of this I want a summary 

125

CHAPTER 9

THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF FRENCH

IN LOUISIANA: HISTORY, SUCCESSES,

AND CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE
aLbert CamP

The popular perspective that Louisiana French is reserved for the remote bay-
ous and far-flung sugarcane fields and constitutes a purely oral language that
evolved in isolation from the institutionalized Standard French found in the
rest of the francophone world is simply not accurate. It may be true that most
of the native speakers of Louisiana varieties of French today were raised in an
environment where French literacy was rare and interactions with speakers
from other parts of the francophone world were even rarer, but throughout
most of the nearly 350 years of Louisiana’s history, which began with the ar-
rival of the first Europeans at the mouth of the Mississippi in 1682, French
has played an almost constantly significant role in one or more of the official
institutions of the area.

During the French colonial period, from 1682 to 1763, French was the official
language of the two main institutions that governed the daily lives of people
in Louisiana, the Roman Catholic Church and the French Crown. While the
church as an institution may have had Latin as its official language, the vast
majority of religious and priests who served in Louisiana came from New
France (modern-day Canada) and France. As such, with the exception of say-
ing Mass, most daily interactions of the church occurred in French. Yet “the
early residents of this area would have found our distinction between political
and religious matters strange and unintelligible. War, a business or marriage
contract, and a baptismal ceremony were both sacred and secular” (Nolan
1976:XIX.). For example, in 1724 Louis XV issued an updated version of the
Code Noir for the Louisiana colony that decreed that all residents, slave or free,
had to be baptized and instructed in the Catholic faith, allowed a Catholic

126 aLbert CamP

marriage (with the permission of their masters if enslaved), and buried in a
Catholic cemetery. These laws, though enforced to varying degrees, necessitated
that the church work hand in hand with the Crown as an institution.

Thus, when Louisiana shifted from an officially French colony to an officially
Spanish one in 1763, the vital institution of the Louisiana Catholic Church re-
mained mostly intact. According to Dubois, Leumas, and Richardson (2018:13),

The idea of monolingual Spanish priests at the parish level in colonial Loui-
siana is absurd and against the Church practice of accommodation to reach
the local populace. French priests were therefore needed and retained in the
diocese for the transition in the 1760s and later. French and Spanish entries
go back and forth in the parish registers. Parishioners’ signatures in Spanish
in a Spanish register did not mean that a parishioner knew the language
any more than he knew Latin when reciting Latin. Most obviously, Span-
ish priests had to know French in order to serve the native and incoming
French Catholics.

Furthermore, demographic shifts in the colony throughout the Spanish pe-
riod increased rather than diminished the French language’s importance.

Spanish immigration policy in colonial Louisiana generally sought not to re-
place the native French-speaking population but rather to increase the popula-
tion by any means necessary. The Spanish inherited a colony that was massively
underpopulated at approximately eleven thousand residents (Din 1998:12).
Thus, immigrants from many different linguistic and cultural backgrounds were
welcomed—as long as they were Catholic. Roughly twenty-six hundred French
settlers in Acadia (modern-day Nova Scotia) who were expelled after the Treaty
of 1763 ceded Canada to Britain made their way to Louisiana between 1765 and
1785 (Brasseaux 1990:1:xii). In contrast, the only major influx of Spanish immi-
grants involved fewer than two thousand people from the Canary Islands (Din
1988:15–25). Many other arrivals during this period sought to escape the grow-
ing unrest in France and Saint-Domingue (Haiti). This numerical discrepancy
meant that French remained the language of daily life and business for most
in Louisiana, including the church, which had even less motivation to replace
the French language with Spanish than did the Spanish Crown.

Even if the period of Spanish rule had little impact on the use of French and
the second period of French rule was too brief to have any lasting effect, the
Louisiana Purchase would be expected to have had a major effect on language
use. Indeed it did, though not necessarily the effect that might be predicted.
Most sources estimate Louisiana’s population at around 60,000 at the time of
the Louisiana Purchase (1803). Most of that population would certainly have
been Catholic and French-speaking (Dubois, Leumas, and Richardson 2018).

the institutionaLization of frenCh in Louisiana 127

By 1810, the population had increased to 76,566 (Forstall 1996:4). However
records show that the rebellion in the French colony of Saint-Domingue led to
an influx of more than 10,000 French-speaking refugees (Lachance 1988:111).

