Let me start by saying that Elizabeth is not in a French
school. I mean, she’s not part of the
French public school system. I was
considering dropping her into a French school so she would become bilingual
overnight, as kids do in that situation.
I relented, however, after my friend reminded me of a story of a mutual
friend of ours. She moved to Paris for a
year and put her kindergarten son in a local French school. On the first day of school, he cried because
he couldn’t understand anything. The
teacher told him, in English, to stop being a “cry baby.” That year, he went from being an outgoing,
social kid, to a timid closed up, and stayed so after moving back as well.
Having a rather sensitive child myself, I opted for a less
immersive approach. We found a very good
private bilingual school that follows an English curriculum of the core
subjects and French for all the rest. Nevertheless,
I must revise my previous statement of Elizabeth not being in a French
school. The school is French and is run
by French people. The staff are French,
and all of Elizabeth’s teachers are French except for her homeroom teacher, who
is Australian. The student body,
however, is a highly diverse group of international children. Her class has two French, one Russian, one Ukrainian,
a Muslim-Canadian (who was born in Switzerland and has never lived in Canada), an
African, a German, an Indian, two Korean, two Japanese, a Canadian-American who
was born in Saudi Arabia, an Argentinean, a Japanese-Englishman, and a few
others I’m not sure of. Most of the
children have lived in multiple countries and speak three languages.
In any case, we are being exposed to the French way of
educating, at least to some extent. The
teachers are extremely strict and unforgiving.
They explicitly say that they “don’t care” when the kids are upset. They yell at them, swear, and say “shut up”
to the children. It is a far cry from the
PC schools of Southern California. Elizabeth
is a much better storyteller than I am, but I will try to recount some of her
experiences here.
French Class:
The school year started out with a jolt by Madame
Renot. First order of business was
getting the correct pencil. Elizabeth’s
cherished mechanical pencils were not acceptable. It had to be an old fashioned wooden
one. Elizabeth fished around in her
pencil case and finally brought out a black wooden pencil with a jewel on top
instead of an eraser that we had bought at a museum over the summer. Madame Renot frowned but said it would have
to do.
Next order of business was correcting Elizabeth’s last
name. All last names in France must be
written in ALL CAPS. Next, Elizabeth had
to redo her entire paper because she had not put a cross on top of the capital
letter “J” in a sentence. She had more
re-writes because her writing was not close enough to the margin line, she
wrote on both sides of the paper (only can write on one), and so on and so on
and so on. Did I mention this was FRENCH
class?
More important than writing was remembering to bring the
correct books to class and not talking during class. Either of those was punishable by being sent
to the “kiddy corner,” where you had to sit on the floor, with no books, and do
nothing for the rest of class. Oh, and
if you miss class because you’re sick, when you return, you have to sit and do
nothing while the rest of the kids work on the material you missed. She won’t give you a copy of the worksheet
that she handed out while you were gone.
Do you think this is Elizabeth’s favorite class?
Violin Class:
One of the things that attracted us to this school was that
they taught violin for music class.
Elizabeth had taken violin for two years at her last school and she was
really looking forward to keeping it up this year. Unfortunately, the violin class was tailored
to beginners, no matter what level the students were. The first week, they were only allowed to
look at the violins. They were not
allowed to touch them. The next week
they could pick them up and hold them.
Then came plucking. By week 3-4
they still had not used a bow. By the
end of October Elizabeth finally switched to singing. They fell short on their promises to start a
level 2 class for the advanced students (Elizabeth was not the only one). In the end, there was nothing more they could
do for her with violin except to let her sit there longing to play.
Writing: Only the Positive, Please
Elizabeth’s teacher is great with computers and
technology. He set up gmail email accounts
for them at the beginning of the year, along with a blog, and chat. They are tasked with posting comments on the
blog from time to time, including comments about various activities that they
do in school. Elizabeth learned,
however, that you are only allowed to write positive comments about things that
go on at school. If you don’t like an
activity and write about it, he will take it down and tell you to rewrite
it. The same is true for papers about
school activities, and videos too. They
did a video of the overnight camp in the fall.
