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Notes -
I honestly doubt that. The idea that bilingualism is somehow bad could be seen in the wild until pretty recently, but in my experience was limited to the Anglos, and might even have been mostly an American thing. Maintaining it requires a huge amount of anti-curiosity, and blindness to other parts of the world.
Sure, once an idea gets rolled out from the top, it tends to get repeated in good faith by the lower strata of society. It seems that this is how Anglos have always done it.
There were not ‘experts’ involved who were not Anglo-American. And as you point out, once those experts float their idea it’s repeated in good faith by lower strata in society- which both the Cajuns and the lower rungs of the Catholic Church that were their source for expert opinions most assuredly were.
Yes, in retrospect raising their children bilingual was probably the right move, but this was not at the time obvious to anyone with the power to stop what actually happened.
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