Anglo-American immigration also had a major impact on the linguistic
landscape. Americans had been migrating to Louisiana since colonial times, but
the level of immigration increased dramatically after the Louisiana Purchase
and statehood in 1812. In 1820, the state’s population had nearly doubled, reach-
ing 153,407 (Forstall 1996:4). Although the pace of growth did slow, the popula-
tion continued to increase steadily throughout the decades with immigration
from other parts of America as well as other parts of the world. Nevertheless,
Louisiana remained a destination of choice for tens of thousands of French
immigrants, particularly during that country’s early nineteenth-century politi-
cal turmoil (Brasseaux 1990).

Despite the Americanization of Louisiana, French enjoyed a privileged sta-
tus in business and politics, de facto at first and then de jure. However, ideo-
logical views about the link between speaking English and being American
significantly affected antebellum language use, and political considerations
fundamentally changed the legal status of French in the Reconstruction period.
Yet one Louisiana institution continued to use and even indirectly to promote
French throughout the nineteenth century. The Catholic Church continued to
offer French a level of institutional legitimacy.

Although the Catholic Church lost its status as a legal authority after the
colonial era, the fact that the vast majority of the state’s population followed
the faith meant that its institutional place in Louisianans’ lives continued. Every
important event in the life of a Catholic involves not only a church ceremony
but also an official written record of the event. So from an infant’s baptism to
an individual’s marriage and eventual death, the institution of the church both
participates in and records the event in a particular language. Studies have
shown that Catholic Church registers in south Louisiana continued to use
French well into the twentieth century, with a median date of 1916 for the shift
to English (Dubois, Leumas, and Richardson 2007). Throughout the nineteenth
century, the Church in Louisiana was dominated by priests and bishops from
France, and well into the twentieth century, the major life events of people in
south Louisiana were conducted in and recorded in the more standardized
European French of these priests. One rough estimate puts the number of
Catholics in south Louisiana at 75 percent of the population between 1906 and
1916 (Dubois, Leumas, and Richardson 2018:137). Standard varieties of French
thus remained a part of Louisiana institutions into the early twentieth century.

Demographic, political, and ideological pressure unfortunately ensured that
by the mid-1900s, neither state institutions nor the Catholic Church continued
to use French in an official capacity. Though Census data are not very specific or

128 aLbert CamP

reliable, Louisiana appears to have had at least a few hundred thousand French
speakers in 1940. In 1968, the state government gave French an institutional
status by creating the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana
(CODOFIL) to revitalize the language. Nevertheless, current estimates put
the French-speaking population somewhere between one hundred thousand
and two hundred thousand, and most of these people are elderly. This chapter
evaluates the institutionalization of language revitalization efforts in Louisiana
and the ways in which ideological and political considerations have affected
the role of public education in Louisiana’s French revitalization movement.

THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN FRENCH REVITALIZATION

The legal status of French in the state of Louisiana has had a rather mixed his-
tory. The first Louisiana Constitution (1812) required that all laws be written
and disseminated in English. However, this clause was inserted only to ap-
pease the US Congress, which had previously mandated that all legal affairs in
the Territory of Orleans be written in English (Ward 1997). In reality, all acts
of the Louisiana legislature were recorded and promulgated in French and
English from 1812 to 1867. The Reconstructionist Louisiana Constitution of
1868 forbade any laws requiring judicial processes from being made available
in a language other than English and required that free public education for
all be offered only in English (Ward 1997).

The Louisiana Constitution of 1879 restored the legal status of French by
requiring the promulgation of laws in French and allowing public schools to use
the language. By this time, however, the French language had already begun to
develop a pariah status, and the 1921 Louisiana Constitution again removed all
references to the French language and required English-only education (Ward
1997). Finally, in 1968, one hundred years after Louisiana law first removed
French from state institutions, Act 409 of the Louisiana legislature restored the
language’s legal institutional status and created CODOFIL A to “do any and all
things necessary to accomplish the development, utilization, and preservation
of the French language as found in Louisiana for the cultural, economic and
touristic benefit of the state” (Act 409, sect. 1). Act 408, also passed in 1968,
required Louisiana children to learn French for a number of years.