Most of the kids thought the camp was horrible. Elizabeth was tasked with interviewing kids
about their reactions to the camp and all of the comments were negative. The teacher intervened and said they weren’t
allowed to say anything negative. She
had to re-film the interviews. This has
led to some interesting conversations at home about the First Amendment.
Art: Two Straight Lines, Madeleine
Monsieur Bertrand (privately nicknamed “Butt Drum”) lines
the students up at the end of art class in two straight lines. He keeps the kids there until the lines are
perfectly straight, no matter how long it takes and how late they are to their
next class.
Art class is very different from what Elizabeth is used to
at her fancy private schools back home.
There’s no clay, no kiln, no special water color paper. They use pencils and markers (which they have
to bring in themselves) to draw thoughtful creations, such as their own idea of
an “Alice through the Looking Glass” world or a machine inside their head that
makes something happen. Elizabeth chose
to make a booger shooting machine.
PE with a French Twist:
Swimming is a very important part of the French education
system. All children have to pass a swimming
test to graduate high school. At
Elizabeth’s school, they have swimming for PE for half of the year, and they
are lucky enough to do it at Aqua Boulevard.
Aqua Boulevard is a gigantic indoor water park with pools, water slides,
hot tubs, a rope swing, waves, fountains, and more. For PE class, they normally have swimming
lessons in portions of the giant pools, but they do get to occasionally ride
the slides.
One day, as described by Elizabeth, the kids were lined up
at the edge of the pool to take turns jumping in and doing their laps while the
instructors watched from outside of the pool.
Behind the instructors, however, there were two adults in the hot tub “having
sex” while all of the children watched.
Thankfully, 11-year-olds don’t tend to give accurate descriptions of
what sex is yet so I don’t know exactly what was going on, but Elizabeth said
that they had their hands inside each other’s bathing suits and he was “kissing
her butt.” I guess it’s good to know
that the instructors were vigilantly focused on the children swimming, at least.
Lunch and Recess:
In case you didn’t realize this, the French don’t dine in 15
minutes. It takes time. For kids too.
They get 45 minutes to eat and another 45 minutes to play, for a total
of an hour and a half for their lunch break.
Traditionally, kids used to go home for lunch, but today they either
bring a bagged lunch or eat in the canteen.
The canteen doesn’t serve your typical school hot lunch dumped on a tray. It is a proper three course meal served with
real plates, silverware, and glasses. For
the kids who bring their own lunches, there are several microwaves available to
heat up their food. It is so civilized.
At Elizabeth’s school, they go to the park for lunch recess
because there is no school yard. They
have to wear uniforms, including only navy or black coats, scarves, hats and
gloves and shoes. We had to buy her a
new coat and all the rest because they were pink. They are not allowed to bring anything with
them to recess either. One kid got
yelled at for bringing a pink jump rope.
They are not allowed on the grass (typical in France) so they stand
around on the dirt. They are allowed to
play soccer and there is always a game at recess, but you are not allowed to
wear sneakers to school. Therefore, the
kids are playing soccer in shoes. For
girls, the shoes that fit the uniform code are often not appropriate for a
soccer game. They are allowed on the
playground structures on Fridays. The
rest of the week, the girls tend to stand around on the dirt and freeze.
Postscript:
In case you were wondering, Elizabeth’s school is a very
good school despite these peculiarities.
We shopped around quite a bit when looking for the right school for
her. We’ve also heard stories from
parents who have had their children at other schools in Paris that makes it
seem like paradise here. We also saw
proof of the quality of instruction at the school’s “Open Day” a couple of
weeks ago, where parents get to watch the teachers at work with the children.
Further to our decision to put Elizabeth in a private school in France,
there is a lot out there on how French school system is currently under a lot
of criticism for the antiquated teaching methods and low test scores compared
with other European countries. A recent
Time Magazine article summarizes the concerns very well: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2021009,00.html
No comments:
Post a Comment