The Mammoth and Me

Replacing French Trainee Teachers absent for Training......

2011-02-22T22:20:00.032+01:00

Anybody who used to read this blog regularly must have assumed by now that both the « Mammoth » and « me » had finally succumbed to extinction as a result of the first term's timetable. It's not that I have suddenly run out of things to tell you about French Education and it's recent reforms, it's just that I've been so completely overwhelmed by it all. So many thanks to Mustard Boy and son-who-does-sums, who came to the rescue of the endangered duo!

Readers in the Autumn may remember that I was very busy being formatted by the Ed. Nat. in order to supervise my charming Trainee Teacher, TT. However, as it's highly likely that some of this wisdom may have been lost in translation, it's probably as well for TT that he has just left for a more state-of-the-art training course. This is to be dispensed by the didactic experts at the University and the ghosts of the pedagogical past of the IUFM1, who most of us thought had now disappeared with the other dinosaurs of education.

Now I don't want to appear needlessly awkward and nit picking, and I would have no problem with TT getting on with a bit of teaching theory for a few weeks,were it not for the small problem of his pupils. For his course is full time and, during the four weeks of his absence, he will be replaced by two lovely lasses who have just passed the written part of the CAPES2 and are now about to have a go at real life teaching. I suppose it's less worrying than a brain surgeon handing a scalpel to a medical student, but the logistic problems caused by their arrival and his departure have been the cause of more than a few administrative migrains. Ensuring the handover of six classes and their unfinished, unassessed projects to ONE qualified person is not without problems, but to hand them over to TWO unqualified students is a minefield in the making.

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TT, on the other hand, left the lycée last Friday on a cloud of insouciance at the idea of the six-week stretch of lessonless bliss ahead. Despite the stern reminder of the IUFM « counsellor » that training was « not a holiday », the remaining few functioning neurones that had surived the teaching tsunami of the last months told him that any alternative would seem like a holiday. Like most of his young colleagues, some of whom have already given up and left or taken sick leave, he has been fighting to cope with a full timetable and precious little in the CAPES syllabus to equip him for lycée life. The French teaching exams are tough and highly competitive but they serve mainly to verify the level of attainment in the subject to be taught rather than any real aptitude to teach.

The difficulties encountered in implementing the teacher training reform were of course foreseeable and foreseen. And the resulting stress and worry for all concerned perhaps explains the significant decrease in the number of CAPES candidates this year. According to Libé the numbers have shot down by almost half. But then in these days of government spending cuts, what better way to reduce the civil service pay roll than by dissuading people to sign up in the first place?

1 Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres (French Teacher Training College)

2 French competitive civil service entrance exams that qualify teachers. Successful candidates of the written part go on to do two days of oral exams in teaching theory and English. The best candidates are then selected and will do their probationary year next year ... like TT

Training TT ... French Teacher Trainee Reform

2010-10-11T23:12:00.025+01:00

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They say the golden rule of blogging is not only to do it regularly but always to post on the same day. Well I haven't a clue what day I published last time, and my daily delays have nearly extended into a mega moratorium ... but Brodie is back

So what's new in the world of the Ed. Nat.? Well first of all I never did get round to reporting back on my training course for TT. It was a four-hour morning event for teacher trainers in all disciplines and we English teachers were assembled in the IUFM's 1 lecture hall. Now this is not the cosiest of places at the best of times but it rapidly resembled a station waiting room as an assortment of lost-looking, non-English-speaking ladies, in long skirts and flat sandals, plodded hopefully round about us, apparently oblivious to our three inspectors. Then, seemingly satisfied that their own inspectors were not in hiding under the seats, they crashed out again, leaving the door open to let in the freezing unseasonal north wind. I have to hand it to our inspectors though, they never batted an eyelid, good naturedly ploughing on with their programme while the rest of us simultaneously fumed and froze.

It seems that Lyon University was very successful at getting its candidates through the competitive English concours 2 exams this year, which explains why there were nearly fifty trainers at our meeting. Since French teachers are trained in the Académie where they took their exams, each of Lyon's successful candidates needs a personal tutor to steer him through his probationary year. After this they will be posted to whatever far afield educational authority needs them, usually Créteil, Vaulx-en-Velin, or one of our other educational disaster areas. This presumably influences the content of what we, the artisans of education, are expected to impart to our apprentices.

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Apparently most of the official blurb about the French teacher training reform concentrates on general crowd control skills and the best methods for meting out punishments, the latter coming as quite a relief since most of us thought they had been abolished. Such is the essence of any young teacher's classroom survival kit nowadays. Little is mentioned about how we should impart knowledge. But then with three hours of « exploration » a week and two hours of «personal accompaniment», none of which is to be assessed, knowledge probably isn't number one on education's list of priorities. Certainly, we are losing the fight to make the nation bilingual, even in seconde, our equivalent of the Upper V, we now have a mere two and a half hours a week, compared with four and a half, fifteen years ago.

Still, it's not all doom and gloom. The institution is clearly keen to adapt to our changing society. For example, I'm sure TT was very relieved to learn that, should any of his pupils attack each other or him during my visit to his class, the Ed. Nat. has authorized me to throw myself into the fray. Come to think of it, this could be why next week I'm going on another course ... maybe this one will include classroom Karate!

1 Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres (teacher training college)

2 Concours (CAPES and Agrégation). Competitive entry civil servants exams which allow university graduates to have tenure within the Education Nationale. Successful candidates have very little say in where they are sent on their first "posting" and often find themselves sent to the north of France.

TT and Me : Teaching Teacher Trainers after the IUFM closures

2010-09-26T13:02:00.025+01:00

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My overflowing timetable does have at least one advantage, namely that the school year seems to be evaporating like water from my oleander pots in August. Not only do I have an extra class this year but I also have to make regular visits to TT (trainee teacher) and advise him on his lessons. Given my allergy to French pedagogical jargon and theory, this is a risky operation, which I hope won't finish his career before it starts. However, such feelings of diffidence will soon be a thing of the past and next week will hopefully see me brimming with confidence about my turorial role. This is because on Monday morning, what is left of our dismantled IUFM 1 will be training me to teach TT. It's only four hours of course but TT and I are both very excited as we anticipate my return, armed with the magic formulae that will transform him into the roi de l'estrade 2.

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Presumably it's a bit late for them to explain to me how I should have prepared TT for his first lesson of the term, unless they're counting on inflicting me on another of the Ed Nat's 4 neophytes next year. However, I shall doubtless receive all manner of forms and formulae for assessing TT's capacity for classroom survival. Fortunately, as a beginner, he doesn't have any Upper Sixth students so he's safely out of reach of the Barbarians. The latter are now doing a lot of uncaccustomed number crunching, working out how many extra points they need to pass their Baccalauréat in June, despite their abysmal marks in French 3 in the Summer. Their teachers are already showing signs of strain as they take stock of the task that lies ahead.

Of course it's early days yet, but so far I haven't been confronted with anything remotely resembling the worst of last year's Lycée low life . This is just as well as TT has to sit in on my classes from time to time and a mere glimpse of last year's war zone would probably have prompted his resignation within the week. As it happens, his last visit went rather well. Various hands waved in reply to my questions, silence reigned while they dutifully copied my prose into their exercise books and they all seemed hell bent on showing TT how lucky he was to have me as his tutor. I breathed a sigh of relief when the bell rang. Nothing would happen to spoil the effect. TT strolled off to find his own classroom and a couple of my pupils stopped for a chat on the way out.

"Who was that pupil at the back of the classroom ?" enquired one sharp young lad.

Anxious to safeguard the authority of my very young-looking colleague, I hastened to dispel any doubts as to his qualifications and pointed out forcefully that the « pupil » was a member of STAFF! This was obviously not a satisfactory explanation however and I could almost hear the little guy's grey cells busily processing the information before giving me the benefit of his analysis.

"A member of STAFF", he repeated in a conspiratorial tone, a look of enlightenment dawning on his intelligent young face. He had finally cracked it.

"Je vois!!" he exclaimed, positively pink with triumph. "Monsieur was ....the INSPECTOR "!

Now floundering helplessly, I muttered half inaudibly that it was something like that, and fled. There was nothing to be done but to inform a delighted TT about his meteoric ascension from trainee English teacher to inspector in the Education Nationale.

1 Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres, French Teacher Training College
2 All classrooms in our lycée are equipped with a platform, or estrade, in front of the blackboard for teachers to stand on and "deliver" their lesson.

3 Bacccalauréat oral and written examinations in French, taken the year before the rest of theBaccalauréat papers, at the end of the Lower VI. Failure has to be « compensated » by a corresponding number of marks over ten in other subjects, thus giving the pupil an overall average of 10/20

4 Education Nationale

Demise of the IUFMs ... Dispute about Training French Teachers

2010-09-21T22:45:00.015+01:00

So much time has passed since I last posted that I nearly shut up shop and called it a day. However, with a workload that has increased by about thirty percent, letting off steam on my blog seemed a good way of not letting my timetable take over my life, its flooded and overflowing state largely due to the Ed Nat's latest innovation: the abolition of the IUFMs* or French teacher training colleges.

