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Matt McCann
TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL

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FREDERICTON - The government isn't giving up on a universal intensive French program, says Education Minister Kelly Lamrock, but they've done all they can for now.

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Kelly Lamrock

"I think we've pushed the limits of that, and we've found out where those limits are both operationally and politically," Lamrock told a Telegraph-Journal editorial board Wednesday.

At a Tuesday press conference, Lamrock released the government's revised plan for French second-language education, a compromise born of a court decision that quashed the province's original plan and ordered it to resume consultations with its constituents.

Lamrock has previously said his original plan, which would have eliminated early French immersion in favour of an intensive French program beginning in Grade 5, was an attempt to combat low literacy levels and student streaming.

The new system will see immersion begin in Grade 3 and provincewide intensive French begin in Grade 5, with Grade 6 being the entry point for late immersion.

"I still believe someday the logic will win out that the best way to deal with a second language is to have a universal expectation and a universal way of dealing with it," he said.

"We've been fighting an educational orthodoxy that says you have to stream in Grade 1 or you're not getting bilingual results and I think, by challenging that, we've finally broken that idea," Lamrock said, adding that having optional courses in elementary school has never been a good idea, but debate was a long time coming because governments were reluctant to broach the subject.

"Did that cause some misgivings around the cabinet table about bilingualism? Sure it did. It made us nervous, it made me nervous," he said.

The cabinet anxiety is something that political scientist Donald Desserud has always been curious about.

"It was being portrayed as an anglophone, middle-class issue by the government," the University of New Brunswick Saint John professor said.

"I wondered what would happen the moment it became a language issue, because language issues are sacred here in New Brunswick."

Although it's difficult to calculate, Desserud thinks the compromise could eventually hurt the government.

"It's going to cost them, and they've had several fights where they've had to come back with a compromise position, so they're sort of a wounded government now," he said.

He said the best-case scenario is that people forgive and forget, but "the pessimistic scenario is that this is a pattern they've established, and it reveals a deep-seated problem at their policy level."

Lamrock told the editorial board the new system would have been just as controversial as the original one if he had introduced it to begin with.

He said the government has learned from the experience and it's the process of bringing people together to discuss the issue that's important.

But Paul Howe, a UNB Fredericton political science professor, said the whole process, from the Croll-Lee report to the legal action to the compromise has been messy.

"Even if, at the end, we've got sort of a resolution," he said, "it looks like something that was cobbled together and not a rationally thought-out plan."

"I think there are probably a fair number of people out there who wanted early immersion who are willing to accept the compromise. Still, it's hard to know what the numbers are, but I think it will cost them to some degree."