SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Time to Think Outside the Box

If a frog is placed in boiling water, according to the story, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is gradually heated, it will stay there until it is cooked to death. This must be the explanation behind the cheerful willingness of Salmon Arm parents to camp out for two days and nights in a school parking lot so that they can get their kids into French immersion.

We at School for Thought find this quite surprising. We could understand if it happened only the first year that French immersion was offered, or if it happened one year when there was an unexpectedly large number of parents wanting French immersion for their children. But this is not the case. Every year, there are too few French immersion places, and every year a number of parents - mostly low-income parents who can’t manage to camp out - are forced to give up their dream of enrolling their children in French immersion.

Why is no one asking the school board to expand its French immersion program? Why are these parents so willing to passively accept whatever the school board decides to grant them? Would they be so passive if the hydro authority decided to produce too little electricity?