A critical look at Canada's second-language acquisition policy.

Lard Tunderin' Jeezus wrote:

OMFG. First bigotry as fiscal concern.

Then EsperFUCKINGanto.

What bigotry?

skarredmunkey wrote:

Thanks for this post Machjo. Very interesting. I'd strongly support moves by the provinces to make mandatory the instruction of both official languages to students in grades K-12 (my understanding is that outside of Quebec, the average requirement is only 5 years, generally grades 4 through 9). There is also the dreadfully low lack of support in this country for the preservation and continuation of Canada's numerous aboriginal languages.

I've looked into services provided by the federal and provincial governments for Anglos to learn French. They are few and far between, and as a Canadian it is really embarrassing to meet people from outside Canada who are wrongly under the impression that we can all speak both official languages. According to some french teachers I know, the main services are geared towards university students, such as the myexplore.ca summer bursary program, and subsidized French language classes for ambitious public servants. Otherwise, it seems English speaking Canadians are out of luck unless you yourself have the time, money and willingness to get private instruction, go to university, or move to Quebec/Ottawa/NB. Of course, it should not be that difficult to learn French in Canada, but it is, and the reason is that provinces (and the feds of course) don't want to invest that much in bilingualism because they think they don't have to.

But is is it worth the money? One book I can recommend is Linguistic Imperialism by Robert Phillipson. He shows quite clearly in this book how the only people who really benefit from such a policy are the elites. Just to take Canada as an example, few Canadians will know both English and French by the end of their compulsory education. So unless we are going to make post-compulsory educaiton free, do we really have a right to force everyone in the country to learn both English and French with such a low chance of success? Many must go out to find a job after high school. Do we not want to ensure that they possess skills that will help them in their life struggle rather than just a smattering of French and English? I myself am fluent in English, French and Esperanto, can function to a certain degree in spoken Mandarin, and have studies some Arabic and Persian. But not everyone has this kind of opportunity. Is it really fair to burden those who lack the necessary apritude to learn such difficult languages?

Who will pay for it? We're spending an estimated 16 billion dollars annually already.

ClaudeB wrote:

The original poster is spewing b*llshit by the bucket.

The 2007 total education expenditures in Canada is in the neighborhood of $44 billion. So, if you believe the original poster, this would mean that 36% of all the money spent on education goes to the teaching and acquisition of a second language. I think not.

If you knew English, you would have noticed that I'd simply said that it cost us taht much, but had not specified the source. Education spending is but one source of this cost. Training for civil servants is a separate source. Then we have the hiring of translators and interpretors to fulfil legal labelling requirements!

There is another cost I'd come across recently, though I do not know if taht one is included. I'd met one lady in Ottawa who was having a hard time finding a job owing to her poor English skills. She'd come from central Quebec to live with her new husband. Unfortunately, the marriage hadn't worked out, and now she's stranded in Ottawa. I don't know the details as to why she chose to remain in Ottawa and not go back to her hometown, but I'm sure you can agree that her language barrier is a burden on us all. I'm not saying it's her fault, but none the less, it's a personal tragedy for her life in how it holds her back. Again, I do not know if that was counted among the costs in the calculation quoted above, but just to give you an idea of how wide-ranging the sources of these costs can be.

Je doit mentionne aussie que le nombre d'interlocuteurs fout rien à ceux qui ne réussissent pas à bien l'apprendre.

Just to take myself as an example, I'd taught myself the language to fluency within 100 hours of self-instruction.

 Agreed ... it is difficult ... and it has not been done ... and yet the CTF draws extreme conclusions from lousy data and lousier interpretation, and you fall for it!

I agree that the source is biassed. But guess what, it's the only source I was able to find! That in itself should be cause for embarrassement. Does the federal government not research the impact of its policies, be it politically, economically, etc.? I went with the only information I could find. Can't do better than that. Then would you support the idea that the government ought to do research on this? 

THE CTF DOES NOT DO "SOCIAL RESEARCH" or any other kind of research. That's a total misrepresentation of what real social researchers do, and extremely offensive!

The CTF is ONLY a voice of political propaganda.

Fine. That still does'nt explain the research from Professor Grin. he's a professor of economics at the university of Geneva, Switzerland, and a specialist in language economics. The paper I linked you to above is on an official French government website. His research was conducted and presented at the request of the High Council for the Evaluation of Schools, a French govenment body. Now Lord in his posts above might have some issue with French speakers. But regardless of his low opinion of us, I think a link to a direct French government education website should count for something.

