I grew up with francophone parents in the suburbs of Montréal, which is in the majority french speaking part of Canada. The context is special in that I live wi

I grew up with francophone parents in the suburbs of Montréal, which is in the majority french speaking part of Canada. The context is special in that I live within an hour's drive of the border of places where english is the official language and that bilingualism is fairly standard in Montréal, I have loads of friends with whom conversation involves seamlessly switching between english and french. I got my first experience of full immersion at age 4 a few afternoons a week in pre-school, at age 7 I was in an hockey exchange with a new england family for a weekend, miming and pointing at things to communicate with people when my limited vocabulary didn't cut it, at age 12 started streaming TV shows in english and by age 14 I was reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. There's something to be said about my educational privilege and the geographic context of my being ESL. Obviously it's probably harder to learn english if your first language isn't that of a country that has colonized England at one point and you don't grow up within walking distance of the USA, but considering that billions of people have english as a second language and totally manage to convey whatever idea they want when they speak or write it I don't think my point that it's no big deal to learn it is outlandish. It's the most spoken language and it's speakers are all over the globe, there isn't a language that's as accessible to practice as english. I think levelling by the bottom by forcing everyone to learn a second language (which would become a lot of privileged kids' first language after a few generations anyway) isn't a very interesting idea.