I think this is a good likeness. Don’t you think this is a good likeness?

[source]

A faithful reader

posted this in the comments, but it is worth reproducing here:

From “The Sleuth,” Times&Transcript:

In political gossip, Sleuth’s spies inside the Liberal Party of New Brunswick report that there was a meeting in Moncton earlier this week of behind the scenes members, such as riding presidents and fundraisers, as well as the party’s president and executive-director.

And what was one of the hottest topics du jour? French Immersion!

Sleuth’s informant indicates the heat is on “high” in the kitchen, and although nobody has been seen vacating it yet, the grassroots are mightily worried about Premier Shawn Graham’s refusal to date to abandon or alter Education Minister Kelly (I’ve got a Report) Lamrock’s changes to second language training.

While the premier and education minister are still insisting there is a large “silent majority” among the public that supports the controversial changes, the grassroots members apparently aren’t so sure. Of 10 party supporters from Moncton at this week’s meeting, your gumshoe hears, only three support staying the course.Seven want changes.

And at least one Liberal backroom person told Sleuth, in worried tones, that this battle “isn’t partisan”. In fact, he noted, it is both small- and large-L liberals who are most against the government’s plan. Could be a very hot summer on the barbeque circuit for Shawn.

No kidding.

If you haven’t already,

you might want to read an excellent commentary from Daylene Lumis, “Discuss education and immersion issues fully.” Also worth reading: letters from C. MacCallum, Sue Park, and Lila Johnson from a couple of days back about her eye-opening conversation with her MLA.

Go now, do not pass go,

and read Diana Hamilton and Matt Litvak’s excellent commentary, “Flawed report, flawed conclusion,” published this morning in the T-J.

I’m not surprised.

Are you surprised? There is a site called wikirage which “lists the pages in Wikipedia which are receiving the most edits per unique editor over various periods of time.” Kelly Lamrock is listed. Some edits are just vandalism (for example, removing a section and replacing it with an expletive), while others are more tempered. Why, I even made one or two myself; the reader may guess in which category.

Excellent article

yesterday by Katie Tower in The Sackville Tribune Post: “Local parents continue decades-old fight to save immersion program: Tea with Hatfield resulted in policy change for greater access to FI.” Tower describes the battle in 1980 and compares it with the situation today:

In fact, [Amanda] Cockshutt says she believes the campaign is just gaining momentum. Because just as it was 28 years ago, parents don’t take their children’s future lightly.

“Whenever it’s about kids and their education, people just don’t drop it,” says Cockshutt.

Hear hear.

Check out

Advantage for Life, a video about learning a second language commissioned by Alberta Education from the Language Research Centre at the University of Calgary.

Interesting

editorial in the Kings County Record. It begins:

By now Education Minister Kelly Lamrock should have learned a valuable political lesson. By this point, he should have discovered that you can mess with a lot of things and still survive to stand up in the Legislature another day.

By now he should have realized that you can mess with people’s roads, you can mess with people’s taxes, you can even mess with people’s jobs and still survive, but the thing that will bring them out fighting like cornered dogs, that one thing you cannot do is mess with people’s kids.

All I can add is, grrrr!

Despite

Kelly Lamrock’s reported comment that concern about FSL is confined to “yuppies” in Fredericton and Moncton, people in the Mirimichi seem interested, if the slew of articles in the Mirimichi Leader is any indication, including Patricia Lee wading in and the Minister’s multi-part series. See in particular Alison Ménard’s excellent open letter and Raissa Marks’ guest editorial which concludes, “I leave you with one more question, Mr. Premier. Are you prepared to lose the next election on this issue?”

So

in Marty Klinkenberg’s most recent must-read article, ex-deputy minister Robert Pichette is quoted as saying that this Liberal government is “amateurish,” “like nuns at a picnic.” Now I hadn’t heard that one before, but hey, I can work with almost anything:

A beautiful essay

by Rita Parikh in the Globe and Mail: “Early immersion is a beautiful thing.” It opens:

“Maman, j’ai une moustache de chocolat,” my chocolate-smeared seven-year-old says with a laugh. Although he’s been in French immersion for just two years, the words come easily and his accent rings true.

Sage is the beneficiary of a stunningly successful experiment in British Columbia – one based in research, faith and, in no small part, beauty.

In contrast, the New Brunswick government’s recent decision to eliminate early French immersion and replace it with “intensive French” is only ugly.

Intensive French is a wonderful program, and it should replace the way most Canadians haplessly struggle to learn French. In its innovative ability to stimulate a love of language and instill basic confidence, this approach is unparalleled. However, it was never designed to produce bilingual graduates – immersion is the only program truly designed to achieve that goal.

Emotion

A recent article in the Gleaner has the following paragraph:

“On some of the issues emotion is very important,” said Graham. “But pertaining to education today, I feel emotion has clouded the real reason on why we are bringing forward an improved education system now that is going to provide bilingual opportunities for every student in the province.”

Reason versus emotion. This is what we eggheads call a “false dichotomy”: the two things are not necessarily opposed. Of course, when the Premier says “the real reason on why we are bringing forward an improved education system,” he is almost certainly not referring to reason in the abstract: thinking; rationality; reasonableness. No, he means “motive,” which in this particular case is the opposite of reasonable.

That aside, one wonders what these “some of the issues” on which “emotion is very important” actually are, if not our children? How about: being cheated? May we get emotional about that? Or about not being listened to? Not being properly represented? Being lied to, and insulted, and treated with disrespect, and manipulated?

Are any of these things about which it is permissible to be emotional?

Ironically,

right beside some of the Premier’s pronouncements on education, there is an ad from the fine folks at Sylvan.

Wonder if they do French?

Shawn Graham knows something that we don’t.

In a recent newspaper article he is quoted as saying, echoing Richard Nixon, “There is a silent majority of New Brunswick parents who want a quality bilingual education for their children that is not being afforded.” The article begins, “A noisy, emotional minority won’t stop changes to New Brunswick’s education system, vows Premier Shawn Graham.”

He is being surprisingly clever here. Notice the deft way he attempts to isolate parents who want early French immersion from other parents. He must be gleeful that they are getting all the attention; he no doubt hopes that his government can slip mandatory French into grade five and no-one will notice until it is too late.

But I think he will find, in the coming days and weeks, that we are not so divided after all.

Couple of webby things:

• Michael Wilcott has set up a very cool website, Citizen Oversight in Public Education, that has resources, information, and FORUMS. Here is the answer to all those email woes! Sign up and post away. Always be able to find something later. Don’t crash your server. It’s great!
• Diana Hamilton and Matthew Litvak have changed the name of their excellent blog to the much more melodious Immersion Delayed is Immersion Denied
• The irrepressible Matthew Hayday has posted Lamrock to the Globe: “French Immurshun is why our kidz kant reed gud“