These laws and CODOFIL owe their existence to a populist movement
known as the Cajun Renaissance that had been taking place in Louisiana for
at least a decade. Social activists, musicians, and politicians such as Dudley
LeBlanc had been organizing public events to promote Cajun heritage, ethnicity,
and language. The 1960s also saw a change in public attitudes toward Louisiana’s
French-speaking population, though it is unclear whether this change was a

the institutionaLization of frenCh in Louisiana 129

cause or effect of the Cajun Renaissance. The laws essentially constituted a
reaction to the Cajun Renaissance and the realization that Louisiana’s French-
speaking population was disappearing rapidly. By requiring “preservation” of
the French language, the Louisiana legislature signaled its acknowledgment
that institutional intervention was needed to slow or reverse the language shift
away from French.

Loopholes in Act 408 meant that it was completely unenforceable: schools
and parents could simply request and receive exemption from the law. In 1972,
only ninety-five schools in twenty parishes had French programs (Henry
1997:192). In 1975, the legislature repealed Act 408 and passed Act 714, which
allowed parishes to establish their own second-language programs, provided
state funding for these programs, and allowed parents to request that schools
offer particular second-language programs. This law met with some success,
and by 1977, thirty-six parishes were providing French-language education to
42,644 students (Henry 1997:193). In 1985, the Louisiana Board of Elementary
and Secondary Education mandated second-language education for students
from the fourth to eighth grade (Egéa-Kuehne 2006:121). This mandate had an
important impact on CODOFIL’s role in French education.

James Domengeaux, CODOFIL’s first director, met with French president
Georges Pompidou in 1969, and the Louisiana Department of Education sub-
sequently signed formal accords with the French government and later with
the governments of Belgium and Quebec (Egéa-Kuehne 2006:123). CODOFIL
created the Foreign Associate Teacher (FAT) program to bring French teachers
from other French-speaking countries into Louisiana’s public schools. While the
state still had a sizable population of French speakers in the 1960s and 1970s,
very few were qualified to teach, and for more than a decade, most of Louisi-
ana’s French teachers came from other countries via this program. However,
the 1985 Board of Elementary and Secondary Education mandate to provide
second-language education in all schools would changed this dynamic.

Because the board placed responsibility for implementing second-language
education on local school boards in the 1980s, the model of a centralized sup-
ply of French teachers changed. Second-language education programs began
to look more and more like their equivalent programs in other states that do
not have an organization like CODOFIL. Schools began to advertise job open-
ings and conduct interviews with eligible candidates. This new system led to
a significant increase in the number of students studying French as a second
language. Whereas 95 schools offered French in 1972, that number had risen
to 536 schools offering French to 77,924 students in the 1991–92 school year
(Henry 1997:193). However, since then the number of students studying French
has actually decreased. A 2010 report by the French Education Project at Loui-
siana State University found only 56,454 students studying any foreign language

130 aLbert CamP

in the 2009–10 school year (Egéa-Kuehne 2010). Of those students, only 31,468
were studying French, and most of the others were studying Spanish.

With schools less dependent on CODOFIL to supply foreign-language
teachers in the 1980s, the agency shifted its focus to French immersion edu-
cation. Unlike traditional foreign-language instruction, students in French
immersion schools not only study French as a language but also learn other
subjects such as science, math, and social studies in French. Following a Ca-
nadian trend, French immersion programs and entire schools were founded
throughout south Louisiana with CODOFIL’s assistance. By the second decade
of the twenty-first century, the United States had 114 French immersion pro-
grams, 28 of them in Louisiana, more than any other state (Center for Applied
Linguistics 2011). CODOFIL is largely responsible for the success and rapid
growth of French immersion programs in Louisiana, which have become the
agency’s main focus. Although CODOFIL provides some funding and sup-
port for other programs, the organization primarily serves as an intermediary
between immersion programs and the foreign governments whose citizens
constitute most of the French immersion teachers.

Until recently, school principals had to request the creation of immersion
programs, with permission dependent on local school boards, which often
denied these requests for various reasons. In some areas, immersion magnet
programs have been used as a tool for desegregation (Beal 2008), while at
other times, these programs placed a cohort of high-performing children in
an underprivileged school to artificially boost its overall test scores (Tornquist
2000:96). These behaviors not only pose ethical questions but create unneces-
sary barriers to CODOFIL’s legally defined mission and to everyone involved
in the French revitalization movement.

