Parent willing to give change a chance
To The Editor:
I make it a point everyday to read the "Forum" section of the newspaper. Sometimes to learn something new, sometimes to understand the other side of the coin, and sometimes just for pure entertainment; however, until recently have a found myself wanting to teach or entertain (depending on your prospective) you.
So here we go once again with the great French Language debate. I am anglophone. I cannot carry on a conversation in French although taking it all through grades 1 to 12 and excelling in school. For those who currently have their children enrolled in Immersion and think that their child is graduating bilingual, I think you are kidding yourself.
Those who graduated "truly" bilingual are few and far between.
I understand and appreciate everyone's point of view; however, the current system is obviously not working. Take a look at the facts . . . almost one in four immersion students drop out of the program by the end of Grade 5 and New Brunswick's education ranks last in the country in literacy, math and science . . . wow.
Now for all those fighting to keep the current system, do you still think this system works?
All of us, both English and French, need to work together to make this work and stop making it such a French vs. English or English vs. French thing.
We are a bilingual province and should be proud of that and not tear it down! Maybe I am wrong and the new program will fail; however, what do we have to lose to try it?
The current program has failed too. My child starts Kindergarten in September and I am extremely happy he will be one of the first to participate in the new program.
Stay tuned . . . I will write another letter in 13 years with the results.
S. Humphrey,
Moncton
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a conversation in French, would it also hold that if someone took math for twelve
years, they couldn't do math?
To say this is a bilingual province and we should be proud of the fact is to prove
it how? And if one in four drops out by grade five, how are we going to entice
children going into grade five to suddenly take up French as a second language
when one fourth of children presently entering grade six are already giving
French the proverbial finger?
Is the "great French Language debate" really a debate, when the Minister of Education,
without public consultation, made such a move? The letter writer says "What do we
have to lose?" The answer is simple enough: we have the best learning years in
a child's to lose.
The letter writer dismisses the outgoing program as readily as the minister did.
Well, we have a generation of children who will be guinea pigs;
we have a teaching staff and curriculum that will go away and won't be easy to get back;
and we will have lost all faith that our Government uses facts to make decisions, not biased and faulty reports.
This is a huge gamble, based on a report that has been condemned by experts across the country.
We have a lot to lose.
Change is in the air. Finally
Y LEVEL STATISTICS and are among many experts who have stated clearly that the Croll Lee report is a joke. When one report (Croll-Lee) says dump EFI and ALL the REST say it should never be dumped, I'd say there is something suspect about that one report.
Read the Scrabba and the McKay reports. Does Mount A issue B.Ed, M.Ed or Ph.D's
in Education. Hmmmmm...NO!! Jim Croll has TAUGHT EDUCATIONAL STATS for Years.
Last time I checked Bio Stats don't count towards any of the above groups of Degrees.
If they know so much about Education, they should stop hiding out at the university
and get jobs in district 2.
How come parents do not go to Mt A and tell them how to teach biology?
What some facts... check out this doc and before you start another anti-CPF rant, this doc was prepared by grassroots parents groups opposed to Lamrock. It is not a CPF document but is just stored on their web server since the grassroots groups don't have a server of their own... yet.
http://www.cpfnb.com/reports/BeyondHysteria.pdf