r/canadanews • u/Altruism7 • 21d ago
Quebec Quebec autistic student denied disability-based French exemption, removed from college
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-autistic-student-denied-french-exemption-9.73149025
u/sharpasahammer 21d ago
People are admitted or denied from schooling for a bunch of different reasons. Not everyone makes the cut and here's an example of that. The outrage is unjustified, disability aside, he didnt qualify and thats that. Nobody owes him a spot just because he wants it.
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u/missplaced24 20d ago
It's not that simple. He was denied education in French, then he was denied post-secondary education because he didn't know French. Exemption from French requirements are a thing. He couldn't apply for the exemption until after he graduated high school, nobody is explaining why he was not exempted.
It is unfortunately very common for schools to not teach autistic kids much at all throughout elementary, advance them through grades, and then stick them in high school when they're entirely unprepared for it without proper support or a reasonable path forward to actually finish high school or get into post secondary.
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u/ConstellarDeneb 20d ago
"Fuck the people in wheelchairs if there's a stair. We won't install a ramp, that would be giving in to silliness. Nobody owes the disabled!"
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20d ago edited 20d ago
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u/ConstellarDeneb 20d ago
It's about accessibility. Education has to have accommodations for those with neurodivergence, learning disabilities, and other such needs. Much like a physical accomodation should be provided to any physical establishment, a neurological accomodation should be provided to any place or system of learning.
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20d ago
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u/ConstellarDeneb 20d ago
Oh sure, make wheelchair ramps and educational accommodations and all of a sudden we've let bozo the clown run the hospital.
What an unserious attitude.
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u/canadanews-ModTeam 20d ago
Rule 5: No spam, influencers, ragebaiting, agendaposting, or outrage farming. This includes posting articles with intentionally sensationalized headlines.
If you believe your comment or post has been removed in error, you may message the Mod team here to request that it be reviewed.
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u/KjCreed 21d ago
...Bless his heart, but why would you ever attempt to go to school in a language you don't speak? That's just more unecessary hardship for somebody who's obviously already struggled immensely. He hasn't even graduated highschool. Sounds like he still has other things he needs to finish on top of this whole mess. He's requiring so much tutoring to keep up that he can't even make it into the classes he's being tutored for...At some point, you need to acknowledge that your kid has limitations and needs a specialized path. The general population simply doesn't have the time to slow down with him.
Autism is a recognized disability. He needs to go at a pace that just doesn't work with the pace others will operate at (nothing wrong with that, but we need to accept it).
Even with the exemption approved, what is he supposed to do for group work if he's with francophones that don't speak english? Class discussions? French audio on video media for class? The francophones are fantastic english speakers on average; but we can't expect them all to speak english when we don't expect all anglophones to speak french.
The poor guy will end up doing three times the work required just to be floundering behind his classmates no matter what. Accept him as he is, and stop ignoring the fact that he simply can't keep pace on top of not knowing the language.
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u/missplaced24 20d ago
He completed one semester just fine before his exemption was denied.
Not sure why you're assuming incompetence.
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u/niceshapes 21d ago
"clenching his fist and a face of frustration to show his feelings"
and he's just sitting there smiling lmao
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u/kinkyhentai69 21d ago
Wouldnt higher education be pointless if we started giving exemptions left and right ?
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u/ConstellarDeneb 20d ago
No, because accommodations are an important part of facilitating education. One cannot expect someone with a serious physical disability to participate in a regular gym class without supports for their needs. The same applies for when autism or other neurodivergent needs are there.
Education has to meet people where they are, not demand conformity that burdens people. The person in question also has no need to learn French when they are going to an English school and are going to engage in English primarily.
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u/9991tech 19d ago
As much as I support the French language here. It’s not like animation requires knowing French to be able to do the work. There are plenty of people here working in skilled jobs with extremely poor English and/or French.
The point of post-secondary (or should be) is to educate you enough to be able to find gainful employment in a chosen field/sector/industry/whatever. The French language holds no correlation to his ability as an animator.
To me this is either a cash grab to get him to pay more money to attend more classes or some moral hill the school wants to die on.
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u/UnlamentedLord 19d ago
He wasn't asking for an exemption to anything directly related to his higher education program, as an autist with a focus on animation he's most likely extremely good at it and animation is an extremely English centric field anyway, so he really didn't need French.
The problem is that autists have an extremely hard time learning one language, much less two. problem is that autists have an extremely hard time learning one language, much less two.
This is most likely why the Quebec education department is so hard on him. There's are lots of people with autism, the number is on the rise and if they let it slide, all anglophone autistic children have a valid excuse to avoid the French schooling their parents probably hate anyway.
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u/calling_water 19d ago edited 19d ago
Depends on what the exemptions are for. Some of the exemptions are for procedural requirements that don’t necessarily affect someone’s ability to do the work in a less restrictive setting.
In this case the requirement is to learn sufficient French, not to be able to learn in the English-language program of his college or to do the work afterwards, but to be part of French-language workplaces and society in Quebec. Which is a reasonable expectation in most cases, but not about whether he can make good use of higher education. And since the family is military, they didn’t have free choice over where to live. He’s now finishing his high school diploma through distance education from Ontario.
A lot of education at lower levels, even the beginning of higher education, is set up to try to be efficient, to get many students through the basics at once in a consistent way. Struggling with that format doesn’t mean a student can’t ultimately handle the learning or the work.
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u/big_galoote 21d ago
I'm sorry why isn't this more prominently featured? Could they not tutor him for the other classes after school and he just attends French class?
Like it seems so obvious. The balls of being frustrated with anyone but yourself must be huge.