I’m… puzzled, to say the least. WHAT was going on in these administrators’ brains, I ask you?
The university apparently only backed down due to “strong public pressure over the extremely sensitive issue in the country which is officially bilingual.”
The service dog trainer in me is pulling her hair out by the roots. I have trained bilingual (hell, trilingual) dogs for service work, but with guide dogs, I’m told the one-language-rule is extremely important, and I can easily see why: You want to eliminate all possibility of command confusion in the dog to prevent potentially DANGEROUS accidents with a blind handler.
I’m always baffled by stories like this. It just seems so bizarre that a group of people can come out with a ruling like this without even ONCE thinking of the potential for public outrage.
Give me a break - did they honestly think it would disrupt the learning of English if the guy spoke French to his guide dog?
Extreme public pressure in a country that is officially bilingual? Give me a break. How about “extreme public pressure to exract their heads from their asses and be remotely reasonable”
Hey, you beat me to the Pit with this one. One of my best friends has a guide dog named Willow (from The Seeing Eye of Morristown, NJ, a great institution). She’s pretty bright (my friend too, met her at Wellesley, but in this case I mean Willow) but she is a dog and needs consistency. She obeys the commands instantly now, and to change them at this point (she’s four) would be bad for all concerned.
Hate to say it, but this is why people make fun of Canada sometimes–fuzzy-headed idealism over reality. Glad they had to reverse it, but it shouldn’t have made the BBC before somebody with two brain cells laughed it out of the room.
Huh. This is sort of an eye-opener for me. (If you’ll pardon the expression.) For some reason, I had always had this prejudice that it was the Francophones up there who were the raving nitwits about language issues. I guess I should have known better, though. Having one’s head up one’s ass knows no bounds of color, creed, or culture.
A typical example of people in positions of authority lacking the moral courage to actually use that authority to make decisions. Falling back on the rulebook in cases like this is just simple cowardice.
First of all that should read “some francophone Quebeckers” instead of “Francophones”
Secondly, this is or was not a moral issue. All over the country their are language immersion schools that require the second language student to refrain from the use of the first language.
All I see in this case is the pitfall of a bureaucracy intended to control ther front line providers of a service. No big deal and quickly rectified.
Well, that’s another debate for another time - but for the record, not all militant francophones are Quebecois
What amuses me about this incident is that technically, NB is the only officially bilingual province (provincial level) in the country (federally, we are a bilingual country).
This was just a ridiculous case of badly applying rules, if you ask me… It’s not as much a language issue as a “dumb administrator tap-dancing on the discrimination line” issue…
… though it certainly did fuel some bad reactions from the francophones among us (me included). Discrimination sucks. At least we can all agree on that
Heh, I just had to reply because UNB is in my town and I’ve have some friends that worked at the ELP for summer jobs.
They are going for a total immersion situation so the students are basically forced to learn English quickly so they can function. I understand the concept but it has lead to some pretty stupid rules (this one being far and away the stupidest). One of my buddies had to chastise a girl for swearing in Spanish when she caught her finger in a closing door. He was technically supposed to write her up for it but, not being a total idiot, he just told her not to do it again after he got her finger fixed.
So I guess I basically agree with grienspace
P.S It’s not only for French speakers by the way; there are a lot of Asian, Spanish and Middle Eastern attendees too.
P.P.S. One of the greatest things about the ELP (from a local standpoint anyway) is that it guarantees that there will be a lot of girls around town in the summer who are looking to learn how to swear in English.
Sometimes I think there are more petty despots in education than anywhere else. More ruling by fiat, harder to require quantifiable results. I think that’s the “fuzzy headed idealism over reality”. Not only this student, but I pity the teachers who work under the morons who issue edicts like this.
Oh my. This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard!
I attended Middlebury Language Schools for a 7-week immersion session in German. They were pretty darn serious about the immersion aspect of it. It was a residential program, and we weren’t supposed to speak English, or even hear English at all if we could help it. Of course, we were supposed to speak German amongst ourselves at all times. But they went further than that. We weren’t even supposed to read English newpapers, see English TV, or even listen to English pop music!* It was even suggested that we try to minimize the amount of time we spent on the phone or writing to non-German speaking family and friends. Our not speaking or writing English was emphasized as being more important than passively hearing it in any case. (I don’t know of any enforcement that they did. I think it was assumed that people who were motivated enough to attend such a program were motivated enough to self-police.)
I utterly fail to see how hearing dog commands in English would have impacted on the German immersion experience in any way. If Joe Shmoe in my German class told his dog to “sit” instead of “sitten die butten downen,” I can’t see how it would even register in our brains as “hearing English,” especially after the first day or so. I doubt it would even have any significant impact on Joe Shmoe’s learning experience, as I imagine the commands become pretty automatic after a short time.
Does Canada have legislation similar to our Americans with Disabilities Act?
We did listen to plenty of English music anyway. How much Udo Lindenberg can a person take? I remember we salved our guilty consciences by translating EMF’s Unbelievable into German–Du bist unglaublich! Oh! We also came up with some fairly bizarre vocabulary when we couldn’t figure out how to say something in German and didn’t really want to ask our instructors. Two particular favorites were “upgehooken” and “upgefucken.” Good times, good times…I hope I get the opportunity to spend another summer there sometime.
A truly ridiculous ruling. Damned Cruella DeVille.
Say, Elly, how do I teach my doggie French? Sheila is a North Florida redneck Aussie Shepherd/Border Collie. She doesn’t even respond to soupcon* at dinner time.
Trust me, there are plenty of nitwit francophone Acadians - says the girl born in Moncton, on the bilingual provincial line (yes, there is a line - I could draw it for you)
Wow, they’re training guide frogs nowadays? You wouldn’t think a frog would be smart enough to do that, being a tiny amphibian and all. Wouldn’t you have to keep it moist? Where would you put the collar? Or the harness?
Okay, to be fair, this is not a French-English issue. The paper this morning said that people in that program are not even allowed to call home and speak in their native language. As well, another blind person with a dog signed the form and did just fine.
I understand why this should be an exception, but neither English nor French people in Canada need to stretch this far to look for prejudice.
I remember we salved our guilty consciences by translating EMF’s Unbelievable into German–Du bist unglaublich! Oh! We also came up with some fairly bizarre vocabulary when we couldn’t figure out how to say something in German and didn’t really want to ask our instructors. Two particular favorites were “upgehooken” and “upgefucken.” Good times, good times…I hope I get the opportunity to spend another summer there sometime.