In 2013, Act 361, the Immersion School Choice Act, began requiring any
school that receives a written request from the guardians of at least twenty-
five kindergarten children to form an immersion program beginning with the
school year 2014–15. It is not yet clear whether this change will increase the
availability of French immersion education. However, CODOFIL is actively
working to encourage parents to request immersion programs.

According to CODOFIL, most “teachers of French are Louisiana natives,
thanks largely to the efforts of CODOFIL and the state’s educational system.
Today, almost 100,000 students across Louisiana study French, and there are
26 French immersion schools in eight parishes” (CODOFIL n.d.b). While these
numbers appear misleading given that CODOFIL now focuses almost exclu-
sively on immersion schools where the overwhelming majority of teachers are
foreign, these statements clearly reflect the ideological views that the agency
seeks to promote. CODOFIL wants the people of Louisiana to believe that

the institutionaLization of frenCh in Louisiana 131

French immersion education leads to economic opportunities. Clearly, becom-
ing a French teacher is an economic opportunity.

CODOFIL’s 2014 annual report includes nine goals for fiscal year 2015:

1. Consolidate all recent CODOFIL legislative mandates into several clusters
of public-private “spheres of activity” for more efficient development of
best practices that may be duplicated for the benefit of Louisiana stake-
holders at large.

1. [sic] Increase number of Louisiana teachers of French.
2. Engage youth. Assure that a minimum of 12% of the products of French

Immersion (former students) are actively engaged in “living, working and
playing” in French in Louisiana.

3. Grow career paths through French, especially in tourism.
4. Develop a program for articulating Louisiana French to military

communities.
5. Increase number of scholarships.
6. Improve Louisiana’s standing with the Organisation Internationale de la

Francophonie.
8. Increase presence of Louisiana French in the media. (CODOFIL 2014:6)

The goals of increasing the number of Louisiana teachers of French, assuring
12 percent of immersion students “work” in French, and growing career paths
offer significant insight into CODOFIL’s linguistic ideology.

While more and more Americans and specifically Louisianans have been
hired to teach French as a second language in Louisiana, teaching in French
immersion schools remains a largely foreign job. In the 2008–9 school year,
the Louisiana Department of Education reported that 125 of the state’s 160
immersion teachers were participants in the FAT program (Barnett 2010:32).
However, even those 35 teachers who were not currently members of the pro-
gram might have previously participated but now had permanent visa status
(32). My research in Louisiana’s French immersion schools has found that it is
common for participants in the FAT program to change their visa status and
remain, whether through marriage to an American or through some other
means. Among administrators from eight immersion schools throughout south
Louisiana, only one remembered having an American work in their French
immersion program. Thus, although CODOFIL and grassroots organizations
focus primarily on French immersion schools as a means of revitalizing French
in Louisiana, Louisianans are largely excluded from working there. Despite their
immense success in helping students learn French, the immersion schools have
been hindered by ideological and institutional hurdles.

132 aLbert CamP

LINGUISTIC IDEOLOGY AND FRENCH IMMERSION SCHOOLS

CODOFIL was born out of the so-called Cajun Renaissance, and its purpose
was and still is to prevent the decline of French in Louisiana and hopefully
revitalize it. The fact that the state of Louisiana has had a government agency
devoted to the revitalization of French for more than fifty years indicates a
level of support for this minority language that is probably unparalleled in
any other state. Nevertheless, ideological hurdles continue to stall the prog-
ress that French immersion schools might make toward that revitalization. As
one linguist said, “Linguistic revitalization starts first at the psycholinguistic
level, that is to say at the level of linguistic representations, for speakers (or
semispeakers or passive speakers), language experts, and educators” (Ryon
2002:282–83). These ideological perspectives have a concrete influence on
the planning and practice of language revitalization. In the words of Albert
Valdman (1998:290), “The choice of objectives for the teaching of foreign
languages in schools and universities depends to a large extent on the inter-
ested parties: the political powers, the various community representatives, the
educational administration, and the students themselves.” Many studies of
language attitudes in Louisiana have focused on the variety of French used
in schools and particularly on the choice to use a standardized version of
international French rather than a more local vernacular such as the Cajun
or Creole varieties. While this debate may have had some impact on parents’
and communities’ decisions in the early years of CODOFIL’s existence, the
use of standardized international French remains the only realistic option for
immersion schools.

