Flu Season and Coronavirus: Were Schools Fully Prepared for the Latest Twist?*

Students are now coming down with seasonal colds and the flu.  What was predicted to be a normal flu season in schools turned ou out to be highly unpredictable with the arrival of a ghost menace – the fear of coronavirus, now labelled COVID-19.  Public anxieties were fed by a popular media inundated with frightening stories about the spectre of coronavirus, rivaling that associated with the outbreak of SARS in 2002-2003. The latest scare also sparked a disturbing undercurrent of suspicion, with racist undertones, directed at Canadians of Chinese ancestry.

The common flu remains a bigger threat than coronavirus but you would never know it from the media coverage.  Some 25,854 confirmed cases of the regular flu have been reported since late August 2019, and, so far, the coronavirus, has only infected a dozen Canadians. Some 12,200 Canadians are hospitalized for influenza each year and about 1,000 die across Canada. In 2002-2003, for comparison purposes, 44 people died of SARS in Canada.

Normally calm Public Health authorities are now forecasting an uptick in cases throughout February into March. Teachers and principals will be on the front lines because schools are well-known breeding grounds for germs and infections.

This flu season it is going to be worse because, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), the country is seeing an unusually high number of Influenza B cases, which tend to cause more severe illness in children. Of the 33,615 reported Canadian influenza cases (up until February 8, 2020), 11,905 were classified as Type B, with 57 per cent of those patients under 20 years-of-age. Reported Influenza B cases were also more common in the Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Face masks are disappearing from pharmacy shelves as people are either wearing them outside or hoarding them in the event of a global pandemic. Nova Scotia’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Robert Strang claims that the masks are not guaranteed to offer protection and may encourage people to touch their faces, actually spreading the germs.

The global outbreak is Chinese in origin and that most regrettably still carries insidious connotations. It may have originated in Wuhan in China’s Hubei Province, where some 57 million citizens were placed in a state of lockdown and isolation, but exaggerated fears and anxieties have spread worldwide. The two-week ordeal of international tourists trapped on the quarantined and virus-ravaged Diamond Princess cruise ship anchored in Yokohama, Japan, further fed public anxieties.

Combating and surviving the flu season in school used to be so much easier. Counselling students and teachers to stay home, drink fluids, and get rest used to suffice in weathering the seasonal onslaught. Most of us fooled ourselves into thinking that miracle cures for the cold and flu like Cold-FX were actually working and toughed it out with Tylenol, Hall’s cough drops, and, on a bad day, toilet tissue kleenex.

Today’s principals, teachers, and students come to school prepared with new weapons in the ongoing war against contagion. Wiping down desks with disinfectants and packing little bottles of Purex in pockets and purses is now standard practice. A few even don surgical masks to keep colds in, or ward them off, walking to and from school.

Fear and panic are running high in Ontario and British Columbia school districts where many of the students are Chinese Canadians or recent arrivals of Chinese descent. Vocal and active parents are clamouring for schools to increase screening of Chinese students suspected of being carriers and sending home children whose families have recently returned from China.

Coronavirus-induced tensions are most acute in York Region, north of Toronto, particularly in Richmond Hill and Markham, where 40 per cent of the population is of Chinese origin. A coronavirus-inspired petition targeting Chinese families launched in late January in York Region, north of Toronto, was quickly endorsed by parents in 145 local schools and generated some 10,000 signatures. In the York Region District Board of Education, Board Chair Juanita Nathan and Education Director Louise Sirisko, were compelled to send out a memorandum to all schools in direct response to the level of concern and anxiety being felt by families of Chinese heritage.

While the province of Nova Scotia is home to some 3,500 Chinese-born students, the only public display of concern was by Max Chen, a second-year Chinese student at Cape Breton University. After searching in vain for surgical masks to send home, he voiced his concern that the province’s public health officials were unprepared to deal with a potential outbreak at the university.

Public health officials, educators and academics are fearful of schools and universities becoming swept-up in an us-versus-them cycle of racism directed at those who look different. Spreading of misinformation and ignoring facts from public health agencies is symptomatic of deeper, sublimated problems.

A leading SARS impact researcher, York University’s Harris Ali, who studied the stigmatization of the Chinese population in Canada, put it best. Gaslighting the Chinese as carriers of the contagion, he claims “feeds into already pre-existing underlying biases or prejudices.”

Global pandemics turn flu season into a mass psychological experience that can overshadow the actual health risks of transmission. Calming and dispelling exaggerated fears as well as sanitizing desks have now become the essential skills in a 21st-century educator’s repertoire. That may be a clear indicator of the high anxiety temper of our times.

Why was the current flu season so unpredictable in our schools?  Were Canadian public health authorities ready for the surge in Influenza B, the strain most commonly infecting young people of school age?  Are principals and teachers fully prepare to deal with students showing signs of coronavirus?  What are the challenges posed by containing the spread of viruses while ensuring that students and families of Chinese ancestry are not unfairly targeted in the broader community? 

*An earlier version of this commentary was published in The Chronicle Herald, February 15, 2020.

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The French Immersion Education Dream: What are the Impediments to its Realization?

One of Canada’s most prized educational innovations, French immersion programs for Anglophone children, continues to generate fierce debate in various parts of the country.  Since its inception in 1965 in a small school in the Montreal suburb of St. Lambert, QC,, it has spread right across Canada, actively promoted by Canadian Parents for French (CPF), and exceedingly popular among affluent, upwardly-mobile parents seeking every advantage for their children. The French Immersion Dream, espoused by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, was that the program would succeed in producing a new generation of more fluently bilingual Canadians.