Now I have to admit to having always been extremely critical of the IUFMs, which I felt did nothing to prepare me for life in the classroom. Maybe my British origins, or a lifelong immunity to maths and pĥysics, explain my aversion to French erudite teaching theories, my preference going to hands on experience and practical examples. Even music here is studied for at least a year « in theory », with children learning notes and keys and not so much as the squeak of an instrument to be heard! Those who have the grit and determination to survive the boredom do go on to become fine musicians but their number is limited and neither I nor my children have many friends who ever got to grips with actually playing anything. During my own training, I supposed that the IUFMs' attachment to seemingly meaningless long words and abstract terminology were just another example of a somewhat dry approach to learning. However, I gradually discovered that plenty of my French colleagues felt much the same way as I did and as a result we would all get on with correcting tests during lectures, longing for the day when we would be permitted to call a spade a spade and the « bouncing referent » a football.

So why, you might wonder, has there been so much fuss about this year's new scheme under which trainees are simply taken under the wing of an experienced teacher, watched, advised and nurtured until they get the hang of things ?

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Well the main problem is that, instead of the six or eight hours' a week teaching required in the past, trainees are now doing a full timetable, like their qualified colleagues. Of course this is now possible because they are no longer taken up with all that training at the IUFMs. It also has the undoubted advantage of contributing to the government's current economy drive since they are paying their trainees the same amount and getting three times as much work out of them. On the other hand the downside is that thousands of untried, untrained and unprepared graduates are being unleashed on unsuspecting pupils. Most had no idea which school they would be teaching in until three or four days before the beginning of term. This meant nothing could be prepared in the holidays and with the best will in the world they are going to have their work cut out preparing lesson plans now! Which is where my extra workload comes in.

When asked last July if I would take on a trainee in September, I accepted because I felt that a more practical approach had to be better than the mystifying jargon that had left me just as « untrained » as the young colleagues who everyone is protesting about at the moment. Needless to say, this was not the most diplomatic of moves and I received numerous union communications explaining that we should all be refusing to co-operate. Certainly by August two thirds of our fledgling teachers were still without tutors. And on my return to the Lycée at the beginning of the month, with trainee in tow, my treachery did not go unnoticed ! Seemingly other tutors have since been bullied, bribed or blackmailed into accepting their task although some are 20 kms or so from their trainee.

Unsurprisingly, we seem to be facing yet another French education reform that hasn't been thought through properly, or that has been largely motivated by financial considerations. As a result, it has little or no support from those who are required to implement it, and yet it would only have required a reduction of a few hours in the teaching loads of the tutors and their charges for the whole thing to have functioned pretty satisfactorily. But for that to happen, the decision makers up there in their ivory tower in Paris would have had to listen to the people on the ground … et ça, ce n'est pas demain la veille!

*IUFM Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres

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Marking the Baccalauréat : June 2010

2010-06-28T22:46:00.022+01:00

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At last! The written part of the Baccalauréat is over. Between the 17th and the 23rd June a seemingly ceaseless stream of teachers and candidates beat a trail from one lycée to another in order to avoid staff marking their pupils' work. This meant teachers from Lyon sometimes driving a hundred kilometers to collect their exam papers and literary students travelling to an exam centre on the other side of the city to sit their specific version of the "Bac". I sometimes wonder if it's all an Ed. Nat.1 plot to prevent slacking by promoting the adrenalin flow.

So with no more excitement until the orals next week, I've just spent my first day in the company of my pile of Baccalauréat papers. There are seventy of them and they make pretty grim reading. Yet somehow beavering away under my clerodendron tree, with the perfume of jasmine and linden blossom wafting around me, makes me wince less at the treatment meted out to my mother tongue. Needless to say, I don't feel I have much to blog about, but will be back as soon as I've finished writing red all over those papers!

Post Scriptum

A post Post Scriptum in celebration of the fact that I have just this moment finished plodding through all that Bac prose. Anybody thinking about TEFL in France should be warned that decoding the Gallic version of English can be a linguistic challenge even for the most resourceful of pedagogues. Asked to imagine a sequel to the extract from a detective story that they had already answered questions on, candidates wrote at length about the « swetty son » who disappeared (in sweltering heat?) like a character from a « Mary Hings Clarke » novel. I suppose I should have been relieved to learn that "swetty" did actually turn up again, still « in life ». But it was at the end of their compositions that I found the key to their linguistic problems. When giving their opinion on detective stories, the emphatic and consensual "don't like read" but "love action", explained it all!

Clerodendron

1 Education Nationale

Friends not Foes?

2010-06-23T23:45:00.010+01:00

The Baccalauréat is still occupying most of my time so this will be another piddling post. In any case, with the whole world holding forth about the Fall of the Blues in France, there's not much left to say. It’s ironical though that this should all have happened at the same time as the 18th June De Gaulle celebrations. It seems the country has a whole new débâcle to tell itself a "tale" about , except that Roselyne Bachelot's1 Ministerial scolding makes less promising material than the General's appeal.

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I’ve been surprised though how genuinely shocked and upset so many French people have been about what is to me just another football match. After all, judging by the number of incidents at matches, le foot doesn’t exactly bring out the best in people. But maybe the French football fiasco’s coinciding with the trial of Société Générale trader Jérôme Kerviel and the anniversary of the De Gaulle appeal, has somehow made us think about the nation's values, today and yesterday. And maybe to some, Nicolas Sarkozy's allegiance to Gaullism seems an anachronism in a society where rogue traders and footballers make millions, while showing contempt for their country, their hierarchy and the rules of the game. In what seemed like a wake-up call, enraged French football fans in South Africa said they had cheered the opposing team and a mayor in the Var2 said the Blues' world cup bonuses should go to Provence flood victims. The entire nation, normally renowned for chauvinism rather than patriotism, is suddenly concerned about the image of their country, the fronde and the flag.

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Then in addition to all this unaccustomed patriotic consternation, there has been a fair amount of concern about our loss of face outre manche. As a result, the reaction of the British press after the defeat by Mexico was widely reported by the French media and led to accusations about the British dishing out lessons as usual and generally enjoying the French defeat. However when the Blues finally hit the bottom, we were surprised to learn that the perfide albion3 had subsided into silence, leaving the rest of the world to wind up the post mortem. There was much conjecture about why this should be, but a colleague I had lunch with today was sure he had the answer. An anglophile, and more into physics than football, he pointed out kindly that France was in such dire distress that to have made any more of the matter would have been like kicking a man when he's down. And, unlike the rest of the world, he told me, the British are just too fair play for that. I found myself breathing a sigh of relief. Having suffered something of an identity crisis over the past few days it was reassuring to know that however strained Franco-British relations may seem sometimes, both sides of my split nationality are friends after all!

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1 Minister of sport
2 The name of the Département or county where Draguignan and other communities suffered severe flooding recently
3 Term used since the seventeenth century, referring to Britain in a less friendly context!

Beating the Blues

2010-06-21T21:38:00.007+01:00

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No time for blogging today but can't help feeling a bit sorry for Raymond , with all the stick he's been getting. After a year of battling with my own brand of Barbarians, I can imagine how he must feel about all that anarchy. Still, at least the Ed. Nat.'s protests about society's refusal of authority are finding an echo elsewhere and on top of that everybody suddenly feels concerned by their national identity ... definitely blue!

Back after the Bac.1

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1 Baccalauréat: French high school graduation exams that are taking up my time at the end of the school year

The British and the French: Friends or Foes?

2010-06-17T22:56:00.122+01:00

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The last couple of days I have been suffering from another bout of cultural schizophrenia and it's not the football but the fall of France in 1940 that's got me doing the splits this time. Tomorrow our Nicolas will be commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the General's appeal, which has attracted a fair bit of attention from the Beeb. This is hardly surprising of course, given their role in the whole affair, although I'm not sure that Sarko would have liked the tone of Allen Little's 1 broadcast this morning.

He would doubtless have been edified to learn how much France still needs to venerate this moment because De Gaulle represents an alternative conception of France. Thanks to him, we were told, the French have a tale to tell themselves about a France that didn't capitulate but fought on, didn't collaborate but resisted. And that « tale » was the founding narrative of the post war French Republic. In a nutshell, it was what enabled the country to forget about all those nasty collaboration stories. I suppose it must have slipped Mr Little's mind that in 2000, Jacques Chirac inaugurated a museum the precise purpose of which was to refresh the country's memory about the two Frances, Pétain's and de Gaulle's. But anyway, even if nous les français occasionally gloss over the unpalatable bits of World War II history, don't we the British do the same thing? I mean how often is Dresden brought to everyone's attention?

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In Tuesday's Thought for The Day3, Angela Tilby astutely remarked that history is always provisional and that we shouldn't expect a final truth. She was thinking about the Savile report, due out later that day, but she could just as well have been referring to the second world war, which is receiving a fair amount of attention from the French media as well. For example, last night on Arte, German, French and British wartime newsreel reports related the period leading up to the fall of France and the General's appeal. When commenting on footage showing the evacuation of Dunkirk, the journalist dug up an old bone of contention. He pointedly remarked that the rescued French soldiers disembarking in Britain were doubtless not as happy as they looked, given that so many of their (French) comrades had been abandoned on the beaches. This implied accusation, that British soldiers had been given preference over French by the rescuers, reminded me of an episode nearly thirty years ago when I first came to live in France.

I had invited four French and British friends for dinner. Nothing disastrous had occurred in the kitchen, the wine had won all round approval and yet, as we turned out attention to the cheeseboard, I suddenly found myself in the middle of a conversational minefield. It all began when Mrs Brit mentioned Dunkirk, clearly one of our history's moments of hope and glory. The attack on the cheeseboard stopped abruptly, the knife quivered uncertainly in the Camembert. Monsieur France paused, giving proper consideration to this version of history before launching himself into battle. Comment? But Dunkirk was évidemment yet another betrayal, like Mers el-Kébir! The cowardly British had saved their own soldiers, leaving the majority of the French behind to face the Germans.

