Time ticks for English textbooks

Even as Ministry of Education assistant deputy for the English section Leo LaFrance told The Chronicle at least some English-language textbooks will be ready for Grade 10 students when they head back to class in a few more weeks, Lester B. Pearson School Board chairman Marcus Tabachnick praised the ministry's efforts but asked why more could not be done.

"When new courses are approved, the English text has to be prepared at the same time," Tabachnick said, criticizing the education ministry's current modus operandi of preparing French textbooks first, approving them, and then clearing them for translation into English.

"We don't even need a simultaneous translation," Tabachnick said, adding there are enough anglophone experts in different domains to prepare textbooks at the same time as French ones are prepared.

Meanwhile, LaFrance revealed that fully coloured and bound math textbooks will be available to Grade 10 students as of September. The first two textbooks should be ready to go, with the third math book for that class hopefully delivered by the end of September. "The French version of the third textbook was still unavailable (during the summer)," LaFrance said.

The solution is an improvement over what Jacques Cartier MNA Geoff Kelley had told a public audience during a meeting on the English textbook translation issue in early June. Back then, the government was only able to assure that the first three chapters of one textbook would be available as of September 1 to Grade 10 students, and the rest would gradually follow during the year.

"We didn't want to announce anything until we knew we could do it," LaFrance explained of the sudden better prospects for math students.

Tabachnick agreed there had indeed been some improvements on the translation front.

Meanwhile, history books will be available as translated "facsimiles," according to LaFrance, by Sept. 15 at the latest, and science and technology books will be left to September 2009, since it is only then that Pearson schools will dive into the reformed education curriculum for those domains.

Translation of textbooks into English has been a problem ever since the ministry implemented its curriculum reform at the beginning of the decade, and its policy has dictated French textbooks should be ready to go before a translation into English is even started

LaFrance shot down some of the popular rumours started by angered anglophone parents and teachers when he spoke to The Chronicle last week. He said, for example, that it is simply not true that Quebec publishers have a monopoly on publishing textbooks for the province in any language, and this causes a delay. "You look at the English market in Quebec, for an Ontario and B.C. publisher, it's not worth their time," he said.

Furthermore, he added anglophone experts are consulted on the content of textbooks. "It's not how we're seen by the public," he said, but that work is done.