Angry N.B. parents seek judicial review of French immersion cancellation
SAINT JOHN, N.B. - New Brunswick parents angry over the cancellation of early French immersion in the province are seeking a judicial review of the government decision.
Michael Wilcott of the parent group Citizens for Educational Choice said Wednesday the provincial Liberal government denied parents due process when the French immersion program was suddenly axed, so they will try to get a hearing through the courts.
"This is about getting the government to accept that in rushing forward with this decision they have caused a tremendous amount of damage, especially for children who were enrolled for this coming September in the early French immersion program," Wilcott said in an interview.
The New Brunswick Court of Queen's Bench will consider the application for a judicial review on June 4.
Wilcott said concerned parents across the province joined together and retained a lawyer after it became clear the government would not postpone the changes to allow for more consultation.
Patrick Ryan, who recently moved to New Brunswick with his family, was one of several people to provide personal affidavits with the court application.
"Our expectation, moving home to New Brunswick last year, was that both our children would have the opportunity to participate in early French immersion," Ryan said.
"What concerns us most is the limited consultation and the lack of transparency for such an extreme upheaval to our province's education system."
The New Brunswick government cancelled early French immersion in March in favour of an intensive French program in Grade 5 that will be offered to all students.
A French immersion program will not be available to students until Grade 6.
The decision was controversial. Early French immersion, which was offered beginning in Grade One, was held by many educators and parents to be a Cadillac program for second-language training.
The government took the step because it said the program wasn't working and it was effectively separating and streaming children based on language ability.
More News
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
Comments (14)
All comments are subject to the site Terms of Use. For a full commenting tutorial click here.
Our editorial team relies on filtering technology and our visitor community to identify inappropriate comments. In the event that a site user has submitted offensive content that has evaded our filter, please select the option to Flag As Inappropriate presented within the comment. Thank you for helping to keep this site clean.
Debate is what makes democracy work. Democracy requires dialogue, discussion, argumentation and dissension.
The debate over immersion is whether or not early childhood learning of a second language is more apt to succeed in the long term. Studies confirm that, therefore it is only cogent to extend or at last maintain that choice.
It has nothing to do with being a bilingual province. A bilingual province refers to the rights of the minority language to address the legislature in their own language and to receive services in one's own language. It has nothing to do with making everyone speak two languages, especially against the wishes of the parent or the child attending.
I think people have lost sight of what the real issue is here : Parental choice. The ability to choose what is best for your child and the consent of the child, thereof.
to be brief, you are right in that regard, but I am confident that you understand my point...
Public consultation was required in order to advance such drastic changes!
Thank you!
PS: sorry for the solecisms in my piece...
The French Immersion program was flawed from the very beginning. To start with it was never implemented province wide, my understanding is it was the choice of the individual school/district to either implement it fully/partially or not at all. I really believe more thought was put into the School Lunch Program then the French Immersion Program.
My Story Part 1:
When entering grade one my wife and I were approached by the school who told us our daughter was an excellent candidate for the early immersion program. She was attending school in Brockway NB, a very small k-6 country school. We agreed and enrolled her in the program where she completed grade 1 and 2.
My job caused me to move to the outskirts of Petticodiac in the summer of grade 2 and we tried to enroll her in immersion for grade 3 only to find out the Petticodiac school, a much larger k-12 school didn't offer the program.
After missing three weeks of the school year we started to push the district for a solution. The only solution they could offer was to place her in a moncton school and bus her 2 hours each way with an unsupervised half-hour wait at moncton high school for a bus transfer. Given the fact that she was 8 years old this was unacceptable to us so we chose the only other solution, enroll her in English.
She started grade 3 without any English schooling and had we not been teaching her in English at home (against the wishes of the immersion program i might add) she would have had a very difficult time adjusting indeed.
In the summer of grade 6 we moved to the minto area and again we were contacted by the school telling us she was an excellent candidate for the late immersion program, at which point my reply was NO, once bitten twice shy.
I still believe we could have bilingual students if we implemented a proper early immersion program throughout the province.
The situation is dire : Province wide consultations were a necessity. Parents like yourself could express yourselves and made your concerns known. This was not done. It was a unilateral abrogation of a program which was in place for a least a decade. What a shame...
The state of our educational system as a whole is in disrepair : A reform in education is required. We must compare with other jurisdictions, ourselves and implement and invest in what is best for our future, which happens to be our youth...
Science, arts and language (first and second) must be prioritized or else, exodus from this Province shall continue. The needs of our economy in the Atlantic must be SERIOUSLY addressed.
I am very concerned about this, however I do not know what the solution is? One thing I do know is that unilateral changes in our educational system is not going to work!
We must take our region back!