The tension was palpable and Mrs Brit's consternation acute. She of course had been brought up on the "tale" of the little boats and the Dunkirk miracle. I admit that at the time I was shocked too. Yet, with time I've gradually come round to the idea that if I'd been born here, I would have probably thought the same way. Let's face it, in 1972 I found it impossible to believe that the British army had knowingly shot at defenceless civil rights marchers. But that was provisional too.

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1 BBC 4 From our Own Correspondent
2 Franco-German TV channel
3 BBC Radio 4

End of Year Lesson

2010-06-14T18:20:00.034+01:00

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Well I was going to write a post about Sunday in the Dombes, but it’ll wait. After all my rants in this blog, it's time to write about one of those moments in the pupil teacher relationship when they are on our side, like this afternoon! It was two o'clock and, as I walked down the endless empty corridor that runs the length of the lycée classrooms, I reflected that the government’s conquest of the third term was less than conclusive. At any rate, conquered or not, it was over so far as the pupils were concerned and the few stragglers still on the premises were clearly on automatic pilot, there more by accident than design. So I was staggered to find my entire class of year tens waiting expectantly for our last lesson together. Not that we were into anything very cerebral, but after watching the final episode of Bend it like Beckham they chatted quite happily in their fractured, enthusiastic English, until one of them noticed my Tupperware.

Flapjacks*, I explained, handing them round. The announcement was greeted with a mixture of glee and suspicion but I had presumably chalked up enough credit over the year for them to take a risk with English baking. There was a moment of thoughtful munching before the verdict finally fell. Trop bon Madame! Seemingly school lunch had been a light affair because they emptied the entire contents of the box in five minutes and then asked for the recipe. To be honest, I was caught short on that one. First of all, my flapjack recipe comes from the Hamlyn book, which was written in the pre-metric Middle Ages and meant I was frantically converting ounces into grams. After that I had to explain about golden syrup. I did my best to promote the little green and gold can and gave a detailed description of Carrefour’s exotic foods shelf, but I have a feeling that a new, French, flapjack is about to be born. It didn’t matter how hard I explained about sugar refinement, molasses and sugar cane, or which language I did it in, they were, and still are, convinced I really meant maple syrup.

But who cares! What really mattered was that they had wanted to show their appreciation in the kindest way possible, by coming in full formation to my last lesson and by expressing the desire to work with me next year. All of a sudden my Annus horribilis with the Barbarians, the horror stories of colleagues and the nagging worry about what’s round the corner for next year, receded into insignificance. As I looked round at the group of trusting, positive students, cheerily chomping away on my flapjacks, next September somehow felt like something to look forward to!

* Recipe for French readers on request!

French Education Reform: School Holidays and Timetables ... again!

2010-06-10T23:00:00.192+01:00

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Tomorrow is the last day of the last full week of the French school year. It's true that for some reason best known to those brainy people in Paris, we are still expected to pretend school is continuing on Monday and Tuesday, even though we all know that only two or three pupils will turn up. If you don't live in France of course you will probably see nothing unusual about school continuing until the 15th June, and yet until last year the Lycée summer term was an affair that finished more or less at the end of May. This was considered necessary in order to leave the administration and teachers time to organize and mark the Baccalauréat. Needless to say, the government's latest campaign to "reconquer the month of June" has met with little enthusiasm from our year tens who resent a two-week reduction of what would otherwise be a three-month summer holiday!

Shortening school summer holidays, compensating by another short holiday in May, working on usually free Wednesday afternoons, reducing the number of hours in the day... These are just some of the solutions being considered to improve conditions for children in French schools. They have been debated since Monday, when our Luc1 opened his much heralded conference on les rythmes scolaires. The results of the conference are expected to be published in May 2011 but it's highly unlikely that anything much will change in the immediate future, whatever the conclusions. This is because the dates of coming school years are set in concrete until 2014, after which our dedicated Ed. Nat.2 comrades will doubtless be taking up the banner to defend those 1951 agreements again. And before the teeniest change has been implemented I shall be retired. C'est la vie! Nonetheless I find the concept interesting and have spent some time looking through Philippe Watrelot's exellent revue de presse on the subject.

One of the most frequent protests I hear in the staffroom concerning any changes to French school timetables and holidays is that this is how things have always been. In a nutshell, we survived it so why shouldn't they? Revolutions in France it seems are a thing of the past. Yet in 1889, when Jules Ferry declared education compulsory and state schools secular, he allowed primary school pupils a mere six weeks a year away from the Republican learning process, all the better for brainwashing, sans doute. So in the past there have been changes, with school holidays lengthening, initially to compensate for the shortage of farm labour after the first world war. Then later, the advent of paid holidays in 1938 and increasing standards of living in the 1960s led to a demand for yet more school holidays to take advantage of houses in the country and a growing tourist industry. However, it is interesting to note that until the beginning of the 1970s, school was still compulsory on Saturday afternoons and it has only fairly recently been abandoned on Saturday mornings in my own lycée.

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So clearly a number of changes have been implemented in the course of the last century or so and they have resulted in France becoming the country whose pupils spend the most hours and the fewest days in school. Thus with so many hours to fit into so few days, both primary and secondary children are forced to spend anything from six to nine hours behind their desks, making their school day the longest in Europe. In the Lycée this can mean starting at eight and finishing at six, with an hour for lunch. Apart from the interminable length of the day itself, most studies on adolescent sleep patterns show that young people are intellectually below par until about nine in the morning. With this in mind an experiment took place this year with a class of year tens in a lycée in Meaux. Lessons were concentrated from 8.30 until 1.30 pm, leaving afternoons entirely free for sport. The week was spread over a longer period of time, Monday to Saturday, in order to avoid any loss of teaching time and the only problem seemed to be lunch, which took place at 10.30 am. But then there are things that are sacrosanct and the four-course French school lunch requires time to be eaten and digested before attacking the sports programme!

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Anyway there's no doubt that the conference is going to have plenty to talk about. Presided by the OECD, it includes prominent figures like sociologist Eric Debarbieu who was present in the recent discussions on school violence. Unfortunately though representatives of the main parties concerned, namely teachers, parents and pupils, are noticeably absent while for some reason the SNCF4, is invited. On the other hand, the government justifies their choice of participants by the necessity to keep numbers to a minimum to improve efficiency. Whatever their reasons, it 's a choice that highlights the fact that any change in French school hours and holidays would have an enormous impact on the economy, cultural and sports associations, school transport, and tourism. This casts some doubt on our Luc's declaration that pupils' welfare would be at the centre of all decision making. And then, in these days of government spending cuts, a reduction of the school day could well mean a reduction in the number of lessons and offers a grand opportunity for more savings, since fewer lessons means fewer teachers. This may even be why we're not invited to the meetings!

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1 Luc Chatel, French Minister of Education
2 Education Nationale
3 Nicolas Sarkozy
4 French railways

Art and Gardens: Parc-Atelier des Rochesmuses

2010-06-07T18:21:00.032+01:00

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On Sunday afternoon my Danish friend took me to visit her Dutch friend, who has a mountainside garden in the Vercors. It was an unforgettable experience and led to my unexpectedly scoring points for the cultural dimension of my national identity. In a country where culture is the key to being a person with a pedigree, I have always felt a bit of a mongrel and so it was very satisfying to be suddenly elevated to the rank of a personne cultivée without having read a single syllable of Barthes or Bourdieu. And all thanks to the Ministry of Culture which had organized the Rendez-Vous aux Jardins 1 , thus bestowing cultural status on one of my favourite pastimes!

Our rendez-vous was with the Parc-Atelier des Rochesmuses outside the village of Choranche, above the Bourne Gorges in the foothills of the Vercors. This spectacular garden, set against the towering pink and grey backdrop of the sheer limestone rock face, is the creation of sculptor Tineke Bot and is entirely tended by her and her husband. From a horticultural point of view there was already enough for me to mull over for the month but I soon discovered that there was even more than I had thought. Tineke is an internationally known sculptor and her garden is punctuated at regular intervals by her incredibly diverse pieces of work. Until recently, these were mostly in bronze but after a series of thefts, she has begun experimenting with concrete, a more challenging proposition for the visitor planning to abscond with the exhibits! In fact these recent works, whose beautiful colours and patina are reminiscent of bronze, are an interesting art form in their own right, to such an extent that the sculptor is now exploring new treatments of this material.

One of the most appealing aspects of the garden however, is the degree of integration into the Vercors scenery of both sculpture and gardens . Native plant species, like the amazing variety of wild orchids, are left to prosper side by side with the impressive collection of iris, while different types of Cotinus wave their feathered fronds next to the yellow flowers of the local linden trees. Hemerocallis and water lillies remind us of painters of the past while bright blue-bodied dragon flies add life to their studied stillness. Indigenous sages, thyme and rosemary contrast with the exoticism of a palm tree from Anduze and hollyhocks grow in gay abandon where they choose. As for the sculptures, whether figurative or abstract, they appear to have been born in the garden, such is their perfect adaptation to their surroundings.

