It's always 1984 at French language schools

EMC Editorial - With a baby on the way, my mind has been filled lately with thoughts of how my husband Steve and I can raise our daughter so as to give her as many opportunities in life as possible.

One of the first things we decided was that we would like her to grow up bilingual in English and French, and attend French schools from Kindergarten. We hope this will give her a more cultured, well-rounded upbringing, allowing her to connect with her French Canadian background on her father's side and ultimately help her to land a good job as an adult.

Not to mention the fact that I'm probably the biggest Francophile you'll ever meet. I found heaven when I visited Paris for the first time as a teenager, and to this day few things delight me more than delicately designed plates full of colourful macaroons and cheesy artistic renderings of the Eiffel Tower. I'm hoping I might be able to master the language alongside our daughter, and that having her around will finally inspire Steve to speak only in French at a designated times of the day - say over dinner, for example - to help me and baby girl learn it.

But then I read articles like the one that recently appeared in the National Post about all non-French languages being banned during recess at Montreal schools, and it almost makes me want to give up all these aspirations on principle. If a child is heard speaking English - or Spanish, Japanese, etc. - during "free time" on the school yard or in the cafeteria, a designated monitor will come over and ask them to please switch to French.

But that's only in Quebec, right? Where everyone is crazy about language anyway? Wrong. When I showed the article to Steve, he couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. He proceeded to tell me about his French elementary school in the Niagara region.

Every Friday, the school held a "Franco- fête", and only those who were not caught speaking English at recess or lunch by teachers or "god help us all" their own peers over the course of the week were invited. The kids were given bracelets at the start of each week that served as admittance to the fête, and it was the duty of students to police each other and confiscate bracelets if classmates dared to utter a syllable of English. Offenders spent the duration of the Franco- fête in a separate classroom writing lines about French grammar. A little extreme, no?

A quick scan through the comments at the bottom of the article about the Montreal schools reveals that most people seem to be against this sort of policy. A number of H-bombs (i.e. Hitler/Nazi comparisons) were dropped, which I find out of place for a situation like this - or most situations where these comparisons are made, for that matter, but that's another story.

Personally, I think these measures are more ridiculous and annoying than anything. I find such strict monitoring for something so trivial distasteful and a little disrespectful of these students' rights, but mostly I would like to see our teachers focus instead on making sure students receive the best possible education during regular school hours. In Canada, French is an important part of children's education, but let's allow them to relax a little and have fun during their free time.

Will stories like these cause me to change my opinion on sending baby girl to a French school? To be honest, I don't think so. That kind of attitude irks me, but in the end allowing her to have two first languages seems like too good an opportunity to pass up.

But rest assured the school will be made aware of my opinion if I ever catch wind of any playground language police.

hpratt-campbell@theheritageemc.ca