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I remember the excitement of starting French in Grade 5 at Prince Arthur School in St. Andrews in September 1948.

Our teacher, Miss Gladys Thompson, had spent six weeks in Fredericton acquiring the language at UNB Summer School. Miss Thompson gallantly started the first French lesson with: "La Port," pointing to the door, "La Feneter," pointing to the window, and "La Pupitrer," pointing to the desk. At home, I told Mother our class was learning French.

Always keen to help a struggling pupil, Mother plunged into the abyss. French from her francophile father was second nature, and Mother was amused by my curious pronunciation. When Miss Thompson's excursions into the new language started again, with Mother's instruction fresh in my head, I tried to help Miss Thompson with her Charlotte County dialect - may she at last forgive a 10-year-old's enthusiasm.

Over the intervening 60 years of French instruction in English-speaking schools, various methods have been applied, and all have been debunked, characterized a disaster, for although learning French is supposedly important, the means of acquiring it through school teachers and curriculum modifications is still unproductive, according to our provincial Department of Education.

I finally acquired enough French in Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia to believe I could teach French a bit better than Miss Thompson; in 1968, as French and Music specialist in Fredericton at two schools with 600 children, Grades 3 to 8, 45 classes per week, I built a French room for the children of Barker's Point school (an anti-French community at the time). In a bright and cheerful classroom, surrounded by French books and pictures depicting French scenes, even the children who had difficulty with the language arrived to visit, and the French room became a haven in the school.

The ambiance was an important first step, but linguistic experiences in another cultural milieu were strengthened through a method started in Quebec in the 1960s called Total Immersion.

In order to promote our version, called "Early French Immersion," I ran for the Fredericton School Board in 1974, introduced despite controversy by Superintendent of District #26, John Hildebrand, who wanted "Anglophone children to have an equal opportunity to be bilingual." English-speaking children did not have the exposure to French in an English-speaking community, he commented recently.

New Brunswick had become the only bilingual province in Canada, and Fredericton was its capital. And Canada, a bilingual country. Dr. Hildebrand, now retired in Fredericton, maintains "abolishing Early French Immersion is a big mistake."

In 1977, I was elected as the only woman school trustee in the City of Fredericton and served until 1983; during that time, EFI was occasionally called "elitist," although pupils came from every background; every parent had the right to apply for EFI for their 6 year old; early pupils were screened to see if they had the interest in learning a new language because their parents, unlike my mother, were generally not able, nor encouraged, to teach French to their children, and therefore, might become frustrated in not assisting in their child's educational program.

Early French Immersion in Fredericton has developed over 34 years, and built a solid reputation for graduating bilingual young persons. There are imperfections, but they can be dealt with.

All children can succeed in EFI, with the proper encouragement.

Like the gift of another language, Measha Brueggergosman was assisted in her music, all the way through school, by Early French Immersion.

The FHS graduate related recently how important growing up in Fredericton was to her, learning French at a young age: the more languages one learns earlier, the more doors open, the more successful and confident one is.

In my view, our schools should be expanding our languages programs, French from kindergarten to Grade 12, Music from kindergarten to Grade 12, Spanish (the future if any government is thinking ahead 10 years, witness South America and the Caribbean), all the cultural and linguistic gifts we can give earlier to our children and grandchildren, as technology races to cover up culture and bury it.

"Grandparents for EFI" laud this motto: "Language is the sound of music."

As our Department of Education is in its headlong rush to the "future," I can see 1948 returning and French taught in Grade 5 becoming a standard feature with unilingual English-speaking teachers. Even Miss Thompson would turn over in her grave.

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