Quebec's language laws and schools

Quebec’s language laws limit access to English schools for most citizens of the province. This is true...

Yet, if any other Canadian province or American state wanted to offer its linguistic minorities access to the kind of education network Quebec finances for its anglophone minority, every single one of them would have to increase dramatically the number of minority schools and the amount of money spent on them.

For example, if American states were expected to give their Spanish-speaking minority the same education rights that Quebec gives to its English-speaking minority, then New Mexico, California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, Utah, Rhode Island, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Kansas – all states that have more Spanish-speakers than Quebec has English-speakers – would have to create a second publicly funded Spanish-language schools system.

Although all Canadian provinces have some minority education rights and schools, no other provincial minority has the vast network of schools, colleges and universities that English-speakers in Quebec have access to. There are in Quebec about 367 English public schools, 4 English public colleges called CEGEPs and 3 English universities.

In fact, if you use the standard definition of a major university as one that has both a law school and a medical school – New Brunswick’s Université de Moncton, the only autonomous French-language university outside Quebec, does not have the latter – then Quebec is the only state or province to fund a complete education system for its linguistic minority.

That’s if you accept the premise that English-speaking North Americans can be considered a minority at all…

Quebec’s dual school system is, in fact, as old as Canada. It was a compromise of sorts between the Protestant industrialists of Montreal and the all-powerful Catholic clergy who agreed that the province would have two completely separate and independently run school systems: one Protestant, one Catholic, which with time morphed into French and English-language systems. The dual school systems were constitutionalised in 1867 and, to this day, Quebec is the only Canadian province constitutionally obligated to maintain "separate but equal" schools.

Putting limits

In 1969, just a couple of years after the United States government had to send in the army to protect black students being integrated into Little Rock, Arkansas schools in spite of the violent opposition of a certain segment of the white population, the municipality of Saint-Léonard on the island of Montreal went through its own episodes of violent riots over the integration of minorities.

The only difference is that in the case of Saint-Léonard, the white, French-speaking majority was rioting against segregation, not in support of it.

Francophones in Montreal had become increasingly alarmed to see the vast majority of new immigrants to Quebec sending their children to English Schools. That situation, combined with the demographic decline of francophones in Canada and the availability of an extensive and totally free network of English schools in Quebec meant that within one generation French-speakers could have become a minority in Montreal.

Quebec’s francophones, representing about 80% of the population of Quebec but barely 2% of North Americans, were put in the position where they had to assist their neighbors in anglicizing immigrants. Not only were francophones being assimilated, but they were paying for it.

In 1977 the government of Quebec adopted the Charter of the French Language, known as bill 101, which made French the mandatory language of primary and secondary education. From that moment on, all residents of Quebec – except the anglophone minority and the First Nations – had to send their children to French schools from the 1st grade through to the end of High School.

Many people in Quebec’s anglophone community and in the rest of Canada were angered by this apparent limit to their freedom to choose their children’s language of instruction. Few noted that Quebec was the only place on the continent where an actual school network made that choice possible at all.

In any case, parents who have attended English schools anywhere in Canada have the privilege to send their children to either school network in Quebec. It is only francophones and new immigrants – those who make the informed decision of living in the French-speaking part of Canada – who are limited to French Schools.

In 1972, before the adoption of the Charter, only 10% of immigrants to Quebec sent their children to French schools. Since the adoption of bill 101 the situation has reversed. Parents who send their kids to private schools can still send them to English schools as long as the school does not receive government funding.

Freedom of choice remains total when it comes to higher education and students can study in English at college-level (CEGEPs) or in one of Quebec’s three English-language universities.

Yes, but it's your own fault!

After the defeat of the Rebellions of 1837-38 and the Act of Union of 1840, the French-speaking nation in Quebec was reduced to a minority status in a manner that shaped its national consciousness. French Canadians began to see themselves as an ethnic group in someone else's country. So, French Catholic schools in Quebec basically ended up as ethnic "French-Canadian" schools in the same sense that Jewish schools in Montreal are for Jews. No one in these schools really thought about or even cared about the integration of immigrants. 

In the 1960s a new national consciousness arose in Quebec which saw a shift from an ethnic model of the nation to a model which is at once civic, territorial, pluralistic, inclusive, and francophone and in 1964 French schools were taken out of the hands of the Catholic Church and secularized.

