Kindergarten students Kennice Wong, left, and Derek Wang, centre, shown at James Thompson Elementary School in Richmond, B.C., on Tuesday November 16, 2010.DARRYL DYCK/The Globe and Mail
The Ministry of Education of British Columbia should not diminish the place of French in the school curriculum to give it the same status as five other languages, namely Mandarin, Punjabi, Spanish, Japanese and German, as is proposed in a draft curriculum that could come into effect in autumn, 2012.
The more languages the schools can teach, the better. To be sure, there is increasing value in learning languages that are useful in emerging economies, such as Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish and Portuguese. But that should not detract from the status of French, which is after all one of Canada's two official languages.
On the West Coast, Quebec can seem very far away, yet the waiting list in the Lower Mainland for French immersion doubled in 2010, and the program has been growing for years. Young British Columbians who want to take part in Canadian life on a national scale should have the opportunity to learn to speak French - not only would-be prime ministers, but for many other vocations, from corporate directorships to diplomacy.
A B.C. Teachers' Federation committee is discussing the issue with concern this weekend. The draft curriculum does not in so many words downgrade French, but it simply appears as one of six "additional languages," which happens to come first in alphabetical order.
It is a good thing for children to connect to their various heritages through language, but families are in the best position to effect that goal. In particular, the choice in the draft curriculum of Punjabi, rather than Hindi, the national language of India, which is also understood in Pakistan, suggests a political motive of appealing to ethnic communities well represented in B.C.
Other languages than French should be offered as options, but Canada's two official languages should be at the core of the curriculum. The 1960s concept of biculturalism may have largely yielded to multiculturalism, but official bilingualism - English and French - remains an important part of Canadian public policy that should continue to be manifested in the country's elementary and secondary schools.