This kind of fits here. The biggest public school board in Ottawa is looking into its French immersion offering and whether or not it creates too classes of kids: the "good students" who are all in French immersion and the "weak students" who are in the regular English program.
I think the short answer to that is probably yes, though that's pretty much inevitable when you have different streams that are tailored to kids' ability to learn quickly or more slowly. Personally I think these programs whether they are French immersion, "for the gifted", "enriched" or whatever, are generally desirable.
But obviously with French immersion the usual suspects come out of the woodwork. The comments section for this article is overwhelmingly negative, especially surprising when you consider how popular French immersion is with many parents in the Ottawa area.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...cdsb-1.5168764
It's funny (sorta) to see how the classic borderline francophobic comments emerge almost like clockwork:
- this was all settled on the Plains of Abraham, and they lost!
- the French takeover is underway, we must resist!
- Mandarin would be more useful than French (in Ottawa??????)