The latest nonsense

Does no one at the Alberta Ministry of Education know that Canada has only two official languages?  Not only do we have only two languages, we have only one officially bilingual province:  New Brunswick.  But apparently the Minister of Education skipped civics classes in high school because he is seriously entertaining the demands of Filipinos that Tagalog be taught in provincial schools.  Tagalog!  This is one of eight Filipino languages and apparently the 170,000 Filipinos living here want special classes added in publically-funded schools here.

This is insane!  Tagalog is the seventh most spoken language in the Philippines so why that one?  Will they then demand the other six be taught?  And what about the 187 dialects spoken there?  Surely we'll have to have classes for those too.

Hey, teach your kids Filipino languages yourselves in after-school programs you fund privately.  Why should Albertan taxpayers pay for it?  And if Tagalog is so imperative and useful in the world, why are Filipinos here in the first place?  Why aren't they back in the Philippines succeeding wildly and becoming prosperous as a result of being able to speak that language -- a language no one else in the world has ever heard of?

Alberta also offers the following languages in its curriculum:

• Arabic
• Chinese Mandarin
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Punjabi
• Spanish
• Ukrainian
• French
• Blackfoot
• Cree, and oh yeah....
• English

Why????

Canada is seriously off-base. 

(Alma, what do you have to say about this?!  I'd seriously like to hear from you, my friend.)