On July 17, 1981, the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly headed by then Premier Richard Hatfield adopted "Bill 88" which established French and English as “Official” languages of the Legislature and the Provincial Government.

The Constitution Act of 1982 also declares the languages as the “Official” languages of New Brunswick and they have equality of status, rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the Legislature and the Government of New Brunswick.

“Official” use of language in the administration of government and the delivery of government services is fundamentality different from the notion of a bilingual province or community. It has been suggested that New Brunswick strive for a 70% bilingualism rate but that may be a challenge given that the Province is handicapped a 48% factor of illiteracy.

The Report and Recommendations of the French Second-Language (FSL) Commission on French-Second Language Programs and Services recommends that early French immersion be abandoned in Grades 1 to 5 to be replaced in Grade 5 with an “intensive” French language learning program.

The recommendations offered by Dr. Jim Croll and Patricia Lee appear to be based, in part, on a model used in Edmonton, Alberta where early immersion students can register in Kindergarten or Grade 1 and late immersion students can register in Grade 7 with little or no previous exposure to French. The theory is that nobody should be denied early immersion but equally, students who are not ready for early immersion should not be denied access to later immersion if and when they become motivated to engage in French immersion.

For early immersion students in Edmonton, at least 75% of the day is conducted in French. Late immersion students undergo two years of intense instruction and then blend into regular immersion classes, writing provincial achievement tests, along with their early immersion counterparts, at the end of Grade 9. Modified immersion programs are also offered in high school where two or three subjects are taught in French, typically French Language Arts and Social Studies.

In my opinion, the FSL Commission’s recommendation to abandon early immersions makes little sense. To turn our backs on early immersion would symbolically moderate our commitment to bilingualism. In a more practical vein, Joan Netten, Order of Canada for her contribution to research and development of French education, offers a most interesting thesis.

She acknowledges the high rate of attrition in early immersion and she acknowledges that immersion students fall behind those in the regular English program. However, and this is telling, she says the English skills of immersion students who remain in the program will catch up to and surpass those of students in the regular program by the time they reach intermediate grades. It seems counterintuitive but apparently the way to strong English skills for immersion students is to develop strong French skills first. French reading skills are transferred to English once a considerable degree of reading proficiency in French has been established. The two languages then reinforce each other.

The Croll-Lee Report uses drop-out statistics to justify recommendations to remove early immersion without offering a detailed examination of causal circumstance. There is little discussion about how kids acquire a second language. Some attention is paid to the deficient skill levels of teachers but little is offered in respect to how that circumstance might be remedied. In my opinion, language acquisition is not as much about the teaching as it is about the learning environment and the amount of time a student has to use the language.

Spend a week in a country where there is no English and you quickly learn to hear the language and use bits and pieces of it to communicate.

In many parts of the world, children are brought up to speak one or more languages. Kids grow up in multi-lingual households. They learn two or more languages without formal instruction.

How do they do it? I suspect they hear language, they mimic language and they adopt language in order to communicate. Why should it be so difficult for our language instructors to figure out a way to communicate and teach a second language in an immersion environment without destroying the tools for learning math and science?

There is a fundamental difference between immersion and the inclusion of French in the core curriculum. Immersion, whether early, late, intense or total is a voluntary engagement. Immersion programs provide the environment for learning a second language and acquiring the skills to use it. French when offered as part of an academic curriculum is just one of many courses designed to result in the achievement of knowledge but without the benefit of practical application.

The optics of bilingualism and the pursuit of bilingualism in New Brunswick are important to this province, so too is the need to increase the level of literacy. We have to find the right way to balance the two

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at mailto:bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com