So saying that French Catholic schools weren't interested in integrating immigrants is not untrue but to pretend that this was the only thing pushing immigrants to opt for English in Quebec is a gross distortion of reality. Although there were certainly cases of immigrants being refused entry into French Catholic schools, this type of exclusion was in no way systemic. From the records of the Montreal Catholic School Commission, we can see that they did, in fact, admit immigrants into their schools, both French and English. We can also see that the demand by Catholic immigrants to Quebec for English schools grew steadily throughout the 20th century. In any case, by the mid-60s all immigrants had access to secular francophone schools but few chose them, preferring English schools instead. 

In a sense, it's an understandable choice. English was the language of money and power in Quebec and it was the language that dominated the continent including Montreal. Francophones earned on average 35% less than anglophones even with the same level of education. But regardless of this, Angryphones like to say that immigrants chose English over French because we were just a bunch of nasty, xenophobic frogs who excluded them from our schools. They conveniently ignore other factors, like the dominance and power of attraction of English as a reason. In any case, we eventually chose not to publicly fund English education for all of our immigrants. I think not making that choice would have been an act of suicide for our nation.

The dilemma

Quebec’s English-speaking minority has a right to its own parallel school system. To this day, anyone who has studied at least one year in an English school somewhere in Canada is allowed to opt out of the majority’s school system.

This, of course, is rationalized on the principal of some supposed right of children to receive education in their own language. That’s interesting because, at least in Montreal, the majority of English-speaking youth are not studying in English at all!

According to the English Montreal School Board as many as three out of four primary school students spend most of their school day in classes taught in French. The so-called “core” program where the majority of classes are taught in English is the least popular of all the school board’s options and is being abandoned by parents who demand immersion and biliteracy curriculum for their children.

Even Quebec’s stuffy English Private Schools that only a generation ago prepared kids in penny loafers to rule the world in English are now falling over themselves to provide rich people with the French the publicly-funded system can’t afford. The students of Westmount’s Selwyn Housenow spend between 50% and 80% of their class time studying in French and have even added a French verse to their school hymn! (Which, I believe, was the number 3 demand in the FLQ manifesto.)

Outside Montreal the situation is even stranger with many English schools having a majority of French students and very few actual Anglos exercising their right to receive an English-language education in Quebec. In Quebec City close to 60% of the students in English schools are francophones. This is possible because French-speaking, or for that matter, any family that has obtained a certificate of eligibility to English schools through, for example, a mixed marriage, can keep passing the privilege along to further generations until the End of Time.

Hey, it’s not that it’s a bad idea for Quebec’s English-speaking kids to take classes in French. What’s profoundly bizarre is the concept of English-speaking children immersing themselves in French in schools with no French kids, two blocks away from an actual French school…

As even the Montreal Gazette reported, the result is technically bilingual kids who don’t know any French people and who are uncomfortable ordering a burger in French at McDonald's.

On the French side there is growing tension between proponents and opponents to the kind of bilingual programs that have become common on the English side. While there is a lot of demand for them, opponents feel that the French schools’ mission of integrating immigrants into Quebec society, especially in Montreal, could be seriously compromised if more English was introduced in the schools.

As a result, many French-speaking families in Montreal are massively abandoning the public school system for private schools that offer, among other things, better English classes. Between 2001 and 2006, the number of students in Montreal’s private schools leaped by 30%.

All this together leads to a profoundly dyslexic school arrangement. Immigrants to Quebec are now integrating themselves into Quebec society in schools with no French-speaking Québécois, while Quebec francophones send their children to private schools. Montreal Anglos are building their own parallel French school network with no French students while francophones in the rest of the province are keeping an English school system alive even though there are no more actual English-speaking students.

Becoming independent will allow us to normalize our school situation as it will normalize many things in our society. It will allow us to break free from the constitutional straitjacket of the BNAA and of the 1982 constitution. Our language will no longer be a regional, minority language and will instead become the national language of an independent country. An immigrant to an independent Quebec will not be confused about which country he is immigrating to and will understand that French is our common language. Basically, independence will allow us to become a country like any other and we will cease to be a people who lives in fear of being absorbed into a larger nation that refuses to recognize our existence.

Based on two articles by Angry French Guy