Time for some ideas on French language instruction in New Brunswick
Education Minister Kelly Lamrock takes to the air of CBC Radio on Wednesday morning (7 to 8am I believe) for a province wide call-in regarding changes to delivering French language instruction to English students. Open houses on the issue start that day around the province and continue on Saturday.
I fully expect the call-in to be an hour of him getting slammed.
Maybe he deserves it but here’s the problem.
He’s been getting slammed for months now. I suspect he gets it that some are unhappy. Initially it served a purpose to let people know that there was opposition. Today, I don’t know what rock you would have to look under to find someone who didn’t know that.
Now’s the time to start presenting some ideas on how to address the problems with the school system. Discuss them here if you want but get those ideas to the government. If the ideas don’t start flowing two things are going to happen without question. One : in the absence of anything else, Lamrock will go ahead with some semblance of Plan A. Two : Those who disagree with that will take the government back to court and we’re going to do this dance for a while. Let’s instead come up with something that may not be what everyone wants but works. I have my own ideas which I’ll throw out in the next little while. In the meantime let’s stop arguing and start thinking up ways to improve the broken system we have now.
Note to CBC’s Terry Seguin. Moderate the call-in so it’s not just a rant for some. Make it useful. We’ll all thank you for it.
Comments (13)
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Can't he just answer truthfully....why? (and maybe let us know what the hidden "X" factor is along the way???)
EFI was just a convenient political (some may say suicidal) target. let there be no doubt the cheapest easiest pretend we are doing something will be the band aid until it blows over and our students are left high and dry again.
The High schools need the Vocations returned if we really care about the future, we have to show our young adults that there is lots of good paying rewarding employment in the Trades professions out side the Information technology field that has been flogged to death.
It should be said that Minister Lamrock is re-introducing vocational training. My local school, Tantramar High, is a pilot school for this initiative. I think this is great: I would like more children to learn from the carpentry teacher, who is very talented and a fine person.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an over-all plan for these things. The Croll-Lee French recommendations, that the Minister is peddling again, makes Core French mandatory for grades 11 and 12, this to make up the hours lost by removing French entirely from the first five years. I think this really runs the risk of turning those 11 and 12 French classes into wasted time, where uninterested kids are forced to learn something they have no interest in. And it robs time from instruction that is targeted at the known skills of the student, such as the Vocational programs.
If you think the children really matter you haven't seen politicians kissing enough babies and lived long enough to know better.