Re: [Futurework] 128. Anti-immigration feeling grows in Europe

[Robert E. Bowd]

Harry,   Have you heard of Woodbridge and Maple, in Ontario?  80 per cent of my neighbours are of Italian background.   The average home, in our neighborhood, is priced at about $300 000.00, with many tipping 500 000.00.  These numbers are above the Canadian means.  Some ghetto!   As to the failure of ESL [I work with Korean ESL students, periodically], I can't agree.  There are problems in the delivery of programme, but these are largely problems with underfunding and lack of availability in many schools, or underqualified teachers, in some instances.   Public education has not served this population well, despite the encouragement to immigrate to Canada, a country whose public programmes are being maintained by immigrant tax dollars given that the Canadian birth rate is dropping.   As a point of interest, the research shows that it takes, on average, 7 years for an ESL learner to attain mastery in English.  Before using the word "failure", I would like to know where in that process the program evaluation leading to your conclusion of 'failure' has been done?   The failures I see are failures of public will, especially in the past 8 years in Ontario.   The situation, in the US, is quite different, of course, given the archaic, class-determined manner in which education revenues are raised, based on local property values, and this impacts directly on the quality of programme delivery.   Bob     ----- Original Message ----- From: Karen Watters Cole To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 1:58 PM Subject: RE: [Futurework] 128. Anti-immigration feeling grows in Europe Harry, why do you say that ESL has been a complete failure?  - KWC   Ed, When I lived in Ontario, it was noticeable that new immigrants tended to move into their own "ghettos". Particularly so in the case of the Italians, who gathered together in Toronto. There is nothing wrong with this, for it is natural for people in new and strange circumstances to cleave to their own, but I wonder what the situation is now? Are the sons and daughters of the immigrants moving out into the broader reaches of Canada? We have a problem here with new immigrants (legal and illegal) from Mexico. I should say that they have a problem. The only way they have of getting out of the barrios is by learning English. The schools are letting them down. Teachers who teach the ESL. classes (English as a Second Language) earn an extra $5,000 a year for doing so. Yet, the program appears to have been a complete failure. I want the sons and daughters to get out of the barrios and become CEOs, perhaps of Enron and similar companies, but in any event, good English is the passport to success. Fortunately, the kids learn English themselves. Unfortunately, not the kind of English that would become a passport. Harry