It's just a shame that all Canada has as far as research in this field is concerned is what the CTF has to offer. We play with what we've got. So why does Canada not do the same research France is doing? Do taxpayers not have a right to know how efficient our policies are?

Oh yes, now we haul out the starving and dying children. Puleez! Pretty low propaganda tactic.

Let me know when you find some data worth looking at.

[quote]

As mentioned above, the Grin report should be wroth something. He estimates a potential saving of at least 25 thousand million euros annually just for education costs alone (unlike the CTF, he did not include translation and other costs). So I think we have a figure worth looking at right there. Are you going to deny that we could help alot of people with 25 thousand million euros a year? And that's just the EU for second language education alone! Imagine how much Canada could save. Do you honestly think that if we are aware of such gross inefficiencies that we should turn a blind eye to them?

Or maybe it has to do with my mindset. I'm a vegan, I like organic foods, and I walk or cycle as much as possible, as part of my belief that my every action affects everything else. And so I extend that same thinking pattern to language (i.e. the more efficient language policy is, the more money is saved for other issues). I know that in our meat-eating, gas-guzzling society, in which each issue is compartmentalized (i.e. food, transport, the environment, language, poverty, etc. are each separate things having no impact on one another), my relating language issues to poverty (money saved to help the poor), safety (more precise grammar to save lives by reducing air crashes), ecology (by saving on paper from reproduction in different languages), and peace (though more efficient communication between different ethnic groups) would come across as propaganda earning about the same mockery as PETA. Well, that is a difference in phylosophies and there is nothing I can do about that. We veg-heads are used to mockery and we just accept it.

Official bilingualism is based on the desire of Canadians to be a bilingual country, respecting and preserving the minority language. It's a policy decision, nothing more.

 It's a fine desire, but like I said, an expensive one that drains resources from other causes. In my mind, strange at it might seem to the typical compartmentalized Caandian mind, this has an impact on other social justice issues too, including peace, justice and poverty. So yes, I do view language policy as a justice issue.

What data do you need to support that? Certainly, not data on how many Canadians are bilingual, as that is totally irrelevant. The goal of official bilingualism is to provide services in both official languages.

Alors palons en  français d'abord. Selon moi, c'est quoi le point de gaspiller tant d'argent sur le bilinguisme officiel quand tres peut de gens l'apprennent bien du tout. Est-ce que ca contribue vraiment a la communication, a la justice, a la paix et a l'unite Canadienne?

 You have your arguments very confused, and should not be trying to support propaganda with irrelevant data. 

 Bon, peut-etre que tu a raison. Mais dans ce cas la, ne doit-tu pas defendre le bilinguisme officiel de ton cote?

"Reasonable to suppose" ? I don't think so! The money you are 'comparing' is not even not for instruction but for providing government services in English and French! Your argument ... or supposition ... makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Yes, it is. Isn't the fact that the Federal Government has to spend on bilingual services a tacit admission of the failure of provincial and territorial Ministries of Education of ensuring that all Canadian children can communicate with one another by the end of their secondary education? If we could gradually introduce an easier second language that all children can learn well before the end of their compulsory education, then we wouldn't have these expenses. I think that's common sense.

Just to take another example. Check out the Statistics Canada page I'd linked to in the OP. About 8% of Nunnavummiut know neither English nor French. Now don't tell me that 8% of Nunnavummiut are immigrants. Few would want to immigrate that far North. That might explain why Nunavut has four official languages (English, French, Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun). We have real poverty over there, and yet their government has to spend money translating everything into four friggin' languages because students are failing to learn either Frnehc or English (we're not even talking about learning both, but just one of them). Don't you think those of us of European descent could be a little more compassionate to their plight? Remember, their languages are very different from our European ones, grammatically, etymologically, etc. So it should come as no surprise that 8% fail to learn either. Don't you think we of European descent coudl at least reach out just half way by learning an easier language that might be within their grasp too, rather than just sitting ou our Euro-caucasian high horses?

 As far as I'm concerned, if the governments fail so miserably that these people cannot even learn one of our official languages, how are these people to have access to federal government services? The federal government functions in French and English only. They know neither; they're screwed. What are we to say: Go back to where you came from? Kinda hard when they've been here longer than we have.

