Fierce opposition appears to be building against the elimination of early immersion in New Brunswick, but the Premier is standing his ground. Perhaps he has good reason to make these controversial changes. As you can read in an earlier CBC news article, the percentage of early immersion students that graduate bilingual is extremely low.

Sure, the young children may know their French very well as they are taking it, and you might be amazed by what you’d hear walking into a classroom, but this is not a proper measure for program success if the numbers show they are losing it by the time they graduate. Would you invest your money in something that had only a 20% success rate? No, probably not, not unless you’re the New Brunswick government for the last several years.

I realize that it is easier and important for children to learn a language in their younger years of elementary before high school. But, I also believe it is important for children to develop a solid foundation in their English language and math skills as well at this younger age. In fact, if I had to choose, I would assign a higher importance to these other skills over learning a second language.

Other provinces do offer early immersion, and some are saying that New Brunswick would be a black sheep by deviating from this. However, with such a low success rate, maybe it is now up to New Brunswick to take an unpopular stance and get serious about doing french immersion a different way, instead of doing what all the others are doing and have for decades. Tom Young, another local blogger, has written a post in which he also expresses this unpopular view.

The government has its share of screw ups, but their proposed changes almost sound good so far. The only changes I would make are giving parents (and students themselves) the choice to avoid taking French altogether, particularly for students already struggling or who already know several languages. Not everyone is planning to move to Quebec or work for the government when they graduate. Additionally, students should have the freedom to move between the different programs if circumstances change, and not be locked into their choice made in grade 6.

This is how I see it. Please free to comment in support of or against my views in English or French, which I am very capable of understanding despite learning it at my own pace in classes, French Camp and in France, instead of early immersion.