But ... I too am a Francophile

Apparently one of the two women proposing a new French immersion program, either as a focus option attached to an existing neighborhood school, or perhaps as another charter school, is a Francophile --a lover of all things French. 

Well, so am I, at least to a degree.  I love most things French --the food, the health care, the five week vacations in August or thereabouts, the literature, the vineyards, the really professional waiters, Le Tour de France.

But I'm not enthused about a new French language program as part of Portland's public school system.  As I wrote earlier, it's a question of equity.  All these niche special programs, including language immersion, tend to stratify Portland's schools.  And that's not something a public school system should encourage.

Options may be good for the few, but they tend to be bad for the many. 

Here's something I do agree with:

"... instilling language – any language – in ...children ...to enrich their cognitive development."

Any language.  So why not Spanish, which already is taught, immersion style, in several Portland elementary schools?  I think that's the best chance for PPS, especially at this time, to equalize enrollment between rich and poor schools, and thereby turn the tide of the growing disparity in educational opportunity within the district. 

But that would require money the district and the state don't have, so Spanish in every school in unlikely to happen anytime soon.  Adding French as another option would only complicate district finances further.

One last thing.  I said in my earlier post that immersion programs tend to be elitist.  In the Trib piece, Marie-Pierre Wolfe, the founder of Eugene's French immersion program*, said that the program was "...labeled elitist because the students came from educated families... ."

Her defense against the charge was remembering "...one student who didn’t come from the ‘rich’ hill where all the other students lived."  He even had to take "two buses" to get to the Fox Hollow School where the French program was located.

Ms Wolfe makes the case for me.  One poor kid among the many who aren't is hardly the definition of diversity.  

*(The school's No child Left Behind report card seems to indicate that the number of minority and special needs students is too few to measure with the required tests.  The enrollment at the school appears to be overwhelmingly white and wealthy.)

Comments

[;]

If it's impossible to implement your recommendation of Spanish in every school due to lack of money, then do we need to start talking about dismantling the existing language immersion programs to address the unequal offerings that currently exist between schools? Your post seems to just argue for keeping the unequal status quo.

[Terry]

No, but the first step is to quit adding the special programs which exacerbate inequity. I think that choice and the transfer policy that enables it must be dealt with before any progress can be made.