However, the crucial ideological question for French immersion schools and
the French revitalization movement as a whole is why these children should
learn French at all. French immersion schools definitely have a place in CODO-
FIL’s mission to “accomplish the development, utilization, and preservation” of
French. Yet the reasons why teachers and administrators participate in expand-
ing French education have remained far less clear until recently. For example,
the reasons why Louisianans decide to become French teachers may have noth-
ing to do with language revitalization. Similarly, the school administrators who
run these programs may not see themselves as part of a revitalization move-
ment. The ideology of those working toward language revitalization will have
a profound impact on the success or failure of the revitalization movement.

Traditionally, Louisianans who wanted to become French teachers first
needed to acquire the requisite education and legal certification. In 2014, I
conducted a study of undergraduate students at south Louisiana’s four largest
universities—McNeese State University, Louisiana State University, Tulane

the institutionaLization of frenCh in Louisiana 133

University, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. I asked faculty to
identify every student majoring or minoring in French who was planning to
become a French teacher and would be graduating within two years. Only ten
students—all at Tulane or Louisiana State—met these criteria. I interviewed
nine of them, created a sociobiographic profiles for each of them, and explored
their linguistic ideologies.

All were white, and seven were female. All came from relatively high socio-
economic classes and had at least one parent with a college degree, character-
istics that reflect the general demographics of these two universities. However,
only about half of the interviewees had parents from Louisiana, and only one
had any familial connection to Louisiana’s French-speaking population (Camp
2015:78). If this sample is consistent with the general population of Louisiana’s
future French teachers, then it would suggest that the children and grand-
children of Louisiana’s Cajun and Creole French speakers are not generally
interested in teaching French.

Eight of the nine students were either open to or preferred the idea of teach-
ing in French immersion schools; the only exception was the one student who
had Cajun French–speaking family, who did not believe that her French was
fluent enough. All of them wanted to teach simply because they liked French
and liked teaching. Thus, while almost all of them would be happy to work
in a French immersion school, none were motivated by a desire to revitalize
French (Camp 2015:82).

I also interviewed nine administrators from immersion schools through-
out south Louisiana to compile sociobiographic and ideological profiles that
could be compared with those of the students. Five of the nine administrators
were white females, two were black females, and two were white males. Unlike
the students, these administrators generally came from lower socioeconomic
classes, and only one had college-educated parents (Camp 2015:88). In addi-
tion, eight of the nine administrators claimed to be ethnically Cajun, Creole, or
French, the same number that had French-speaking family (89–90). Paradoxi-
cally, only two of the administrators spoke French, and all ended up adminis-
tering immersion programs by chance rather than by desire. If this sample of
administrators is typical as well, then neither Louisianans who run immersion
programs nor those who desire to teach in them do so for reasons that mesh
with because they hope to achieve CODOFIL’s mission to “accomplish the
development, utilization, and preservation” of French.

From an ideological standpoint, both groups either supported or were
ambivalent to the idea of the state government working to revitalize French.
The aspiring teachers who generally lacked a familial connection to Louisiana
French believed that preserving and promoting Louisiana’s French heritage

134 aLbert CamP

constituted the main benefit of French education. The administrators tended
to be more practical, seeing cognitive benefits, job opportunities, and economic
benefits as the main advantages. Consequently, the administrators also tended
to see any second language, not particularly French, as equally beneficial for
Louisiana students (Camp 2015).

The linguistic ideology of these administrators seems to mirror CODOFIL’s
goals, which, in turn, mirror its leaders’ ideological positions. CODOFIL lead-
ers have described the long-term goals of the immersion programs as “critical
to the revitalization of French in Louisiana. Not only can the immersion help
to create a population identifying with French, it also improves education and
creates pathways to careers for students” (Haskins 2015:32–33). In addition, the
administrators claim that “parents and students see the benefits of bilingual-
ism and aren’t necessarily participating for the Louisiana French aspect. . . .
[P]arents of current immersion students are younger than the parents of im-
mersion students when the programs were created and they’re less concerned
with the emphasis on Louisiana French” (33). Based on her interviews with
CODOFIL officials, researcher Meredith Haskins believes that “the focus is
more on a diverse and global approach that promotes functional bilingualism
and enhances employment opportunities outside of Louisiana than an actual
attempt at revitalizing Louisiana French varieties” (35).

