Earlier this school year, the SCHS world language department announced their plans to cut the school’s French program. This decision was enforced upon the department by the SCUSD after an abrupt and drastic drop in student enrollment in just a matter of years.
Such a trigger-happy willingness to axe an incredibly important curriculum on behalf of the SCUSD reeks of cultural erasure.
As a result of colonization, francophones are strewed out and partitioned around the world. Individuals from the Maghreb, the Levant, Indochina, west and central Africa and Europe are among many of the world’s French-speakers. It’s hard to believe that hundreds of years of French imperialism can be consolidated in a single French class, but believe it or not, it does.
A French class brings together francophones from around the world – cultures that traditionally clash and have issues with each other based on ethnic, racial annd religious lines. In a class that chooses to teach their cultures, even having a textbook that devotes time and space to doing so, such barriers can be overcome.
The diversity of a French class in representing francophones globally cannot be understated. So knowing this fact, the SCUSD’s choice to hack off the program entirely speaks testimony to their inability to factor in and value their district’s French-speaking students.
It would be easier to forgive the decision if the SCUSD chose to boost the curriculum’s enrollment, but no such thing has happened. A language class is an elective, meaning that it should be treated so. Electives around the school are advertised when it comes to enrollment, but no such thing has been done for French.
Students need to be pushed into any given elective. Classes such as Journalism and Leadership make the decision to advertise out of a consciousness of their respective places in a schoolwide dynamic. The choice to do so indicates an enthusiasm and happiness about their availability in students’ course requests. Not seeing French class subjected to the same treatment reveals that the class and the students it would appeal to are not cared about.
Logically, such apathy conveys a clear disinterest in the representation and celebration of the diverse and wide-ranging culture of francophone students district-wide. This cannot stand.
The choice to make Ethnic Studies a mandatory class for students by the California state legislature was a choice made for the building of healthier racial and ethnic dynamics among oncoming generations. This policy should be reverberated in all decision making implemented into the SCUSD. Yet it is clear that the abandonment of the French program is a severing from a commitment to racial and ethnic equity.
At the end of all debate and argument, it is unclear to see what the final effect of the end of the French curriculum will be; however, one thing is for certain. There will be no positive benefits.