APHRODITE

And as so often happens when I visit little known places of beauty in France, I had the feeling of being granted a glimpse of Camelot, a secret garden in an alpine paradise, and I found myself wondering if I would ever find it again !

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1 Nationally organized event to encourage visits to private and public gardens

Discipline in French Lycées : Role and Responsibility of a Teacher

2010-06-03T22:25:00.290+01:00

The spell cast by the Ice Saints in May has certainly retarded the arrival of Summer temperatures but then again a delay in the hot weather can be a boon when it comes to managing the various challenging behaviours of our more spirited breed of pupil. Rising temperatures seem to be more synonymous with sex appeal than studies, and strappy tee shirts and flip flops create an atmosphere better suited to the beach than the Baccalauréat.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the old days of writing up reports in the staff room and swapping spelling plans for improbable French agreements, are a thing of the past. In these technological times, computer programmes and internet allow us to bash out our virtual paperwork on a keyboard at home. Nonetheless, at the end of the third term the handwritten tradition still holds for the livrets scolaires, that ultimate French teacher's weapon and the final come-uppance for impossible pupils. The livret scolaire is a document that is filled in for upper and lower sixth pupils at the end of each year and includes an appreciation of work, progress and attitude, together with term and annual averages. After the Baccalauréat in June, teachers mark papers from other schools in order to ensure fairness and then assess each candidate's performance at a meeting with examiners in other subjects. The livret scolaire is taken into account if there is any discussion about the pass mark or the grade. Thus all French pupils know that a favourable or adverse comment on their livret can have a significant effect on their results!

with thanks

So it's a job that is tedious but no teacher takes lightly and it's a rare opportunity for a general discussion about Lycée life in a school system where staff don't have to be on the premises during their free periods. Take Monday. I was busy doing the Barbarians' livrets and couldn't resist a critical comment or two both about their cloddish conduct and about the way the Lycée handles it. Despite much wailing and gnashing of teeth by the entire teaching team this year, not one of the little toads has been expelled and they continue to behave like a horde of hooligans let loose in a holiday camp. Next year of course they will know nothing and this will then be an excuse for yet more unacceptable behaviour, caused by feelings of frustration and failure! I suppose my mood was particularly poisonous since the hostilities that day had started before we even got into the classroom, the first missile of the morning hitting me rather than the philistine it was aimed at.

My colleagues clucked in sympathetic unison, apparently in full agreement about the lack of support from our hierarchy. So in a mood for reform and self-help, I suggested that at least the problem of i-pods and mobile phones could be reduced in the classroom if we all enforced the rule that forbids their use in the corridors. Erreur! Pens remained poised in mid-air as everyone considered the idea for a moment, but from their aggrieved expressions I realized that I might just as well have asked them to don boiler suits and sweep the car park. As teachers, they pointed out earnestly, they were only responsible for what occurred behind the doors of their classroom. All other problems fell to the CPE1 and their team of super surveillants2. It's true of course that the French educational system is fortunate enough to have a whole department responsible for discipline and pastoral care, but for how long? With the French government currently cutting more jobs in education than any other sector of the civil service, their days may be numbered.

with thanks

And anyway I can't help feeling that we are facing a complete abdication from teacher responsibility when only a few old relics like me and my fossilized friends still believe we should be enforcing school rules. Yet if we fail to show a united front, the young people we are responsible for will be only too quick to spot the crack in the wall and break through, when what they really want is a wall that stands up to them.

End of rant!

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1 Conseiller Principal d'Education, resonsible for pastoral care, discipline and liaising with parents

2 Students who work part time to help with the administrative and disciplinary tasks in the Lycée

What's in a Name? Weekend Walks in Provence ...or the Diois ?

2010-05-31T22:37:00.086+01:00

It seems ages since I last posted and it's a bit like being long overdue to phone a friend - I hardly dare any more. However, hiking in France is a subject that always leaves me bursting to tell all, so I'm back!

with thanks

with thanks (click to enlarge)

I have to admit that despite all these years of living within spitting distance of the Alps, I still find the names of French mountain ranges and regions a source of constant confusion. This probably has something to do with the way an assortment of different names are used to designate identical areas, in much the same way as English tenses are rechristened in every new edition of French textbooks. Take where we were walking this weekend. Was it the Vercors, the Drôme, Provence or the Diois? The latter is a term that refers to an area which includes the little town of Die, its valley and two mountain ranges, one of which is also called the Diois. Two thirds of the area is situated in the Vercors, which is the name of both a national park and the mountain range between Die and Grenoble. However, to make sure that no tourist ever gets it straight, the entire Diois area is in Drôme Provençale while the Diois mountain range is confined to the south, bordering on the Hautes Alpes. And everyone knows of course that the Hautes Alpes are not a mountain range but a département 1! As for Drôme Provençale, there's a département called the Alpes de Haute Provence, and another called the Drôme, but what makes the Drôme « Provençale »? And where exactly is Provence anyway?

Well it seems that Augustus annexed Gallic tourism's most successful appellation contrôlée to the Roman Empire somewhere between 27BC and 14AD. Two thousand years later, this loosely defined area is officially part of the large administrative région, Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur, known as PACA. However to a Lyonnais like myself, it's simply an area bounded by lavendar fields, olive groves, and Peter Mayle's Luberon mountain. Most of Provence today is situated in the département of the Vaucluse 2 but fortunately for its tourism, the southern part of the département of the Drôme is also allowed to call itself « Provençale », although it isn't in PACA. Et Voilà! Mind you, despite all these efforts at fact finding, I'm still not absolutely sure that I've got all those names straight but I do know one thing, walking during the Whit weekend was a moment of pure unadulterated pleasure!

CROSS OF JUSTIN

Borrowed with thanks

Before we could start though, my French friends were determined that the demands of the kitchen should be satisfied with a visit to Die market. A fruitful visit indeed! We tested local organic rosé for the apéritif, bought bags of huge shiny black Nyons olives, filled our baskets with the sweetest of strawberries and munched on samples of soft, pastel coloured nougat. Only when culinary matters were well in hand were we free to put our boots on and do some exploring. So leaving fields of walnut trees behind us, we made our way up the mountain path among blossom covered laburnum and sweet smelling broom. We picked our way across bubbling mountain streams, overflowing with the last of the snow from the little white handkerchiefs on the peaks above, and after a couple of hours we reached the Cross of Justin. The altitude was only a thousand meters but the views over the Drôme Valley and the sheer limestone cliffs of the Vercors left us humbled and in happy anticipation of the days ahead.

CIRQUE D'ARCHIANE

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The following day, the « balcony » walk round the Cirque d'Archiane offered equally wonderful landscapes and a picnic with our feet in the icy water of a mountain stream. There was also the bonus of Archiane itself, a hamlet of few souls and six donkeys and the unlikely site of a café, run by Madeleine and Ulysses, an enterprising pair of 90 year-olds. Speed was not their selling point, but as we sat basking in the sunshine savouring this unexpected luxury, nobody was in any hurry. Well not at first. The mood changed however as we began to notice the ominous blackening of the previously blue sky and it became clear that we were about to experience one of those instant weather changes that can be so alarming in a mountain environment. Hesitating about whether to wait in the café for the storm to pass, but anxious about how long it might last, we finally grabbed our rucksacks and took to our heels.

Fifteen minutes later, dripping and bedraggled we regretted our haste! The wind whipped at our clothing, our wet hair sent rivulets down the back of our necks and our trousers clung to us like a ballet dancer's tights. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the black clouds scudded away in search of another mountainside, leaving the sun and wind to tumble dry us out of our sodden silence. Finally the perfume of damp earth and pine needles, the returning rays of sunshine on the green and gleaming wetness and the promise of home made icecream by the old fountain in Châtillon completed the restoration work on our spirits. Laughing and chattering, we began to plan the walk for the next day. And it was then that we saw it, the mysterious mottled yellow and rust bloom. Meditative and reverent, we stood in a circle like pagan priests, contemplating our find. For there before us was that rarest of orchids, the Sabot de Vénus, or Lady's Slipper Orchid, waiting modestly beside the leafy path to be discovered and admired.

1 French administrative area, similar to a county

2 Département next to the Drôme situated entirely in Provence and much written about by Peter Mayle

Bank Holiday Bridge

2010-05-20T22:44:00.016+01:00

A break in the blogging routine ... we have another pont for Pentecost. Back soon with tales from the Diois!

The Système D : Dealing with Technology and the Baccalauréat

2010-05-17T23:05:00.050+01:00

Anybody who looks in on this blog regularly will already have come across references to the Système D, the unorthodox Gallic way of dealing with unwelcome legislation or any other difficulties thrown up by every day life. This may have something to do with the fact that there are more rules and regulations here than in the UK, which makes things like setting up a business or disinheriting your children a complex affair. But whatever the reason for the Système D's existence, it's certainly well mastered by the Ed. Nat.'s 1 less than diligent pupils at exam time. That being said, judging by articles in the press, exam time irregularities are not a spécificité française even though my French friends regularly refer to what they perceive as the British spirit of fair play. They even express the touching belief that UK politicians are more pristine than the ones in the Assemblée Nationale, despite the Daily Telegraph's efforts to prove otherwise.

