Foreign Perspectives

Thursday will mark his third week in the class and we just heard today that they’re dropping him back a year because he can’t speak any French yet. Seems a little odd to us as the headmistress told us that he would be starting to speak his first few words of French after 2 or 3 weeks. Now that hasn’t happened (yet) but what has happened (and we suspect that this is the problem) is that his classmates have started speaking English.

I suspect that he’ll not be able to go to the school much longer and this is a way of gently easing him out. For a start, French kids are pretty small and he’ll be easily twice the height of most of the class which I suspect means that he’ll not be able to fit into the much smaller chairs in the other class. I’m not that sure that he’ll be very happy with playing games aimed at 2 to 3 year olds either. And, if the other kids start picking up English from him, what will they do then?

Of course, all this begs the question: does it mean that he’ll not be able to go into the primary school ’til he’s 7?