One of Quebec's dirtiest little secrets is that the powers that be, the entrenched educators, most politicians, the unions and the civil service, all share a unique view of Quebec as a unilingual country/province, where English should be discouraged rather than promoted.
This of course doesn't jive with what the general public wants, a province which is French, but where every child is taught to speak English as a matter of public policy.
In a battle of wills, it's not hard to predict that it will be the powerful and entrenched, French-only militants who will prevail in imposing their view of a unilingual Quebec on the powerless public.
Premier Charest's pronouncement that sixth grade school children will be treated to half a school year of English immersion sent sub-surface shock waves throughout the intelligentsia who view this possibility as a dangerous development, a project to be nipped in the bud as soon as possible.
The reality is that the Premier's promise of English immersion is another pipe dream, similar to the promise he made during the last election campaign that we could expect reduced wait times in emergency rooms.
Both are lofty ideals, but unfortunately neither is attainable in present day Quebec.
And so six years after the Liberals took power with the promise of improving wait time in the emergency room, Quebec has sunk to last place in North America, where it takes an average of 1026 minutes or about 17 hours to be treated, wherein the average in the United States is 240 minutes.
LINK
Better to move the public debate to a new and different unattainable promise than to mire in the failure of the past.
For the powers that be, keeping Quebec unilingual is viewed as a necessary evil that protects and maintains the French language and Quebec's unique culture. The present day policy of functional unilingualism acts as the
'FRENCH CURTAIN' that envelopes Quebec's borders and keeps citizens from exercising free movement due to their inability to communicate with the outside world.
Author Christian Dufour, sums up neatly the pathological fear that many Francophone intellectuals share;
"If all Quebeckers
become very bilingual, they will buy more records, newspapers and books
in English. It will create a decline in interest for our cultural
products, already heavily subsidized. ...
"It's a a regression of identity, It means that those who do not speak
English are not functional, as if being French no longer sufficed, that
English was a necessity to exist. LINK
In a letter to the editor a reader, dead set against the teaching of English summons the same hackneyed excuses that are the hallmark of bilingualism foes.
" Although I think the teaching of English should be improved in Quebec, I disagree with the government's plan mandating the exclusive learning of English for half of the 6th year, compressing all other academic subjects in the other half. Where will we find the specialist teachers who will be needed? Teachers are already in an impossible situation, that is, to integrate students with learning disabilities in regular classes. Now we want every child, whatever his strengths and weaknesses, to become bilingual while assimilating a school year in 5 months"
And so support for the existing FRENCH CURTAIN of ignorance remains strong and like the IRON CURTAIN of the communist era, it may be cynical and cruel, but undeniably effective. Francophone Quebeckers are the least mobile of all Canadians and are culturally and linguistically dependent on the province, like an infant attached to its mother's breast, a pleasing state of affairs to militants.
Take for example the exodus of newly-minted anglophone doctors who are exiting the province at a rate of about 50% due to the gross iniquity in remuneration and working conditions as compared to any other place in North America. Yet francophone colleagues remain steadfastly at home, tied to the province through the language and cultural handicap.
For language militants and separatists, this represents a happy state of affairs, not something to be trifled with at all.
And so unless you are a unionized government employee (including government corporation like Hydro-Quebec) or a unionized construction worker, working in French in Quebec means working for less money. The lack of worker mobility because language is the number one factor.
It's no different than the bygone practice of controlling women by keeping them "
barefoot and pregnant," a cynical device to keep women in their place.
Nobody can deny the effect of Bill 101 in transforming Quebec from a bilingual to French only society. The higher echelons of elected government, the bureaucracy, state controlled business have all eliminated English completely from daily affairs.
Years ago politicians, even separatists were fluently bilingual, including René Levesque, Jacques Parizeau, Lucien Bouchard, Daniel Johnson, André Boisclair and even Bernard Landry.
Today's politicians, Liberals included, can hardly speak a whit of English and this includes Liberal cabinet ministers who sound like tourists reading out of a handbook when speaking English.
Unlike the citizens in the street, most of these leaders remain firmly planted in unilingual Quebec society and cannot really see the utility of English.
And so the backlash begins.
Of course the French radicals who populate the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Mouvement Montréal français and the majority of readers and writers on vigile.net have no qualms about opposing this bilingualism initiative on principle, but they are of no import, they have zero power.
The meaningful push back will come from those who have the political power and will to sabotage the bilingualism project from the inside. These are the politicians, the school board officials, the teacher's union who will pronounce themselves firmly in favour of bilingualism...with an asterik.
They will cleverly support bilingualism publicly, but work to sink the implementation of any such project from the inside.
Yves Parenteau of the Teacher's Alliance;
"We already had trouble teaching all the content in the other subjects. The problem will worsen if we have to steal time from other disciplines in order to teach English" LINK{FR}
There is really no political will to speak of in the French school system to teach English. While everybody pretends that it's a good idea, the entire system will fight to keep English out.
The teacher's union, which doesn't have members with the capacity to teach English will fight tooth and nail to keep Anglophone teachers from replacing unilingual francophone teachers and that's just a start.
The ideologues throughout the system, be it the Ministry of Education, the school commissions and the teachers themselves will work to frustrate any plan to further the teaching of English.
In the meantime a policy of misinformation, ignorance and misdirection towards the teaching of English continues unabated in the media
A recurring theme in many of those complaining about the proposed language training, is that it isn't fair that English students will not be subjected to the same intensive training in French.
Here's a typical complaint{FR}
What an ignorant fool!
Most Francophones remain entirely ignorant of the efforts of the English community to teach French intensively to their children. Here in a letter to Le Devoir by Jean-Michel Brunet, a French teacher in an English school, sets the record straight
LINK{FR}
By the way, as most parents can attest, this intense French language instruction doesn't turn the children into francophones, but rather, bilingual anglophones!
Intensive French instruction for English students has been in the curriculum of English schools for over thirty years, with French immersion and general language starting in kindergarten.
Gilles Proulx, the French blowhard radio and television personality, gratuitously claims that English high school students can't speak a word of French, a lie that only an ignorant fool would propagate.
French educational 'intellectuals' continue to weave the fiction that starting young children on second language instruction is dangerous and confusing, a concept that runs counter to what the rest of the world believes.
The myth that learning English turns Francophones into Englishmen is perhaps the most monstrous of all the distortions propagated, yet we hear it every day.
Look for this project to teach English intensively to die a death of a thousand cuts. While nobody will admit to it, there will be an insurmountable campaign to scuttle the plan because while educators agree that learning English is important, they aren't really in favour of it.
And so it remains that your typical francophone high school graduate cannot ask for the time of day in English and come to think of it, neither can their teachers.
Parents who seek English for their children will do what they need to
do, outside of the system. More kids learn English by playing video games and watching
English television and movies than through the entire English training provided by the French educational
system.
Francophones who learn English do so on their own, by their own ingenuity and effort, and they should be congratulated.
In acquiring English they never could count on the support of the French educational system and sadly, notwithstanding Mr. Charest's announcement, they never will.
Instead of looking to the English school boards as an example of how to properly teach a second language, the government is setting out on a program doomed to fail from the start. Every English parent who has sent their child to English school where French is taught intensely, knows that it takes years of training and that the earlier the exposure to a second language starts the better.
French language militants who want to keep franncophone Quebeckers unilingual, should applaud Mr. Charest's effort.
As the greatest English playwright said in Macbeth - it is a case of;
'
Sound and fury, signifying nothing"