However, the purpose of this post is not to prove that one side of the Channel is more fair play than the other. It's just that with the build up to the Baccalauréat examinations, which start in the middle of next month, the pupils' version of Système D is uppermost in everybody's minds. In fact the problem even seems to worry the pupils themselves since they and their parents have asked the Lycée to do more to prevent it. This is because, despite the collège unique and the almost egalitarian Lycée, everyone knows that the funnel shaped éducation supérieur is anything but equal and unique. Outstanding students are creamed off immediately after their Baccalauréat and sent to écoles préparatoires where they will be crammed for the super competitive entrance exams to France's famous Grandes Ecoles. As a result the country is run by an élite who are the successful survivors of this ruthless system of elimination. And since entry to prep school depends on how well placed pupils are in class, those who are unfairly overtaken by the PEEPERs are understandably aggrieved.

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So the soon to be disbanded IUFMs3 will be glad to know that a session of practice analysis took place in the staff room today to improve our exam awareness skills. We compared notes on how to spot i-phones and listened in alarm as a colleague treated us to an update on the latest pupil favoured technology for enhanced exam performance. He told us about gadgets on the internet that transmit answers dictated from afar thanks to wireless earpieces and a system that enables pupils to have information transmitted to a watch with an integrated screen. Needless to say he had everybody's full attention and after he had finished there was a pause, followed by murmurs of anxiety as everyone contemplated the new challenges of invigilation in the world of 007.

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Still, I reasoned, at least our super savvy ally would soon be zooming up to the deputy head's office with his gold mine of information. Or would he? The sudden change in atmosphere seemed to indicate that this was one of those occasions when I had underestimated the cultural gap. There was silence, and then a series of vigorous protests. Mais NON! the informer exclaimed at last. It was fine for his peers to be aware of all these goings on but to denounce such things to our superiors… He made an open handed upward gesture, shrugging his shoulders for extra emphasis. Embarrassed, and rapidly reorganizing my thought processes around the unspoken legacies of history, I responded weakly with some inane comment about pupils distinguishing between good and bad behaviour. Needless to say, I stopped short of using such prehistoric terms as probity and moral rectitude but even so my colleague instantly assumed an expression of consternation tinged with compassion. Enfin, he explained carefully, I must understand that philosophical French minds were trained to keep notions like good and bad in perspective. It doesn't do to oversimplify such complex issues. Naturellement. Well that certainly goes a long way to explaining the success of the Système D!

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1 Education Nationale
2 French teacher training college

Ascension Weekend in France: After the Ice Saints

2010-05-13T22:57:00.073+01:00

borrowed with thanks

Today is Ascension Day, which means the beginning of a pont, one of those nice long French weekends that occur every time a public holiday falls inconveniently on a Tuesday or Thursday. It's a charming custom, permitting the prolongation of Catholic feast days, world war commemorations and Labour Day, and it has remained happily unaffected by our Nicolas's nasty puritan ideas about working more and earning more. However, despite the holiday mood this is going to be a super short post, partly because I doubled the dose last Monday and also because a small family invasion has started, with Cartesian Daughter the first to arrive from Paris this morning. And to add to the time shortage, there's that depressing bulge in my school bag, an unwelcome reminder of the Barbarians' unmarked test papers.

Still at least the garden is more or less ready to break out in a riot of colour now that we no longer have to contend with Messieurs Mamert, Pancrace and Servais, the sinister Saints de Glace. If French folklore is to be believed, the three Ice Saints have threatened French agriculture and gardens every year for centuries, to such an extent that any precipitous planting between the 11th and the 13th May is doomed to failure in advance. Presumably to prove his solidarity with the peasantry, the Pope fired the lot of them from the Catholic calendar in 1960 and hired Estelle, Achille and Rolande instead, but to no avail. Plant life is still said to be in peril before their designated days have passed and today's blog is just to salute the unsung heroes of my tubs and borders that made it through the first potentially freezing fortnight of the month of May!

borrowed with thanks

Education Reform in France: Truancy, Training, Timetables

2010-05-10T22:50:00.421+01:00

These are tricky times as stock markets and currencies plunge, oil slicks advance and a volcano with a name like an Ikea fitting continues to spit up ash. So reading about the latest in French education reform has been a way of keeping my mind off the gloom and doom and I have to admit that I've been forced to pour a fair bit of water into my wine. Which is a way of saying in this part of the world that I've stopped brandishing my battle axe ... at parents.

Borrowed with thanks

Anything I've read about the reform seems to fall into three categories: teacher training, truancy, and the organization of the French school day. Of the three, it's teacher training that appears to have provoked the most protest from eminent educationalists such as Jean Louis Auduc, Directeur Adjoint of the IUFM1 in Créteil. Créteil is France's educational front line where battalions of young inexperienced teachers are sent every year on a survival course of indeterminate duration. On the subject of teacher training, Monsieur Auduc rightfully stresses the importance of practice analysis and learning to deal with parents. However, he then continues in the IUFMs very own vernacular, insisting on the importance of identifying the multifaceted heterogenous characteristics of the teacher's job, putting them in perspective after linking and clarifiying what has been learnt during the training course. Hmm ...I doubt very much that many young teachers will be regretting the disappearance of this part of the programme. The IUFMs are closing at the end of the school year and I admit that JLA's fin de règne protests leave me completely unmoved.

Borrowed with thanks

On a more positive note, the Institut Montaigne, a liberal think tank founded by Claude Bébéar, has come up with a report about primary school education which highlights what many of us have deplored for some time. I was also pleasantly surprised to note that the report uses simple, straightforward language to describe the shortcomings of the system. First of all it focuses on the organization of the French school day, the Périgord goose approach to teaching. The report explains that French primary school children attend school a mere 140 days a year, which articles in the press compare with 180 days in Finland or 200 in Italy. Yet French primary school children actually spend more hours in school that any other country in the EU or the OECD, 913 hours a year compared with 634 in Germany. Clearly with so many hours to fit into so few days, productivity is an issue!

It's certainly an alarming fact that, despite all those hours spent in the classroom and the 21% of the GNP thrown into the educational black hole, French schoolchildren's results are still not satisfactory. That's why the Ed. Nat.2 is more than a little fretful as it awaits the publication of the latest PISA3 results, due out in December this year. France is not expected to rank among the highest of the 65 countries assessed. This is because statistics already show that nearly 15% of children are neither literate nor numerate when they start secondary school and 40% have an insufficient grasp of primary programme core subjects. With this in mind, it's hardly surprising that the situation in secondary school is worrying too. The report points out that with 150,000 young people leaving school every year with no qualifications whatsoever, we can expect an additional three million unqualified individuals on the job market in twenty years' time. Added to a current annual shortfall of 100,000 qualified people, the country is in fact facing an educational time bomb with potentially huge social and economic repercussions.

So after reading all this I found myself doing a quick revision of my previous rants and wondering if there was a bit more to sorting out our schools than educating parents with the Mallette des Parents or Parental Responsibility Contracts. Supporting parents is important of course but it doesn't compensate learning difficulties that date back to primary school, or the resulting spiral of failure and aggressivity in secondary school. In the face of such difficulties, the report very usefully stresses that other countries hire motivated teams of teachers with a common approach to the task in hand and a desire to work together. This is perhaps an oblique reference to French "teams" of teachers which are selected by a computer on a seniority based points system. Their posting has absolutely nothing to do with their previous experience, their specific skills or affinities with an existing team!

Borrowed with thanks

The last point currently attracting much attention both in political circles and in my lycée, concerns truancy. It appears that the concerted efforts of teachers and CPE4 have little impact on attendance records. As a result the government has created a great deal of controversy by resuscitating a law passed in 2006 to stop family allowances if children fail to turn up for school. Obviously the idea is to make families take responsibility for their children but even I find it hard to believe that there are a significant number of parents who really don't care about their children dropping out of school. Surely if they could do anything about their offspring's absenteeism, they would have done so long ago, regardless of family allowances. In addition, schools are being put in a position where they are in effect denouncing families to the social services, and creating yet more financial hardship for children whose family circumstances are already difficult enough. Then of course, although regular school attendance is certainly a step in the right direction, just because a kid comes to school does not mean that they will learn!

This was brought home to me during my lesson with the Upper VI this morning. A boy was sitting at the front with his back turned to me, chatting to his neighbour about essential things like his weekend, his girlfriend and the latest OL results. His rucksack was firmly zipped up and his coat still on. Irritated by my constant interruptions, he finally turned to face me. Didn't I realize, he asked in exasperation, that he was simply carrying out an acte de présence? Mais évidemment! He was only in my lesson because if he hadn't come he would be expelled, and with the Baccalauréat coming up such an eventuality was out of the question. And he isn't the only pupil in that class that has been taken to task for truancy.

Borrowed with thanks

While I was at the bus stop last week I came across another one. We chatted about England, my ailing car, and his repeated absences from lessons. His problem he told me was not so much school itself as getting up in the morning. In my most school ma'amish manner, I retorted something to the effect that he had better get a grip or he would never get a job. He looked at me in mild surprise, and as though stating the obvious to a six-year-old, explained patiently that getting up for a job was no problem, he did that all summer, he found work motivating. He stopped in mid-sentence. « Unlike school » hung in the air between us, unsaid but understood. Somewhere in the back of my head yet another boy's voice echoed the same theme. Insolent and undisciplined in class, he had worked all summer and had had no problem accepting the authority of his boss. So actually all three boys seem to be able to fit into society, their problem would appear to be specifically with school.

