Anglicization?.. A Lesson in Faulty Logic

The Sky is falling, The Sky is falling!

Many years ago McGill University instituted a policy of allowing francophone students to submit papers and take exams in their native French.
The onus is put upon professors and T/As to make a 'reasonable accommodation' (Ha!) to those French students who are capable of taking classes in English, but lack the commensurate writing skills.
The policy has been wildly successful, allowing those French students so inclined to earn a valuable university degree from Canada's most venerated institution.
McGill today boasts that somewhere in the vicinity of 20% of its students are francophones.

For French language militants and PQ ministers like Jean-François Lisée, it's not a situation conducive to promoting the French language, rather the opposite. They believe that allowing francophones to attend an English institution of higher learning under favourable circumstances, ultimately leads to French graduates working and perhaps marrying in English, an inexorable march towards assimilation.

The argument is made because of the very real correlation between the higher assimilation rate for Francophones who graduated from English cegep or university. So for low-brow hysterics like Mario Beaulieu or Jean-Paul Perreault, it's simple proof that English cegep or university is dangerous for the survival of Quebec's francophone majority.

Even those who should know better, publish similarly biased views when there is an agenda to be promoted, like the deceptively named Institut de recherche sur le français en Amérique, a virtual separatist think tank with as much credibility as the Institute of Hair Replacement.

"For francophones who attend English college, French is  used less  when shopping, at work and among friends," explained the president of the IRFA, Patrick Sabourin. Link{fr}

It is always dangerous when academics or scientists use their talents to confirm preconceived notions or try to prove an agenda, like tobacco company scientists who maintained for decades that there was no link between their product and cancer.

Of course the academically challenged public is easy to dazzle with such simple conclusions, the  scientific relationship between  correlation and  causation of little import with those determined to deceive.
  
The fact that more francophones who graduate from English institutes of higher education, get a job in English, than those francophones who attend a French school, doesn't necessarily mean that the school caused them to do so. 

I can best demonstrate the principle that correlation does not imply causation with some brief examples.

Some insurance companies offer a discount to owners who equip their homes with fire extinguishers, not because the extinguishers prevent or limit the effect of a fire significantly, but rather because these homeowners are inherently more safety conscious and suffer less fires.

But sometimes causation can clearly be linked to correlation, for example in buildings that are outfitted with sprinklers and those that are not.

Statistics bear out that regardless of staff training, the age of a building, or the type of residents, sprinklered buildings save lives. In this case there is ample evidence of causation.

Let me offer a final example, perhaps easier to understand, the fact that people who voluntarily take a CPR course, live longer and healthier lives than those who do not.
Yet 99% of these people never use the training in a real life situation, so we cannot by any stretch of the imagination say that the CPR training itself can cause you to live longer.
But people who voluntarily take CPR live longer because they are clearly motivated to be pro-active about health issues.

Francophones who go to English schools assimilate more readily because that is the track that they were on to begin with, after all they learned English as a second language, long before they even started school.

Understanding cause and effect is a complicated issue, so it's easy to arrive at a false conclusion if one is so inclined;

"It has been proven that all heroin addicts smoked marijuana in their youth. Therefore, smoking marijuana leads to heroin addiction." 

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. ("After this, therefore because of this.")
Heroin addicts probably really started on mother's milk; does it lead to heroin?

Other examples:
"The cock crows, then the sun comes up, therefore the cock is responsible for raising the sun every morning"
"Francophones who go to English university are more likely to be assimilated, therefore English universities are responsible for their assimilation."

At any rate for an entirely entertaining and easy to understand, one page course in faulty logic. GO HERE

And so, French language militants, have developed a certain expertise in interpreting or twisting any fact or figure to prove the premise that French is under attack and in dire straights.

Not convinced?

If militants conclude that allowing French students to attend English university under favourable language conditions is an important element in their anglicization, why do they arrive at the complete and opposite conclusion for Anglophones attending French universities under similar language accommodations?

Recently we were treated to more hysterical predictions of gloom and doom by militants who claim that the handful of English students who are given language accommodations in French universities are anglicizing the schools, instead of being francisized themselves, the opposite of what happens when the shoe is on the other foot.

I can just imagine the contortions and twist of logic that those so inclined to disagree will formulate in offering a counter-argument.
No doubt it will be that the rules apply differently to English and French, the old standby, when all else fails.

And so, the University of Montreal is in danger of becoming anglicized because a handful of Anglo students are given a language accommodation, while the 20% of Francophone students at McGill have no effect on francisizing McGill, but in fact get anglicized themselves.

In  considering the 'facts' presented by so-called experts, it is useful to consider the source, after all would you blindly take on faith anything oil industry scientists tell us about the oil sands?
Would you automatically believe experts hired by the asbestos industry who claim that their product if properly used is non-toxic?

I am reminded of the baseball anecdote wherein a batter hit an infield fly and the third baseman and the catcher converged on the ball.
The catcher called for the ball by screaming;"I got it! I got it!, but the third baseman stepped in front of him and promptly dropped the ball.
As the catcher returned to his position behind home plate, visibly seething, the opposing on-deck batter tells him ;
"Hey, he had to consider the source."

Premier Pauline Marois recently served us up a textbook demonstration in faulty logic in a speech she made in Trois Rivieres.

"The Prime Minister argued that she was ready to allow Quebecers to choose between  "prosperity" and the economic measures she proposes, and "austerity" proposed by the CAQ and the Liberal Party, which want to return to the balanced budget more quickly."

 Madame Marois actually hits a bullseye in faulty logic by employing the famous Either/Or debate as demonstrated neatly in the comic below;

Is there any faultier use of logic than the assertion that the Crucifix in the National Assembly is not a religious article because it is a heritage item ?

In Quebec as elsewhere, anything can be argued away, where black can be argued as white and where in the end, it is the propaganda campaign attached to a debate that either wins or loses the day....seldom the facts.