Great progress has been made in integrating French immersion into provincial school systems, but the Dream remains as elusive as ever. While the 2016 Canadian census showed an overall increase in the national bilingualism rate, from 17.5% in 2011 to 17.9% in 2016, the proportion was significantly lower among Canadians whose mother tongue is English (9.2%) or another language (11.7%). Perhaps most telling of all, French immersion is floundering in Canada’s only “officially bilingual province,” New  Brunswick, right next door to largely French-speaking Quebec.  

Accessing the opportunity to enrol in French immersion remains a challenge. Some 79% of bilingual Anglophones surveyed in a 2016 survey reported that they learned French in elementary or high school. They also identified the lack of access to French as a Second Language (FSL) courses as a continuing impediment to learning a second official language. One of the most critical contributing factors is the shortage of teachers with the French language proficiency to deliver the programs, particularly in French immersion, where the requirements are much higher than in the reguar stream.

The problems with French immersion in New Brunswick demonstrate, in microcosm, some of the challenges faced by education authorities everywhere outside of Quebec.  While hailed as Canada’s “only officially bilingual province,” making that a reality through changes in education has proven much easier said than done. A year ago, N.B. Auditor General Kim MacPherson produced the latest evidence that French immersion was falling far short of its primary objective of producing more fluently bilingual graduates.

Finding the optimal French Immersion program in the Anglophone school sector has proven elusive to a succession of governments. Three times since 2008 major changes have been introduced in the provincial program, shifting the entry point from Grade 1 to 3 and back again.  In 2015-16, an Intensive/Post-Intensive French program was started in Grades 4 -12.  Current Education Minister Dominic Cardy is so concerned about the problem that he has waded, once again, into what has proven to be a political minefield, arousing language passions on all sides.

N.B. Auditor General MacPherson delivered a clinical analysis of the sorry state of French immersion in Anglophone school districts. That’s significant because French immersion, in 2016-17, enrolled some 40 per cent of all students in the Anglophone sector.

French immersion was far from its fundamental goal of producing a functionally bilingual generation. Just 10 per cent of the 1,624 anglophone students who entered French immersion in Grade 1 back in 2005, the AG reported, actually achieved the N.B. Education Department’s proficiency target of “advanced or better” upon Grade 12 graduation. Some two-thirds had dropped out of French immersion before graduation. Of those who did not drop out of the program, a disappointing 40 per cent met the expected standard.

The N.B. Department of Education’s official “Everyone at their best” French as a Second Language (FSL) slide show strikes an optimistic tone and gives no indication whatsoever that French immersion is floundering in the province. “Grade 1 entry to FI was successfully introduced in September 2017 and will be the only early entry point in September 2020,” it proclaims.

MacPherson was sharply critical of the latest Grade 1 entry point implementation. “Because of rushed implementation,” she found, “school districts could not recruit enough qualified teachers to meet the implementation timeline.“ Teachers lacking the requisite “language proficiency” were hired, she reported, and “significant resources were directed to implementation, and this impacted student performance across the sector.”

The AG’s report also broke an education sector taboo. Some 90 per cent of N.B. students on personalized leaning plans – serving students with identified learning difficulties – were in the English stream, MacPherson reported, making it “very difficult to teach” in those classes. That confirmed what the weight of research elsewhere has shown: French immersion effectively skims-off most of the academically able students.

What can be done to change the trajectory and produce more anglophone students capable of conversing and working in French in that province — and perhaps elsewhere?  Education Minister Cardy is going to launch pilot projects to test alternatives in FSL education.  It may well ultimately involve scaling back on the province-wide commitment to single-track French immersion.

Single-track French immersion is not the only way to enhance and advance French as a Second Language (FSL) programming, and, in every jurisdiction, it tends to peter-out in the final grades of high school. It rarely even reaches students from more economically disadvantaged communities.

Parent demands for French immersion for their children became so high in some Canadian urban metropolitan school districts that it threatened to crowd out regular program schools. Some more successful Ontario school districts, such as Halton District School Board, for example, responded by offering double-track French immersion and multi-track programs with advanced hybrid French language options, utilizing elements of FI. Meeting those demands continues to be a challenge in Halton District and in Peel Region, west of Metropolitan Toronto.

Some of the proposed N.B. pilot schools should be modelling and testing the dual track and multi-track models combining French immersion for the most disciplined fully-committed students, Extended Core French for those seeking enrichment, and Core French for those struggling to read or to survive the daily rigours of school.

Starting with Grade 1 in September 2020, there is an opportunity to pilot double-track and multi-track FSL programs. It makes good sense to look to Montreal, Quebec, for English schools that have higher success rates in producing students with bilingual graduation certificates. Extended or Expanded Core French (wherein students take two or three of the six core subjects in French, in addition to a French class over the whole year) is working in some Montreal English language schools and might well prove popular in the province. If nothing else, it has all but eliminated the extraordinarily high student attrition problem affecting most single-track FI models everywhere.

Shifting French immersion entry points back and forth in New Brunswick has done little to inspire confidence in politicians or pliable provincial education officials. It has bred cynicism and strengthened the influence of those advocating leaving everything alone in French language programs. Fixing the problem carries political risks.

Most education initiatives falter because of poor or uneven implementation and the September 2020 timeline looks too rushed. Whatever Minister Cardy and his Department do, let’s hope they follow the Auditor General’s wisest advice. Education strategies, the AG reminded us, should be based upon “expert research, in-depth needs assessment and the best practices” found in other provinces and international jurisdictions. Put more simply, do your preparatory homework and take the time to get it right.

What are the prime impediments to implementing French as a Second Language (FSL) programs like French immersion in Anglophone Canadian schools?  How important is the milieu in which French language learning is actually taking place?  How has the shortage of French teachers with the requisite proficiency compounded the difficulties? Are there viable alternatives to single-track French immersion that might prove more successful in the long run? 

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