Which brings me back to the probable ineffectiveness of imposing parental responsibility for truancy by threatening the family allowances. There is no denying that some parents have a lot to learn about bringing up children but we cannot blame school failures solely on the ills of society and the parental role. If we really want all our young people to attend school until they're eighteen, then surely we need to offer more varied, less academic routes across the educational field. I may have missed it, but so far I'm not aware of anything like this in the reform, unless that's what Luc Chatel5 meant in March, when he referred to the diversification des parcours d'excellence in the technological Baccalauréats. I somehow doubt it! However, the Institut Montaigne Report does at least hammer home the idea that the national school sport 6 of re-doing a year is counterproductive. Its abolition would avoid kids, like the one at the bus stop, being in school when they're twenty, which probably goes a long way to explaining why he has difficulty getting up in the morning!

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1 Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres= Teacher Training College
2 Education Nationale
3 Programme for international student assessment
4 Conseillers Principaux d'Education (CPE), responsible for discipline and pastoral care
5. French Minister of Education
6. 40% of French schoolchildren have re-done a year by the time they are fifteen

April Showers in May .. Back at the Lycée

2010-05-06T21:55:00.096+01:00

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Well, we're already nearly two weeks back into the new term and anybody reading this could be forgiven for wondering if I had retired. All that scribbling about French gardens and holidays, and banging on about ladies in burkas. So just to set the record straight about my teacher's leisurely lefty, lifestyle, I'm still doing battle with the Barbarians, the first round of Baccalauréat orals has already taken place and I've been taking a closer look at French youth on the bus.

Certainly this week my thoughts have been less focused on the promise of Summer since temperatures have plummeted to record lows and and there's been enough rain to start a wetlands area in place of the lawn. Even the south seems to have been having a hard time. Carpentras woke up to thirty centimeters of snow the other day and on Tuesday, twelve-meter waves forced the Niçois to flee the Promenade des Anglais. And of course it never rains but it pours, so my elderly Renault has been hospitalized for some obscure battery problem leaving me dependent on public transport. Not that this should be a problem since the bus runs from the centre of the village to the Lycée but even French public transport sometimes lets us down!

borrowed with thanks

So when I arrived at the bus stop, windblown and dripping, there was already an unexpectedly large crowd of would-be commuters waiting in the usual non-committal French fashion. After a few minutes I allowed myself a moment of indiscretion. Did anybody know what had happened to the bus? This caused some consternation before an eighty-something gent replied grudgingly that he had been waiting since eight o'clock. He then followed this revelation with a helpful nod of the head and a less than optimistic Gallic shrug, which won him a round of disapproving stares. Cowed and humiliated, he redirected his gaze to the gloom outside the bus shelter. A lady peered at us suspiciously from under her orange cloche hat. I gave up and resumed a respectful silence.

Ten minutes later though the bus finally arrived and the driver gleefully informed us that everything was saturé. No further information was forthcoming and I was left with visions of sodden tarmac, floating kerb stones, and amphibian vehicles all the way down my Golden Mountain. Needless to say, I never did find out exactly what was saturated but the bus took over an hour to do a ten-minute trip. Only the unrelenting downpour outside prevented me from abandoning ship and setting out for school on foot. For a brief moment I even considered getting on with the lesson in the bus, after all half the passengers should have been in my classroom anyway. However, I quickly abandoned that idea and settled down to observe my year tens who were completely unstressed by the slowness of the transport and their lateness for the Lycée.

Inevitably they were linked up to each other and their electronic equipment thanks to a seemingly endless tangle of wires. Their heads resting on each other's shoulders, they happily absorbed themselves in whatever sound was assailing their long suffering eardrums and began the important business of the day on their cell phones. With a concentration that I have yet to observe in an English lesson, their fingers flew over screens and keyboards in a series of operations essential to the organization of French teenagers' hi-tech lives. Then, as the bus finally arrived, they emerged reluctantly from cyber space and the pulsations of their i-pods, bravely resisting the return to the world of dinosaurs and chalk dust, the world of the mammoth and me!

Coming to Live in France on May 1st ... 37 Years Ago

2010-05-03T22:31:00.039+01:00

Borrowed with thanks

Saturday was May Day, a holiday with multiple connotations ranging from dances round maypoles to the rise of the servile masses, and in France it has the bucolic charm of locally gathered bunches of muguet* which people bring home for their friends and family. But for me, the first of May will always be associated with the anniversary of my arrival in Lyon in 1973 to work for a small agrochemical company. It was a time when Britain was still negotiating to enter the Common Market, rural France was getting to grips with fridges, and private telephones were as rare as hen's teeth. Yet from the beginning, I had no doubt that I had made the right move.

click here

To start with, May Day was the first of a long string of French bank holidays that made the working environment seem a very congenial place indeed. In fact I soon discovered that if the holiday occurred on a Thursday or a Tuesday, a pont was declared, enabling the exhausted workforce to make a bridge with the Friday or Monday and creating a long weekend. It was a whole new concept and a remarkably positive start to my French career. Then to boost my good humour further, there was the amazingly warm and sunny cimate and my temporary lodgings in a delightful Auberge. There I discovered the pleasures of mousse au chocolat, a strange creature called a guinea fowl, as well as a delightful and at that time relatively little known local wine called Beaujolais. It was all new and exciting and of course I had no idea that the course of my entire life was about to change!

borrowed with thanks

In these days of European unity where, despite disagreement, Greece remains everyone's responsibility, it's hard to remember a time when France felt foreign. A time when cafés smelt of Gaulloises and revolution was in the air, when the pill was like gold dust, abortion illegal but the guillotine was on the go. It was a time when the Common Market was still an exclusive club to which Britain didn't belong. So I queued for medical examinations and a residency permit, and in a moment of total madness went through the marathon of importing my right hand drive sports car! In fact cars were a complete education. The 2CV was everywhere in various stages of redesign, thanks to local parking techniques which meant bulldozing between whatever was lined up along the kerbside. Anything short of a complete write-off was an accrochage, barely worth a mention and usually solved by a belt with a hammer.

At work there was the challenge of the language, the distinction between the familiar and the formal, the constant confusion between tu and vous. I learned to extend a hand whenever I came across a colleague and acclimatised to the idea that distance and discretion were considered qualities in a country that only thirty years earlier had lived in the shadow of Vichy. I became aware of the anonymity conferred by foreignness and the detachment from an identity derived from accent, cultural code and a form of education. I emerged into a new world, I fell in love, I succumbed to the spell!

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*lilly of the valley

Trials, Tribulations and Treasures of a Lyon Garden

2010-04-29T08:55:00.011+01:00

My garden in France is one of my greatest joys, even if it is a far cry from the lawns and flowerbeds of my English childhood. This year the Winter in Lyon was long and hard, but true to tradition, after five full days of Spring, Summer has arrived, and today we are to reach a sizzling 28°. Fortunately though météo France has promised us a break in the weather this weekend and some soft refreshing wet stuff is apparently on the way. Not that I'm one for spitting in the soup, as my French friends would say, but the Lyon climate is a collection of mixed blessings. I mean, it's great for Winter sports and balmy evening barbecues but it presents more than a few challenges for would-be gardeners like me.

Take my grass, scorched by the sun in the Summer and transformed in a trice into a stretch of parched yellow stubble. To be fair though, this is something I've learned to be philosophical about since over the years the situation has become synonymous with the holidays. Then there's the problem of my rambling roses that, despite regular treatments with evil smelling substances, routinely metamorphose into horticultural dalmations after three or four weeks of heat and humidity. Finally, by the middle of the Summer they are virtually leafless, their floral offerings buds at breakfast, full blooms at dinner and a pile of petals by bedtime. The heat accelerates everything, leaving us little time to take in the pleasures of transition.

However there are definite compensations. Heat and sun are brilliant for geraniums, olive trees and oleanders. In fact one could easily imagine a terrace worthy of the Côte d'Azur, were it not for the small matter of the semi-Siberian Winters. Even the Pittosporum Tobira, which grows in green abundance in English gardens is a high risk proposition in the below-freezing temperatures of the Lyonnais. As a result, until recently, a series of major manoeuvres used to take place at the end of the Autumn in a bid to ensure survival. This entailed moving more delicate specimens to sheltered spots or even bringing them inside. In fact my lemon tree thrived on this regimen, producing record numbers of untreated lemons for the Christmas cake. The problem was that its three-foot-long thorny branches made the annual tree hugging ceremony to get it into the stairwell a scary and scratchy proposition.

with thanks

So two years ago I made the difficult decision to go Darwinian. The terrace tenants were left to survive as best they could in situ, and to suit the mood of the times all vegetation on my French terrace was left unveiled. Not even the tiniest little voil burka to defend their delicate foliage from the frost. Regrettably, the lemon tree succumbed but the olive and the oleanders are now promoted to the rank of unfrozen fittest. I might actually have given up on the leafless spiky sticks in the oleander pots were it not for the tiny sprouting green shoots, evidence of the stirring Spring life within. Which makes the performance of my star jasmine all the more remarkable since it had the good grace to keep its waxy green leaves all through the winter and now it promises to envelope us in its heady perfume in just a few weeks' time!

Islam in France - Cruising in a Niqab in Nantes

2010-04-26T22:18:00.027+01:00

borrowed with thanks

Once again the nation is plunged into a much mediatised islam related rumpus, provoked by our Nicolas's threats to ban the burka and the provocations of a few Sharia following fundamentalists. Yesterday's class conflicts, restyled and translated into today's quest for cultural identity.

