To the editor:
Re: "Letter of the week," May 23. Let us deconstruct, as it were, Jean-Louis Brussac's letter: L'Ãcole Bilingue may well be seismically unsound, but that is not a good enough reason to fret for the safety of the pupils inside because (A) earthquakes occur "very often at night," (B) children are more likely to die at home due to poor construction and (C) more damage was caused in Kobe by gas fires than by the quake itself.
On the other hand, the uselessness of learning French in Canada is so clear and dramatic, in his view, that it constitutes sufficient justification on its own for demolishing the school and never rebuilding it-this despite the fact that I'm quite certain it is possible to change the name, mandate and curriculum of a school without actually tearing down the schoolhouse itself. And even though he admits to using his French privately and professionally in the U.S., Europe, Japan and China, he contends that it is pointless for Canadian schools to teach Canadian students the French language because they will have fewer opportunities to use it in Canada than he has had abroad.
Perhaps he does not realize that persons educated in Canada sometimes travel and work abroad, too. Félicitations to Mr. Brussac for obtaining the maximum score in French on his baccalauréat; I wonder whether he performed as well on the logical reasoning portion of the exam.
Evan Ouimette, Vancouver
