New Brunswick test scores are low, but again, they are not THAT low. Bilingualism is bad, but not THAT bad, and the government policy of dumbing down ‘bilingualism’ to ‘intermediate knowledge of french’ will go pretty far to address that problem in an of itself. I never went to immersion and failed french more times than I can count but I can still talk ‘intermediate french’ with my wife. In fact, NB’s numbers aren’t much lower than other provinces, particularly in comparison of immersion or non-immersion (Manitoba is the clear standout here where both sets of students test identical).

As for testing, its odd that NB opts out of most national tests and then claims that they will ‘have benchmarks’. Yeah, I trust that. But let’s look at studies, like the OECD literacy studies that put NB at the bottom of the list (or close to). When you actually go through it you find that the problem is not immersion at all-it is the urban/rural divide, that ‘thing’ that rural people keep complaining about that urban people typically ignore. It’s well established that the further a child is from school, the worse they do. The OECD study found that the worst scores were NOT non immersion students, it is actually rural french students. And guess what, they have among the worst funding, about to get much worse now that ‘community schools’, also known as ‘corporate schools’ are about to be the norm. Vermont, a rural state, kept local schools open, and doubled funding and its low test scores increased in a a decade to above the national average. Rural schools ALWAYS have lower scores, and usually fewer services.

So take for example girls in urban schools. Girls are far more likely to take immersion (another reason it was popular and an issue seldom discussed), and girls in urban areas in New Brunswick actually had scores HIGHER than the OECD average. Their education is about to get worse. In the government’s own studies the number of students in grade two in St. Stephen who never reached benchmark proficiency dropped 60% in ONE year. In other words, and what any parent has and will tell you, is that educational problems have far more to do with individual schools, individual teachers, and even individual kids than it does with implementation of ANY ‘program’. So the government shuffling about programs clearly will not even address the problem. I know of people who took immersion right through to grade 12 and still aren’t bilingual, how many do you think will remember the french they learned in grade 5?

One final point is that opposers to this policy have been saying what is lacking is FUNDING, and I checked it out and New Brunswick spends (by far) the least amount of its budget on education, barely 16%, compared to 20, 22, and 25% for the other maritime provinces. That includes the boost in funding from this year by the way. So the ‘solution’ is quite clear-increase funding, look at individual problem schools and teachers, get accurate statistics, and make the change in bilingualism to support ‘intermediate french’ so that more people qualify.

At least TRY those first, I can well imagine why people get irate, this is just public policy insanity at a level not seen since Irving got an LNG tax break.

That brings us to fascism ( or ‘public policy insanity’). Let’s make a comparison, in international polls the US is by far the most dangerous and feared country on the planet, they also have the most democratic forms available to any country. Does that mean that if current practices hold that in ten years nobody will be able to say ‘democracy’, because a democratic country also did bad things? By that reasoning people won’t be able to use ANY political discourse in describing political events.

The definition of fascism is fairly broad, but even at a specific level EVERY nationalist country in the world (which I think is all of them) is fascist. Fascist means that the state’s rights take priority over individual or collective rights. Trudeau ensured that collective rights weren’t an issue, and increasingly with Canada’s terrorism laws individual rights have taken a backseat, just ask Charles Leblanc.

And of course go ask a native what kind of country it is, and fascist will be a term definitely used. So this particular act of Lamrock’s fits in there quite well. Fascism is now taken to be any action by government that goes against the common good and is done autocratically. The attention to this issue has brought out the analysis of the studies that shows this policy is NOT ‘the common good’, and you’ll notice that it isn’t even an item being voted on in the legislature.

So the term ‘fascist’ isn’t nearly the same as ‘hitleresque’, which I would agree, is so broad and derogatory that it’s ‘stridency’ should have your grandmother not saying that you like your own voice, but rather ‘insisting you take your meds before talking’. It’s true that Hitler was an elected official who acted like an oligarch, and so does Harper, so as long as the definition of ‘hitleresque’ was defined first, then it could fit quite well. That’s a frequent topic made over at Charles Leblanc’s blog, where a large number of ‘fans’ have no trouble accepting the fascist line-just go listen to some of his interviews. But people at different economic levels have always differed greatly on the costs/benefits of their governments. Natives have a FAR different view of the matter, and the poor definitely do. Think of it this way, in germany Hitler cancelled elections. That’s a terrible ‘crime’ and easily ‘fascist’. In Canada, they would never do that, but they have ensured that we have an electoral system which makes any political change impossible and where who you vote for is almost completely irrelevant. Yes, that is ‘different’, but exactly HOW different remains to be seen.

Surprise, surprise – another main $tream journalist gives the 4th Reich (1) another pass while they overtly decimate the populace.

“And, having been labelled as one, will I think twice about opening my mouth the next time a sacred cow gets led to the slaughterhouse?”

Please spare us – our media personalities have either been bamboozled or complicit in the perpetration of every state sponsored crime of late, it seems, i.e.:

- The obsequious retooling of our Armed forces to assist in Bush co’s wars.
- Covering up child rape in Prisons and Churches across Canada
- Insane bottom-up policing in the Nixonian drug war

The mass media’s acceptance of superficial inquiries and the lumping of blame on a few political Oswalds (i.e. Andy Scott, circa 1997) is no small part of why the information revolution is occurring far from the corporo-fascist run newsrooms.