It all began three days ago when a French Muslim woman met with journalists to protest against her 22 Euro fine for driving in Nantes wearing a full muslim veil, niqab for the initiated. Such attire was apparently deemed to have impeded her driving technique. Minister of the Interior, Brice Hortefeux then went into a tantrum, threatening to have her husband stripped of his French nationality on the assumption that he may be polygamous and swindling the family allowances. Mr Hortefeux seems to have made a very short shortcut here, since there is no immediate evidence that either accusation is founded, even if the accused Liés Habbadj admits to having a few mistresses. But then if a little extraconjugal comfort is grounds for losing your nationality, there will soon be a stream of French politicians offering to help out the Belgians in these times of government shortages.

Doubtless with this in mind, Immigration Minister Eric Besson spoke on RTL today of an évolution législative with regard to stripping citizens of their nationality. As the law stands, French nationality apparently has a sticky quality that makes it difficult to strip off. So if Mr Besson goes in for évolution, does this mean that someone who supports the Catholic church and, by extension, its paedophile priests will become a non-French person too? And more importantly, am I going to be allowed to keep my tea cosy, my schizophrenic nous and my dual identity ?

borrowed with thanks

France Cycling : Pedalling in Provence

2010-04-20T22:40:00.224+01:00

Borrowed with thanks

I'm back, I'm late, it was hard, but it was Heaven! Even in these post Peter Maylian times, bicycling in Provence is still paradise and the charm of the Luberon has not yet been lost. CD* and I were entranced by the russet beauty of abandoned ochre quarries, the precariously perched villages on the their rocky promontories and the orchards of cherry blossom encircled by mountains. When we were weary with pedalling, we paused to rest among the brown shrub oaks, still shrouded in last year's leaves. And when we were hungry, we lunched in nature's dining room, marvelling at the wild iris, their bold blooms an irregular motif in a rustic rug of rosemary and thyme. Unlike the rest of the world, the only black cloud on our horizon was the one that chased us along the Combe de Lourmarin from the village of Bonnieux. In a race down the mountain to escape the storm, we pedalled furiously for forty minutes, with an exhilaration akin to skiing. A ski situation in reverse however since our excitement was conditioned not by the fact that we had finally got down the mountain but by the feat of our having been up it!

Borrowed with thanks

When we stopped cycling, the barely begun tourist season meant that there were unpeopled places of interest for us to visit. The disused, open face quarries of Roussillon and Rustrel offered a surreal red and gold landscape, sculpted by centuries of chipping at the rockface. We allowed ourselves an hour's walk along the woodland paths at each site, the strong greens of the vegetation in stark contrast against the flaming colours of the quarry. Close by, we discovered a subterranean cathedral, where forty-five kilometers of galleries had been carved into the same red rock by quarriers of another age. Huge rock pillars were the only support for the perfectly rounded arches and fifteen-meter-high vaulted ceilings. It was an unforgettable spectacle that was never seen by the artisans who, incredibly, had crafted it in virtual darkness.

Borrowed with thanks

Then there was the Fortress of Buoux perched a hundred and fifty meters or so high, with ruined fortifications running the whole length of the five-hundred-meter-long site. Surrounded by a natural circus of mountains, the settlement began sixty thousand years ago in the bronze age and over the centuries was recycled and restructured by the people of the time. A mediaeval citadel, it served as a refuge for people like the Vaudois, Provençal precursors of the protestant movement, who hid out there to escape persecution. Visitors are free to roam as they please, and the most exciting moment was when we left the site by a flight of secret steps, built into the sheer rock face in such a way as to be invisible from below. The steps give onto a path in the woods, thus enabling the fleeing inhabitants in days gone by to leave the fortress without being seen. If I was the film-making type I could do a great job here!

click here

And even at the end of the day, our excursions into history continued since our Luberon chambres d'hôtes were in mediaeval fortifications and centuries old village houses. Only on the third day did we become aware again of the workings of the real world when we came across a Canadian couple stranded by the Icelandic cloud. Strangely enough, they seemed in no hurry for it to lift.

* Now Cycling champion Daughter

Terms and Timetables of French School Children ... Holidays!

2010-04-12T00:06:00.056+01:00

Borrowed from

I sometimes think that the organization of a French school timetable is a bit like one of those bottles of concentrated washing machine detergent. All the vital ingredients to do the job in the teeniest volume possible. Let me explain. On Friday evening everybody in the Lycée gave a sigh of relief that it was the end of term, which to an outsider must seem pretty incomprehensible, since it's only six weeks since the last holidays. It may on the other hand have something to do with that eight-till-six French school day that enables us to feed information to pupils like the Périgord farmer feeds grain to his geese. After six or seven weeks of this régime, a two-week recovery period allows their beleaguered brains to digest the data while their teachers prepare the next batch of concentrated fact files. It's true that few teachers complain about having too many holidays, but the system certainly attracts criticism from doctors and educational psychologists, to such an extent that our Luc1 is now planning a new conference on the subject.

Parents associations also regularly contest our cram and crash approach to learning. In 2008 the primary school week was officially reduced to four days, institutionalizing a situation that had in fact prevailed in French primary schools for a number of years. However the decision has recently been condemned by the fiery FCPE1 who are lobbying for an extra half-day on Wednesday mornings. Interestingly though there is no suggestion of shortening the primary school day, which currently runs from 8h30am to 4h30pm and justifies the rest on Wednesdays. This is probably because of a certain ambivalence, even on the part of parents, since long school days make it easier for mothers to work, thus contributing to the success of the politique familiale and the highest birth rate in Europe. Maybe the British have a point in letting pupils have more say in the educational process!

Borrowed from

However, I won't be hypocritical. It's just lovely to be on holiday... again, to have time to attend to my oleanders on the terrace and do something about my delinquent lawn. Mind you, my neighbours think my lawn is lovely, generated by my British genetics, they claim. But then with Lyon's anti-horticultural climate I doubt they know what a lawn should look like and they certainly view my quest for a stretch of green velvet as an endearing eccentricity on a par with my tea cosy. Lawns apart though, the holidays also leave more time for walking and cycling, which meant a hike in the Vallée d'Azergues on Saturday.

That unspoilt stretch of the Green Beaujolais, is another of the numerous Central Massive annexes that surround Lyon. Heavily forested and hilly, with the Mont St Rigaud culminating at 1012 meters, it is a region rarely trodden by tourists and certainly far less visited than the famous vineyard area further east. Largely agricultural, in days gone by it was also home to a textile cottage industry which left its mark on the local architecture. Certain houses are astonishingly tall for a farming area because they required high ceilings to accommodate the weaver's looms on the first floor. This same architectural feature can be seen in the old silk weaving quarter of the Croix Rousse in Lyon. So next time you're speeding down the A6, take a bit of extra time and do a detour beyond the vines of the Beaujolais to the Hidden Hills,... another of Lyon's closely kept secrets.

Borrowed from; http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canut

And here endeth the first holiday post. However, I shall continue being a tourist in France for the rest of the week with Cartesian Daughter in the Luberon. So for those who look in regularly, next Thursday's post will not be possible, and Monday's, about the cycling sortie, will doubtless appear on Tuesday. Merci de votre compréhension et Vive les Vacances!

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1 Luc Chatel, Minister of Education
2 Fédération des Conseils de Parents d'Elèves

French School Violence Solution: Anglo-Saxons Advise ...

2010-04-08T18:38:00.046+01:00

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2010/04/07/01016-20100407ARTFIG00042-ecole-chronique-de-la-violence-ordinaire-.php

I was going to do this (very late) post about the Easter weekend, but after all my ranting about families foisting their responsibilities onto the long suffering servants of the Ed. Nat.1, I feel I have to give a mention to the national conference on violence in school in France. Of course there is some argument about whether or not school violence is really an issue now since the official system for its measurement, SIVIS2, recently concluded there had been a decrease in the number of serious incidents last year. And everyone knows about the wild exaggerations of the media who only last month scared parents and discredited state education with tales of a teacher being beaten with an iron bar, when it turned out that she had merely been clouted with a curtain rod. Nuance, indeed.

So I waited expectantly for the revolutionary sounding Conseil Scientifique des Etats Généraux de la Sécurité à l'Ecole to meet for their first day of talks at the Sorbonne yesterday. Luc Chatel's3 speech opened the proceedings in the presence of a number of internationally respected researchers, who had come from around the globe to help our Luc tame Gallic youth. However, before letting these men of learning have their say, sociologist Eric Debarbieux of the Sorbonne pointed everybody in the right direction. Contrary to Anglo-Saxon belief, he declared, CCT cameras and police intervention are definitely not the answer to school Sturm and Angst… because at the end of the day it's the human element that counts. Quite so Monsieur. But then why are the Ed. Nat. currently replacing one retiring teacher in two and why did the teachers in Seine-Saint-Denis have to strike for weeks to get the "human" surveillants that you say are so much better than cameras?

I think most people would agree with Monsieur Debarbieux too when he mentioned the importance of stability in teaching teams. Unlike Britain, where pupils are called on to put teaching candidates through their paces, recruitment of teachers in France is done via a computer which allocates posts on a points system. Like the post office manager in Danny Boon's Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, this can result in young teachers and other civil servants being uprooted from their home in Provence and sent to survive in the unknown universe of the North. The reason for such rough management of human resources is that with the points system, postings depend on seniority. Their success on the other hand depends entirely on serendipity, since neither schools nor new teachers know the slightest thing about each other!

