Why I won’t let my children learn French

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[/audioplayer]My children won’t learn French. If their school tries to force the issue, I’ll fight tooth and nail. There’ll be the mother of all Agincourts before I let it happen.

It’s not that I have any problem with the language, even though it has too many vowels and you have to say 99 as ‘four-twenty-ten-nine’, making it impossible (I imagine) to sing that song about red balloons.

It’s just that I want my children to be successful, and learning French makes no business sense. There’s a moral issue too, but first the business: no English person moves to France to hatch a business plan these days. They might go there for the lifestyle, or the wine, or to live out their years. But nobody goes there to succeed. My nephew, who recently left school in Brittany, had modest ambitions to be a shop assistant, but found he needed a three-year accreditation in retail. He signed up to be a tour guide, but was required to take a two-year course in pointing at battlements. You cannot lead even the most unambitious life in France without sitting an exam for it. There’s not much incentive to do anything for yourself, either: even if you remain insufficiently prosperous to stay clear of the 75 per cent tax rate, every self-starter who sells their business after ten years owes the state 60 per cent capital gains tax on any profit. Quebec has launched a programme to lure 50,000 French entrepreneurs to its shores, which is a bit like deciding to save 50,000 black rhinos. Too late, I reckon.