Dear Sir:
The parental response to the Coast Mountain School District’s mulling over placing limits on its French Immersion program is an indicator that, for parents, educating our youth is not an undertaking to be treated as if it were a commercial or industrial enterprise.
French Immersion is not an essential course. Students may go on the become lawyers, engineers or scientists without the benefit of French Immersion.
However, French Immersion opens doors to horizons beyond the English speaking world.
History provides ample evidence that we cannot foretell the future. The best we can do for our children is to provide them with opportunities to nurture, grow and expand their abilities to think, to reflect, and to reason.
Doing so is not an option: it is the older generation’s duty.
We should look to Ireland for inspiration in this regard, according to The Guardian newspaper, responding to the question of “How should educationalists prepare young people for civic and professional life in a digital age?”
Irish President Michael D. Higgins suggested that teaching philosophy “is one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal to empower children into acting as free and responsible subjects in an ever more complex, interconnected, and uncertain world.”
Philosophy is today an optional course in Ireland’s high schools and the feasibility of teaching the subject in primary schools is being explored.
Our school district trustees would do well to reflect on Ireland’s determination and search for ways not only to retain French Immersion, but to also explore the feasibility of introducing optional philosophy courses in our classrooms.
André Carrel,
Terrace, B.C.
