Over the past two weeks, parents and teachers have packed hotel ballrooms in the province’s southern cities, voicing their anger at proposed changes to French language learning.
Dozens of parents publicly denounced the province’s plan at public consultation sessions in Moncton, St. John’s and Fredericton.
According to Donald Wright, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick, Premier Blaine Higgs and Education Minister Bill Hogan should be wary of that fear.
“You don’t want to upset parents and you don’t want to upset parents over their children’s education,” he said. “Parents can mobilize. Middle-class parents with a vested interest in French immersion understand how government works, how communication works, how the law works.
“You don’t want to alienate your voters.”
The new program is called the Innovating Immersion Program and will replace French immersion with the Anglophone system for all incoming students. The proposal would see children in grades 1 and kindergarten spend half their day in English and the other half in French, with the goal that all students graduate with at least a conversational level of French.
Parents have expressed concern over the program’s impact on students with early literacy, learning or other disabilities and whether students will still be able to achieve the same level of French competency as they would in immersion.
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According to political scientist J.P. Lewis, drawing attention to the issue alienates a major voting bloc.
“This policy position may have caught their attention and perhaps antagonized them and in some cases may change their vote in the next election,” he said. “It can be cynical to look at the decisions a government is making and just wondering how the vote intent will play out, but it’s easy to say here that the people who are showing up in these consultations are the kind of people who The parties see active voters in those ridings as ones that could be close.
“It could be a point of concern for the Conservative government.”
In the 2020 election, Higgs’ majority government victory was driven by gains in the Fredericton and Moncton regions. Urban and suburban middle-class voters who are most affected by the changes could have an impact on the 2024 elections in the province.
Wright said the experience of former education minister Kelly Lamrock, who tried to get the immersion intake level up to grade 6 before pushing it to grade 3 and finally leaving it at grade 1, is an instructive example that when you mother If you try to fight with your father then what can happen on education.
“You don’t pick a fight with middle-class parents who have access to social capital, understand how the system works, because they will push back and in this case, they will win,” he said.
But Lewis said the biggest threat to Higgs’ quest to reform second-language French education may come from within his own party.
It “could be the major breaking point to propel any opposition within the Progressive Conservative caucus and Progressive Conservative cabinet,” he said.
“That’s where I think the breaking point will be if there is one and that’s where I imagine the government will probably think about backtracking.”
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So far Fundy-the-Isles-St. John West MLA Andrea Anderson Mason has been the only caucus member to question the proposal, citing concerns over its impact on the new literacy curriculum that is being rolled out across the province.
“Put on the brakes. We’re just implementing this new literacy program,” he told reporters last week.
“So now to say we’re going to spend half the day in French and half the day in English, I’m concerned that they haven’t taken enough time to address that issue.”
Higgs’ insistence that the new program begin in September of 2023 was also a significant point of disagreement, leading to former education minister Dominic Cardy resigning from cabinet in October 2022 after he tried to take a “wrecking ball” to the premier. charged to. French immersion.
Over the past two weeks, Hogan and Deputy Education Minister John McLaughlin have begun to reassure parents that the new program is just a proposal and could be adjusted or abandoned after consultation.
“There is still plenty of time if we choose to do Grade 1 French immersion next year. As such, it is only January. So we have plenty of time to choose that path.’
Parents won’t know whether the province will go ahead with the program or have something different until the consultation ends in early February.
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