 Sure they have access to quadrilingual services from their territorial government, but aren't they Canadian citizens? Just thing to ponder. How do they read their ballot? Can they run in an election? If they win, will have have an interpreter handy in Parliament, or are we gonna tell them to bugger off cause they're not European enough?

I can't read French well enough to get much out of the 'Grim' study you cite. I'm not opposed to another choice of languages to learn, but I am strongly opposed to your suggestions that we remove funding for services in both official languages of Canada to apply it to learning this new language. There are no savings.

 Now I see the misunderstanding. Of course I'm not proposing removing bilingual federal services in the mean time. In fact, I'd add Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun to make sure the Inuit have full access to our democracy too, if that means anything. But for the long term, why not give schools the freedom to teach Esperanto now so that in a generation from now the federal government finally could cut bilingual or even quadrilingual services and just have all services in a common easy-to-learn language. This would allow for both democracy and fiscal frugality. Right now, we have official bilingualism in two difficult languages, which is neither frugal nor democratic for the 8% of Nunnavummiut who don't know either of our European languages. Considering they've been here thousands of years before us, don't you think we have a responsibility to make sure democracy works for them too? So essentially I'm suggesting that in the short term we do what we have to do to ensure access to democracy for all, regardless of the cost. But recognizing that this is just inefficient, and that to make it democratic we must add some isolated Inuit languages to our list of official languages, which just makes it even more expensive, we need a long-term plan at the same time that will allow us in future to adopt a simultaneously more efficient and more democratic option than we have now.

You say you don't know French. Isn't that a tacit acknowledgement that the education system has failed you too? I know both languages fluently, so I have a better idea of what's going on on the French side. And believe me, many of them fail to learn English too. We're a nation whose hearts and mindas are cut off by at languages, not just French and English, but Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun too.

Remember: You are dealing with people and things they hold dear. There are many more issues than $$, and those human issues will chew up a lot of money before you'll get anywhere with your new language.

Well, obvriously those 8% of Nunavummiut who know neither of our official languages are among the things we hold dear, nor is their access to federal services, otherwise their languages shoudl be added to the list of official languages too. But alas, not European enough. 

Now, iof you had only proposed that Esperanto be provided as another language in school, adult ed, etc. I could agree. But this distorted political propaganda approach, misuing and abusing data, well ... that just makes me see red!!

Well, this just confirms my discovery in the paragraph above (i.e. that there was a misunderstanding), because that was essentially what I was getting at in a round about way. My idea was that in the long run, as Esperanto or similar language spreads, we could eventually eliminate official bilingualism at a later date, maybe let's say a generation from now. Or maybe more. But at this jusncture, I think just adding Esperanto to the list of elective languages would be an appropriate start, especially in the North where clearly our european languages are inaccessible to much of the population. 

Maybe you need to get a better handle on your proposal, and stop flinging dirt at other programs and services, hm?

It's not like it will replace anything currently in place in Canada: It's an add-on.

There are no savings. 

Again, all this confirms the original misunderstanding that's now been discovered. But as for savings, I think I've made it quite celar that our education system is even failing to get some Canadians to learn either language well, let alone both.

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Dogbert wrote:

He said he learned Esperanto in 100 hours, not French or English.

And from where I sit, in the middle of the praries, our bilingual education isn't working terribly well. Hell, most everyone I know, despite going through the required core French in school, couldn't even read the French on this thread. Myself included. 

Exactly. He needs to ibrush up on his English before he starts promoting inefficient Official Bilingualism policies.

Michelle wrote:

He has not said anything about "savages" up north, and you're not allowed to use ironic racism to make your points here, Machjo - especially when you're falsely attributing such racism to someone else here.

 Yes, I was out of line. I simply blew up at the accusation out of nowhere for reasons taht are still beyond me. Is it common for him to just run around calling everyone a bigot for no good reason? is that how his parents raised him?

http://lingvo.org/GRIN_en.pdf

The quotes presented in this petition in no way conflict with what you have presented above. Espearnto is seen as an extension of language rights, as a way of placing
the local indigenous language on an equal playing field, thus giving minority language groups such as the Inuit equal access to the nation's economic resources, rather than give a systemic and legislated distinct advantage to native speakers of the country's european languages.