Dossiers ~ Parenthése L’enseignement 50/50 comme compromis? D’autres parents, particulierement les couples exogames, choisissent les programmes d’immersion en francais du sys- téme scolaire anglophone dans le but d'assurer le bilinguisme de leur enfant. Encore ici, ce compromis ne produit pas de résultats optimaux. Les éléves des programmes d'immersion n'atteignent pas un rendement en francais similaire a celui des éléves des écoles francaises et maintiennent une identité ethnolinguistique surtout anglophone. Des sondages auprés de parents ayants droit selon l'article 23 de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés montrent que plusieurs parmi eux pensent que le programme scolaire idéal pour leur enfant comprendrait un enseignement 50/50, c'est-d-dire la moitié des cours en francais et l'autre moitié en anglais. A leur avis, ce compromis favoriserait le bilinguisme. La faille fondamentale de cette logique est |'attribution en- tire du développement du bilinguisme au milieu scolaire. On oublie les réles du milieu socioinstitutionnel et du milieu familial. Le modéle des balanciers compensateurs montre que |'école et la famille doivent plutét viser 4 contrebalancer les effets puissants du milieu social ou la langue anglaise est largement dominante. Pour les familles exogames, le degré le plus élevé de bilinguis- me et le meilleur équilipre entre les deux identités culturelles chez leur enfant sont associés a un choix réfléchi et éclairé, celui de miser sur le réle compensateur de la francité fami- lioscolaire. What's forte francité familioscolaire | in Exogamenglish? | by Glen Taylor The key message in the preceding article is that we as — counterbalancing the weight of English-speaking society with exogamous parents can help our children become flu- the combined weight of francophone education and a home ently bilingual and develop a well-balanced identity _ setting that actively encourages the use of French. by using French as much as possible outside the francophone school. The ferm forte francité familioscolaire means that both — Without the illustration (which is based on extensive research], family life and schooling contribute to children's French-lan- one might think that home and school together would over- guage development. compensate for society's influence. Not so! What we do, in fact, is simply level the playing field so our kids can acquire both lan- Figure | in professor Landry's article, which we could call the guages and cultures. Professor Landry’s article explains all this in Counter-balance model of bilingual development, shows how much greater detail. strongly the social and institutional spheres of everyday life - in other words, the many sectors of our predominantly Eng- Now, to answer the question in the title: in ExogamEnglish (since lish-speaking society - influence language acquisition. In fact, | we have our own label why not have our own language, too?) the impact is so strong that even if we spoke no English to our — forte francité familioscolaire translates into... kids, they'd still become fluent in the language simply because they’re surrounded by it. FISH That's right: FISH: French In School and Home. It’s not as slip- Our challenge, then, is to create the necessary balance that pery a concept as you might think, either - it simply involves helps our youngsters realize their full linguistic and cultural po- applying what research has shown to be what's best for our tential in French as well. As Figure 1 shows, we can do this by _ children!