Having visited Northern Ontario several times over the past seven or eight years, I have known that schools here are different.

For example, Catholic schools in Canada are tax-supported public schools. That’s very different from home where Catholic or other religious-based teaching institutions are "private" schools and do not receive taxpayer financial support.

But on this most recent visit to Ontario, my father-in-law said something that really caught my attention.

There is a large beautiful building located near my in-laws’ neighborhood and I asked what it was. He told me it was a French school.

"French?" I asked. "You mean French is the only language spoken and taught at that school?"

"That’s right," he said, and explained that children in this town have the option of either attending a French-speaking school, or an English-speaking school.

I have known for some time that Canada has two official languages – English and French – but I did not know that kind of cultural segregation existed on such a fundamental level.

Schools in America were similarly segregated along racial and cultural lines many decades ago. The old argument was that "separate but equal" educational opportunity was a legitimate way to run a school system.

A 1954 US Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, changed all that.

The court outlawed racial segregation of public education facilities, ruling on the grounds that the doctrine of "separate but equal" public education could never truly give the same educational opportunities to students of different racial or cultural backgrounds.

More than fifty years later, our country is a better place because of this ruling. Students from all different backgrounds have more educational opportunities than at any time in our past, and I think, more importantly, it has changed the fabric of our society for the better.

Children of different racial and cultural backgrounds go to school together, and in doing so, learn to become friends with one another. They learn to work with and interact with people of all different races and cultures and our country has seen over the past 50 years that these good habits have carried over into adulthood.

A child won’t notice or care about racial or cultural differences unless someone teaches that child to do so, and in Canada, they apparently believe it is okay to segregate students based on differences of language and cultural background.

But I wonder, what happens after Graduation Day?

Some students will speak English only, and some will speak French only.

How will they interact or learn to work together?

The answer is simple.

They won’t.

Some will live and work in French-speaking parts of Canada and others will live and work in English-speaking areas.

English-only-speakers will seek work with English-only-speaking businesses and French-only-speakers will look for jobs with businesses that speak French-only.

Separation of children from different and diverse cultural backgrounds, taught early, has become a long-range part of their lives, and I don’t think this is good for the people of Canada.

On Sunday, while sitting on a park bench watching my daughter play at the local park, I noticed that about half of those who walked past me were speaking in French and about half were speaking English.

It turns out that this was a pretty accurate survey, because I later researched the topic and found out that statistically – as a primary language, a little more than half the people in this town speak French, and a little less than half speak English.

I suppose that when a country adopts two official languages, there are going to be compromises on many different levels, but it seems like one thing a country would not want to compromise is its ability to help people unify in a way that would benefit all Canadians for now, and for future generations to come.