THE CURRENT STATUS OF LOUISIANA’S FRENCH IMMERSION
SCHOOLS AND ESCADRILLE LOUISIANE

As of 2016, Louisiana’s public schools had twenty-nine French immersion
programs. Almost all of the teachers in these French immersion programs
either are or were participants in the FAT program. According to Brian Bar-
nett’s (2010:83) survey, only seven of eighty-five French immersion teachers
in Louisiana public schools were native-born Americans, and only four were
from Louisiana. Despite CODOFIL’s emphasis on the economic and job op-
portunities that learning French can provide, these immersion school teacher
jobs have not traditionally been available for Louisianans. Today, institutional
legal hurdles stand in the way of Americans who want to teach in French im-
mersion schools.

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education requires school districts
to hire, with priority, all qualified Louisiana teachers to teach French or in
French immersion schools (Egea-Kuehne 2006:10). Only then can schools hire
FATs provided by CODOFIL. Yet, for many years, schools have had a financial
incentive to hire FATs rather than American teachers. Multiple immersion
school principals told me that they would prefer to have immersion teachers

the institutionaLization of frenCh in Louisiana 135

from Louisiana, but hiring them rather than FATs would be foolish because
the schools would lose money: the Louisiana legislature contributes twenty
thousand dollars to offset the cost of each FAT’s salary. Teachers in French
immersion programs are paid the same state-mandated salaries as any other
teacher in a particular area. During the 2014 regular session, the Louisiana
Senate adopted Concurrent Resolution 55, which provides:

Any city, parish, or other public school system or school employing a For-
eign Language Associate or a graduate of the Escadrille Louisiane program
shall receive a supplemental allocation from State Board of Elementary and
Secondary Education of $21,000 per teacher. The state shall maintain sup-
port of the Foreign Language Associate program at a maximum of 300 For-
eign Language Associates employed in any given year. These teachers shall
be paid by the employing city, parish, or other local public school system or
school at least the state average classroom teacher salary. . . . Of the $21,000
allocation, $20,000 shall be allocated to the school where the teacher is em-
ployed and the funds used to support the total cost of the teacher salary,
and the remaining amount shall be associated with costs of VISA spon-
sorship pursuant to State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
regulations. (Appel 2014)

No doubt, these allocations were originally intended to provide schools with
an incentive to open language immersion programs that might otherwise be
seen as too costly. Until recently, any Americans who might have wanted to
work in immersion schools would have to overcome the financial incentives
not to hire them.

Although there appeared to be no evidence that a Louisianan had ever been
denied a job for this reason, the situation remained problematic. However, to
address this problem and the general lack of Louisianans teaching French im-
mersion, CODOFIL and the French government partnered in 2011 to create
the Escadrille Louisiane (Louisiana Squadron) program. The name is a refer-
ence to two hundred Louisiana pilots who flew planes for the French army
in World War I, and the program seeks to train two hundred Louisianans to
teach in French immersion schools over the next twenty years by sending them
to study in France. Students from Louisiana would spend a year working in
France as English teachers through the French government’s long-established
TAPIF program. In addition, students would also take classes at the University
of Rennes, credits that would apply toward a master’s degree in teaching and
teacher certification from Shreveport’s Centenary College.

In exchange for grants and stipends that cover their education and expenses,
Escadrille Louisiane graduates will be asked to commit to teaching in Louisiana

136 aLbert CamP

French immersion schools for at least three years. Schools that hire graduates
of the Escadrille program are entitled to the same twenty-thousand-dollar
supplemental allocation as schools that hire FATs. In theory, this seems like
a practical solution to the lack of Louisiana French immersion teachers. In
practice, however, one immersion school administrator confided in 2014 that
it was impossible to find American teachers with the necessary fluency and
certification in a second subject to work in an immersion program. The idea
of Escadrille is that a year in France would provide Louisianans the necessary
fluency, and their degree from Centenary College would provide them the
necessary certifications.

