Thank you, Calina.
I would now like to take a few minutes to add a few things to what my colleague was saying.
First, I have to highlight the fact that although you are studying immersion schools and immersion studies, we must remember that immersion graduates, from our calculations, make up less than 5% of the total high school graduates in English Canada. Although there is a fairly large difference in their levels of French, core French graduates and those who dropped French at the earliest possible moment face many of the same challenges as immersion students do.
First, they don't truly understand the benefits of learning French as a second language. They know they can get paid more and there are more job opportunities and they can travel to French regions of the world, but they don't really understand why they get paid more. They don't understand why there are more jobs available to them, why French is an asset to their career, or what type of impact French can have on their personal development, and where French will come in handy, etc.
Second, they are very unaware of how many people around them actually speak French. For many of these young people, the only time they will ever hear French spoken before they leave high school is in the classroom. Never will they think that someone they meet in the street can also speak French, because everyone in their region simply speaks English anyway.
Next, as Calina touched on, the quality of teaching is lacking in many places around the country. It's not consistent perhaps is a better way to describe it. Sure, there are great immersion teachers, but there are also some not very good ones. The same is true in core French as well, so we're hitting all the things there.
The Canadian Association of Immersion Teachers
exists solely to support immersion teachers and we are sure they are well aware of this concern. Therefore, we're not going to talk more to this effect. We'll let them have the opportunity to do that for you.
I would like to say one thing, though. I was invited to participate in a round table hosted by Canadian Heritage in 2011 entitled, “Reflection on Future Actions With Respect to Official Languages in Education 2013 to 2018”. Many challenges were discussed, but there is one that remains fresh in my mind because I see it as a great opportunity.
SPEAQ, namely the Society for the Promotion of the Teaching of English as a Second Language in Quebec,
divulged that one of their biggest problems is and will continue to be the lack of qualified English teachers to teach their students. ACPI, the other organization, also made reference to the lack of qualified French teachers to teach their students.
On one hand, we have teachers with great abilities to speak French struggling to provide quality teaching in English in Quebec, and on the other hand, we have teachers with a great ability to speak English struggling to provide quality teaching in French throughout English Canada.
Why not create a simple teacher exchange at the beginning of the career to alleviate that and to help the English people get more fluent in their French abilities and the French get more fluent in their English abilities?
I am a good example of what can happen to someone who is completely immersed in the second language. My accent is not so bad. If we were to do that, the quality of French immersion teachers would increase.
From what I understood, this opportunity, however good it was, was out of the hands of those within Canadian Heritage because education is a provincial matter and they couldn't make the transition.
This being said, I don't see why the federal government wouldn't be able to encourage this opportunity by offering incentives such as grants, scholarships, subsidies, or whatever to make those exchanges happen.
I have another story for you. I'm not sure if I'm going to have enough time, but I'll try anyway. This will provide a segue from the first two points into the third point.
I was approached by a student at Western University who is a researcher. He was studying a literary review on why boys don't take French after grade 9. I asked him to share his thoughts with me, and he obliged by sharing with me the social stigma, the level of maturity, the other options that are available to them. As you've come to know from me, I took a slightly different approach to his question and I asked him to look at things differently.
What happens when our immersion students, or anyone for that matter, leave high school? What are the careers that they go forth to do? Most immersion graduates, a great majority of them, will become French teachers—French immersion teachers, core teachers, one or the other. The teacher market is normally dominated by women. More women go into that category. The young girls see the value of continuing their studies through to grade 12 because they know at the end they'll be able to become immersion teachers and have great lives, whereas for the young boy who doesn't really want to become a teacher, where's that career that he has to strive for with his French? Where's he going to go afterwards?
Again, it comes down to the post-secondary opportunities in French and what's available for a young person at the post-secondary level.
This is the third point. For years we've spent millions upon millions to ensure that as many children as possible obtain the best type of immersion education possible. If we've invested so much, so many resources into the study of immersion, I have to ask, why are we studying it again? Why are we back here studying more?
Canada founded immersion studies. We're the leader in immersion studies. We want to maintain our status as a leader. There are thousands of immersion teachers. There are many researchers studying immersion. When the whole francophone community talks about French in English Canada, they refer to the immersion students. It's all about immersion.
Obviously, you're going to hear that we need to improve immersion studies when all of these voices collectively are telling you that immersion is the way to go. We have to increase the amount of immersion, but I think it's pretty common knowledge that with all the research that has been performed, the level, the amount we can increase on the studies is only going to be marginal. We're not going to see a substantial increase in the number of bilingual Canadians or the capacity of English Canadians to speak French if we concentrate solely on immersion.
I've run out of time, but I strongly suggest that this committee and/or others, or researchers throughout the country begin to look at the post-secondary environment for anglophones wishing to learn French. What are the challenges? What are the opportunities available? What are the roadblocks? I think if we look at this question, we'll start to see that we can drastically increase our success.
Thank you very much.