CREOLE SPEAKERS AND EDUCATION: AN EXAMINATION OF THE LANGUAGE SITUATION OF WEST INDIAN STUDENTS IN THE FRENCH AND THE ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF MONTREAL

Résumé

Among the children of Montreal are many Blacks whose parents are West Indian and Haitian and who speak one or other of the creole languages. The history of development of these languages has led them at the same time to become fully viable as first languages in their own right, and yet sufficiently close to the European languages of the respective colonisers to be mistaken for merely debased versions of them. Domingue and Laferrière show the complexities arising from the various social and political aspirations of the parties involved, including parents, and how they threaten to continue indefinitely to deny to these children, especially those who are assumed to be French-speaking, the same access to education available to their differently-born contemporaries.