CODOFIL had sought to have ten students per year participate in the Es-
cadrille program(Haskins 2015:31), but low enrollment has been a problem, as
table 9.1 shows. While CODOFIL has yet to achieve its goal of ten students per
year returning to teach French immersion, the numbers are improving signifi-
cantly. After six years, Escadrille Louisiane has produced only twelve French
immersion teachers, but that number may actually represent more actual Loui-
sianan French immersion teachers than ever before. One of the problems with
all of these numbers is deciding who qualifies as a Louisianan, since Louisiana
issues no passports and does not actually have citizens, only residents. Even if
this pattern continues, it will be quite some time before Louisianans comprise
a significant number of French immersion teachers.

Enrollment in the Escadrille program may be hindered by its location. After
the year in France, students must spend two more years at Centenary College
in Shreveport, a small private Methodist College that is three to five hours
away from most of Louisiana’s French immersion schools. Since most south
Louisiana students who wish to become French teachers attend Louisiana State
University or Tulane, a program based geographically closer to students’ homes
might be more attractive.

Table 9.1. Escadrille Louisiane Enrollment and Placement, 2011–2018

Iteration Enrolled Teaching
Immersion

Teaching French as
Foreign Language

Not Teaching
French

1 (2011–13) 6 0 3 3

2 (2012–14) 7 0 3 4

3 (2013–15) 6 1 1 4

4 (2014–16) 3 1 0 2

5 (2015–17) 8 3 3 2

6 (2016–18) 9 7 7 2

Source: Rodriguez 2019

the institutionaLization of frenCh in Louisiana 137

According to two CODOFIL employees, “even if the number of native Loui-
siana French speakers were to increase, . . . they would not ever completely
replace the foreign associate teachers . . . for several reasons.” First, CODOFIL
has “establish[ed] good working relationships with educational organizations in
francophone countries due to the hiring of foreign associate teachers.” Second,
FATs have the “ability to offer a cultural mix” that benefits students, who “learn
more than if they were learning from teachers who all came from the same
place.” These administrators believe “that a better balance between Louisiana
teachers and foreign associate teachers would be ideal” (Haskins 2015:30–32).
Thus, the Escadrille Louisiane program clearly does not seek to replace the
FATs in French immersion programs but rather is geared toward redressing
the extreme imbalance that has existed for some time.

It is difficult to assess what progress has resulted from CODOFIL’s creation
half a century ago and from the funds that the state has directed toward the
agency’s efforts to preserve and promote French. According to a well-known
CODOFIL slogan, usually attributed to its first president, James Domengeaux,
“The schools destroyed French; the schools must restore it.” There are certain-
ly many more Louisiana students studying French today than there were fifty
years ago. However, it is unclear what level of fluency they generally achieve.
Those who go through elementary and/or middle school French immersion
programs undoubtedly achieve a relatively high level of fluency by necessity:
as of 2014, forty-five hundred students were enrolled in French immersion
and about twenty thousand adults had graduated from immersion programs
(Haskins 2015:34), meaning that CODOFIL had increased the population of
people who speak at least semifluent French by nearly twenty-five thousand.
However, Louisiana has probably lost more than five times as many elderly
French speakers in the past twenty years. Numbers thus are probably not the
best measure of success or failure for CODOFIL and the French revitaliza-
tion movement in general. The fact that Louisiana has a government institu-
tion devoted to promoting and preserving French is a unique and important
achievement.

To ensure the continued success of the French revitalization movement
and particularly CODOFIL, greater efforts need to be made to remove the
institutional and ideological hurdles that prevent Louisianans from engaging
with French immersion schools. One administrator at a French immersion
school informed me that “all of our teachers are native speakers; we would not
hire an American with a degree in that language.” Being American and speak-
ing French—or any language other than English—must no longer be seen as
contradictory. The administrator also said, “Every day they sing a patriotic
song, even though this is a school that focuses on other languages, we want

138 aLbert CamP

the children to understand their heritage and be proud of being American.”
Such a linguistic ideology, pervasive in Louisiana, truly hinders the French
revitalization movement.

While changing people’s attitudes may be difficult, eliminating institutional
hurdles should be more straightforward. To put more Louisianans in French
immersion classrooms, the Escadrille Louisiane program must increase its
numbers. Perhaps the program needs to be moved or expanded to include
other university partners or simply needs to be better advertised. Changing
the laws so that hiring an American who did not go through Escadrille would
not cost a school twenty thousand dollars might also help if other pathways to
gaining French fluency and certification can be opened. CODOFIL’s existence
is a noteworthy achievement, but French must occupy an expanded place in
other Louisiana institutions if it is to survive.

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