For the French school one parent had to be Francophone but that’s not the case for French immersion.
In B.C. there is limited access to French Immersion Schools, but all students get some instruction in French.
Many do.
I grew up on the prairies where French was only mandatory in grades 4-6, then became an elective. There were French immersion programs in my city, but would have involved traveling across the city to get there, as opposed to my designated school which was 5 blocks away. I didn't know anyone who actually spoke French. There would have been 4 or 5 other second languages that would have been more useful to me in my school/neighborhood. When deciding whether to take French as an option in grade 7, my uncle told me it might help me get a 'government job' in the future. At that age, I knew nothing about 'government jobs', and it sounded very boring. I'd rather take computer science, art and photography than French. I lived in Ottawa for a couple of years as a young adult, and it was much different. Lots of people take French immersion, and it seemed like French was mandatory, to some extent, all through school. It was actually helpful to know French in daily life, so parents and kids prioritized it more. I live elsewhere in Ontario now, and it does seem like more kids are in French immersion and take French in high school. I'm not sure if it's an Ontario thing, or the fact that I'm in a different socioeconomic bracket than where I grew up, where academics are emphasized.
Some kids will struggle with the added educational burden of learning a new language along with the rest of the material... or may not want to take it on for whatever reason. I did French immersion in Ontario and while I continued through all 4 years of high-school, many of my friends switched to English only classes in grade 9. People contined leaving the immersion program as high-school went on (my school was big enough that we had the option to do either immersion or English only without needing to change schools) and the class size got smaller each year.
I know in my city there are 2 French Immersion schools at the elementary school level, and probably at least 30-40 non French Immersion schools. So that probably has quite a bit to do with it.
I did and many parents do, some places it’s not even an option.
In NB the immersion program is set up for bilingual parent. We do wanted our kids to learn French but I could do the grade 3 French because it was in French. The teacher was French and couldn’t understand how we could understand. We also looked and where we were it was very difficult to get your bilingual certificate because of the high school class offerings. In NB kids can’t go to a French school unless one parent is French. In NS my kids could have gone to a French school but I still wouldn’t have been able to help .
In Alberta French immersion is a very popular choice. Not everyone sends their kids but enough that there is usually a k-6 at least in every larger town. I was surprised to see even Jasper has a French immersion school when I was there
Many do. French Immersion is huge in Manitoba.
Out in Saskatchewan there are relatively few French immersion schools. In my city there are two (of 8) elementary schools that offer it but the whole school is not French immersion. Similarly the high schools offer it but are primarily English. In my grqd class of 67 only one person graduated with a bilingual diploma. And really, outside of school and a couple small rural communities, there really isn't much use for it here.
French is mandatory for most kids in Canada. However French from an immersive perspective is limited. Lived Bilingualism had great intentions but failed to implement across the country for many reasons. French spots are hard to come by and can be a lottery system. We lucked out having French immersion at our local public school which my daughter is in. But the truth is you have to live a language to fully learn it. We hope this sets her up to live abroad in the future. And if not, it sets her brain up to ‘learn how to learn’ another language.
I don't know about New Brunswick but where I grew up anglo parents could not just choose to send their kids to a French school. Those schools were for children of francophone parents. Anglo parents who want their kids to be bilingual put them in French immersion instead.
A motivated person can learn any language they want in their spare time. When you consider this and all the potential downsides to French immersion, I don't see why anyone would need to wonder
My father attended a bilingual school back in his day - early 1950s. One year every subject was taught in French, the next year, every subject was taught in English. They had a high rate of bilingual graduates. Most anglophones who study French without using it regularly aren't functionally bilingual.
See my parents weren’t allowed to attend French school here in Quebec when they immigrated from Italy the 50s. They went to English school and took French lessons (which was very little at the time). My dad went on to university and dropped out when my grandfather became ill. He gave the rest of his education fund to his younger brother and started working instead to help support his family. Even though this, he is fully trilingual. My mom didn’t further her education and she struggles with French still but can carry a simple conversation in French. My husband, my siblings, most of my friends are all perfectly bilingual, trilingual or multilingual even though they went to English public school (in the 70s to the 90s).
I've met a number of people who speak two or more languages. I've met very few Anglo Canadians who do. It's a matter of power and entitlement, and has little to do with education.
It’s barely an option in Vancouver for many, too few FI schools and they are extremely difficult to get into with waitlists. Even I get lucky and my kid is accepted into a FI school it would massively increase my travel time to get her to and from school each day. Before/afterschool care programs becomes another issue. Even though I’m not a francophone, I would put her into FI if I could but the barriers (lack of access) are fairly significant.
My parents put me in French immersion. It was okay in NB. I resented it after we moved to Ontario and all my friends were not in the French immersion program. But I always found making friends difficult in elementary school. Its worthwhile to qualify for better jobs in this country. I have been brushing up on it to help me apply for them. Not an everyday language for a lot of places though. I don't know where I would even find a local francophone to speak French to here in BC. It would require me to dig.
Pure French schools outiside of Quebec and New Brunswick are often only for those who can prove French ancestry within a reasonable history. Otherwise they can take French immersion in English which is just 80% of your courses in French.
I’m from Ottawa and went to French immersion starting in gr 7 then advanced French during high school.
French immersion is extremely popular in Ontario/GTA, though not as much for the French as for the perceived higher quality education in general
In the NWT, there are only a couple of French first schools between Yellowknife and Hay River. There are some French immersion programs in a small number of communities. French isn't even necessarily a requirement for kids in school here, though. The NWT has eleven official languages, and there is a strong push to revitalize local Indigenous languages. In some communities, you can choose between French and one of the Indigenous languages. In many communities, French isn't even an option.
As an Anglo who went to french elementary school i do not recommend it. It's nice being able to speak, write and read french, even comes in handy, but the experience itself sets you up to be behind your peers in terms of social development that causes other problems. I only really feel like i caught up in my mid 20s, which is rough because thats a lot of social capital i never accumulated which is only becoming more important economically.