Most Quebec parents wishing to send their children to schools offering a bilingual education would face many obstacles. Although legally defined as ‘English,’ bilingual schools already exist in Montreal‘s metropolitan area. In some ‘English’ elementary schools, there is more French instruction than English. Implementing their immersion model could fulfill the requirements of a bilingual system.
It is erroneously thought that promoting French was an Anglophone reaction to Bill 101. Yet, the Home and School Association representing English parents stated to the Parent Commission in 1962, that French should begin in kindergarten. The St. Lambert experiment of bilingual education started before either the P.Q. or Liberals enacted language laws. The experiment concluded there was an overall intellectual improvement when learning a second language, which produced no negative effects on the mother tongue. These findings greatly encouraged English parents demand for more French, and its growth in the English system has been widespread.
Despite the proven value of bilingualism, both Laws 22 and 101 limited the choice of most parents to opt for an English school, curtailing the possibility of a bilingual education. There is an irony that Anglophone parents, have a right that Francophones and immigrants do not. Arguably unintended, but it is a rare political event when the majority of citizens, support governments that remove rights from them, whilst providing them to a minority. The principal impediment to the growth of bilingual schools is Bill 101. Even if those restrictions on parental rights were lifted, there are other difficulties.
Any increase in English language instruction has significant ramifications for unilingual French teachers, their unions being amongst Bill 101’s staunchest defenders, and its members the greatest beneficiaries. Notwithstanding the union stance, increased second language instruction, cannot occur without the training of thousands of teachers who would be prepared and capable of working in this bilingual milieu. The bilingual system in the English schools has taken decades to develop, but it has a significant advantage compared a French system trying to emulating it. It is much easier to recruit French speaking teachers for the relatively small number of English schools, when over 90% of the population speaks French. Conversely, finding qualified personnel for French schools but drawn from a minority Anglophone group would be a challenge, although the increasing number of bilingual teachers may mean in time that this could be accomplished.
With the exception of mother tongue, the curriculum in English or French schools is the same. Whether it be Math, Science or History, the students are evaluated on identical material, the only difference is the language in which it is taught and examined. No new books are required; all courses already have approved textbooks available in both languages. Some modifications may be required to help students grasp concepts and vocabulary written in their second language.
The introduction of bilingual schools does not mean the end of English or French schools as we know them, but would provide an option that presently unavailable to French parents. At the moment, there are thousands of students who have the right to an English education who attend French schools; the contrary is not legally possible. The introduction of bilingual schools might well require an administrative overhaul, as the schools and boards legal definition was changed in 1999 from confessional to linguistic. In time, bilingual schools could make that as anachronistic as their previous label of being either Catholic or Protestant.
Maybe the school’s governing board should be given more responsibility. The Education Act stipulates the governing board must be satisfied that “the compulsory program objectives and … compulsory contents be acquired”. A bilingual curriculum is not a ‘one size fits all’, so it is incumbent that parents and the individual school personnel be heavily involved in developing each school’s options. There is a strong undercurrent that many French parents wish to have their children be more exposed to English, they recognize the obvious, that English is a vital tool in the contemporary world, and its acquisition poses no danger to one’s mother tongue. Maybe this drive should come from the grass roots, through each school’s governing board.
Unfortunately, a province wide system of bilingual school is far off, as no political party shows the slightest inclination to relax language legislation. It will only be by removing the shackles of Bill 101 that we could see its introduction. However, we may see the day when, to paraphrase Victor Hugo, ‘politicians cannot defeat an idea whose time has come ‘
Jim Wilson