Surrey - The Editor, Re: "French immersion pour la bourgeoise," the Now, Jan 15.
As a parent of a child in the Surrey French immersion program, I was offended and saddened to read Adrian MacNair's column on why parents enrol their children in French immersion.I am 42 and I was also in French immersion in as a youth. I now have two daughters, 10 and 12, who I enrolled.I feel MacNair's opinion is somewhat shallow, in that he feels that we parents of French immersion students are "Type A" and are only looking to segregate our children in hopes of a higher education (or in his words a "publicly funded backdoor ticket to a private school education).Wow. Why can't we, as taxpayers, want a better education for our children?Children in Europe and Asian countries are all learning two, three and even four different languages in school. That alone puts them at an advantage later in life when it comes to applying for a job.And, given that our country is a bilingual nation (French and English the last time I checked), would it not make sense to help better educate our entire nation by enabling them to speak another language, especially one that is spoken around the world internationally?If you do a consensus, I'm sure you would find many parents of French immersion students are more involved with their children's schools. Why? Because we care about our children's future. If it's our job as parents to raise our children right to become valuable contributing members of our society and country, why criticize us for helping them get one extra tool/ability to add to their resumés?Yes, if looking at sheer numbers, Mandarin and Punjabi might be spoken by more people, but not in as many different countries of the world.Do I speak French every day? No. Can I hold a conversation? Yes. Does it make me better than a non-French-speaking person? No. Just simply a different skill on my own personal resumé.Let's embrace French immersion and work toward a better educated nation as a whole.Orianne JangulaSurrey