Trailer from Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis

The Anglo-Saxon participants in the conference had presumably been selected carefully in order to avoid any subversive ideas about cameras and policemen. Certainly the French education system had nothing to fear from Russell Skiba, an American specialist in educational psychology from the University of Indiana. Indeed, he made the point in a press interview later that twelve-to-sixteen-year-olds don't relate to fear in the same way as adults, underlining the pedagogical error of punishing adolescents for doing what is "natural for their age". So if I understand Mr Skiba correctly, a kid who starts a knife fight is just giving free reign to his naturally fearless instincts. Furthermore, putting him in a repressive institution would be absurd since huge economies can be made by compelling him to do useful community work on the school premises. Regrettably though, no indication was given as to how we are to persuade such fearless young French spirits to clean desks and sweep up when we can't even get them to sit down in a lesson.

At the end of the day, despite the outcry from the unions, I think I actually feel more reassured by our Luc!

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1 Education Nationale (French national education system)
2 système d'information et de vigilance sur la sécurité scolaire
3 French Minister of Education

I know why I like teaching (in France ... in the Spring)!

2010-04-02T22:16:00.039+01:00

This is late which is apparently very bad for a blogger, but in the absence of hundreds of readers out there waiting impatiently for the latest installment from the teacher in France, I decided to do my own thing this week. As a result, I have had more time to train for Cartesian Daughter's Provence project, something of a challenge after the long cold winter of inactivity. So this afternoon I was jubilant, pedalling away in the sunshine until I reached one of our Golden Mountain tops, enchanted as always by the arrival of Spring in this area. Primroses, violets and periwinkles lined the roadside and the amazing backcloth of the snow capped Alps reminded me to make the most of the moment, for if the Alps are visible in Lyon, tomorrow it will rain.

Maybe it's the approaching Spring weather and the prospect of a long weekend, but suddenly the politics of education and the tensions of the classroom have receded and the more positive points of life in the Lycée come to mind. Of course grumpy old grannies like me have been sighing about adolescent shortcomings since antiquity. Socrates, for example,reputedly remarked about the youth of his day that "they have bad manners, contempt for authority;" and "show disrespect for elders". He then continued his little tirade, pointing out that "they no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." Any classicists in disagreement about whether the cantankerous Socrates actually wrote this, are of course free to comment here. But the point is, there are plenty of good things about teaching it's just that I sometimes need a crash course in tolerance in order to appreciate them.

Borrowed from: http://dragonfire1.50megs.com/Boynton/images/buttons/bpin115.jpg

Take the test this week with the Barbarians. I had reserved the exam room slot at the last minute, so when French lit. teacher Fleur discovered our joint reservation she looked as though she might swoon on the spot. And yet, presumably subdued by some vigorously reproachful terminology on their reports, the little horde of hooligans were astonishingly studious. Not a single UFO. Even Fleur began to relax and I found myself reflecting in wonder that reform was perhaps impending. At any rate it was certainly more encouraging than anything our Luc1 has come up with. In fact the day seemed set for success, an impression that was confirmed when my anxious-to-please year tens rushed to my desk to inform me that they had spotted me on my bicycle. Apparently the idea that an old relic from the Lycée was on a bike rather than in a bath chair had earned me a certain amount of kudos and they didn't seem to mind a bit that I pedalled at the pace of a strutting hen.

Not wanting to waste time on this digression though, I soon had them telling me about an extract we had studied from Maya Angelou's I know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The text, a wonderfully wrought lesson about the value of tolerance and the dangers of ignorance, describes how segregation created an aura of mystery around whites, who weren't « really real » since « they didn't walk on the balls of their feet the way people did ». In response to my enquiry about how Maya perceived white folks when she was a little girl, I was rewarded with a forest of hands of would-be English speakers, all demanding to answer the question. Je SAIS Madame insisted one lad, bursting to demonstrate his erudition « Ze wight personne was walking on ees BALLS ». It's at times like these that I know why I like to teach!

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1Luc Chatel, French Minister of Education, currrently engaged in reforming French secondary education

French School ... English School

2010-03-29T22:38:00.320+01:00

One of the things I find really interesting since I've started blogging about education in France, is reading through the blogs of my English colleagues, full of humour and indignation about the grim facts of life in UK Comprehensives. They also underline the inadequate responses of governments and politicians whose ineffectual, politically correct measures and jargon seem to be all that is offered to discouraged and depressed teachers. The information is already interesting in itself but it has the added bonus of making me feel that I am perhaps more fortunate than I realized to be working in the French system, despite its shortcomings! Smug, self satisfied, complacent? Not really, it's just that I'm only too aware that many of those potty plans and ideas that plague teachers on your side of the Channel are drifting across to us in much the same way as Starbucks, cornflakes and ketchup. Not that I'm imagining a sinister plot to sabotage the system, it's just that whatever happens in the Anglo-Saxon world usually happens to us too, in the end.

Take the much discussed ongoing French Education Reform, which has resulted in a huge reduction in teaching posts, with only one retiring teacher in two being replaced. Initially this didn't bother me too much. We were told by the statisticians at INSEE1 and the top brass in Paris that the demographic dip meant fewer pupils thus reducing the need for teachers. Which is why, when faced with the current chronic shortage of replacement staff, we look back in anger to the recent past when a pool of teachers qualified in every subject were permanently on hand. With this in mind, I would recommend any French educationalist to read Mr Chalk's enlightening book, a few pages of which are visible on his blog. I have ordered a copy and am seriously wondering about sending one to our Luc2. Even if there is no reason to believe his English is any better than our Nicolas's, I'm sure he'll find someone up there at head office to translate it for him. And if the Minister of Culture gets to read the account of Mr Chalk standing in for his French colleague, he'll be onto Gordon in a flash to save the language of Molière from extinction.

Borrowed from: http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2009/02/we-are-drowning-in-paperwork.html

The other subject prevalent in many UK teaching blogs is what Mr Teacher describes as the « paper chase », the endless, pointless paperwork that appears to take up more time than actual teaching. The situation is brilliantly illustrated in Mr Chalk's account of giving a detention, a task to keep a Brussels bureaucrat in business for a week. This puzzles me because in the Land of Marianne, the Mecca of red tape, organizing punishments remains reasonably straightforward and speedy. First of all, pupils who misbehave can be sent out of the class to that wonderful department we call la vie scolaire, where they are kept out of harm's way in the « goldfish bowl », a box-like room with windows round it, until the end of the lesson. Afterwards we do have to fill out a form to explain the reason for our ill humour, but two lines are as much explanation as that tried and tested team are likely to read. The form is accompanied with the work for the detention et voilà!. It's a terrific system but rumour has it that the Enarques3 and Normaliens3 have discovered countries like the UK, who manage without la vie scolaire. Those workaholic British teachers do two jobs at once we are told and the implication is that we soon will too.

Despite the differences though, some of the grumbles have a familiar ring whether I'm reading through Guardian blogs or Philippe Watrelot's Chronique Education. Nobody understands what motivates the anonymous decision makers regarding the piles of paperwork in England or the changes to curriculum in France and everybody seems to denounce the abdication of parental authority and responsibility. So I'm taking the opportunity of doing some denouncing for all of us. Last week our Nicolas created a bit of a stir by declaring that badly behaved pupils should be sent to boot camp, or Borstal or wherever they would do less damage to the learning environment. And needless to say his proposal brought forth a storm of protest from the FCPE4, France's ever-so-politically-correct left wing parents association. As usual, the bottom line is that increasing numbers of parents refuse to instill discipline into their children themselves, but they refuse to let us do it for them. Presumably they won't mind if we write a report.

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1 Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques
2 Luc Chatel, French Minister of Education
3 France's civil servants and administrators who are frequently graduates of ENA and ENS, the two most prestigious grandes écoles
4 Fédération des Conseils de Parents d'Elèves des Ecoles Publiques

French Traditions of Gallantry ... and the Lulling Effect of Lieder

2010-03-25T23:32:00.020+01:00

CLICK HERE

Another post about school discipline I'm afraid, but it's what's uppermost in my mind at the moment.

Yesterday was Wednesday and I was wingeing as usual at the idea of waging the second crusade of the week on the Barbarians. As it happened, my fears turned out to be justified and their ten o'clock rampage did nothing to redeem their reputation. A mere ten minutes into the lesson, my efforts with the past infinitive and an assortment of modal verbs faded into the background, drowned out by an exchange of fiery French expletives from somewhere in the middle of the classroom. It turned out that Bad Boy was threatening astonishingly Gutsy Girl, who alternately fluttered her eyelashes French style and spat venom at her aggressor while I tried to get both parties interested in my teacher's talk show. My ineffectual babblings were cut short in mid-sentence however when Bad Boy suddenly leapt to his feet, hand raised, apparently bent on bashing three bells out of Mademoiselle.

Given the various tales recounted by colleagues in less leafy areas than my Lycée, I have always felt that the best policy to adopt in the case of classroom violence was simply to keep the score for the opposing parties. So I was actually quite surprised to find myself bounding towards the two belligerents accompanied by yells of encouragement from the rest of the class. There are times when you're glad of any allies. It was a tense moment but it was reassuring to note that a furious and determined adult, even the puniest specimen, can calm a six foot adolescent's fury. Interestingly, in the course of our little conversation at the end of the lesson, he seemed receptive to the suggestion that threatening people with physical violence might be considered less than acceptable behaviour. He explained to me quite candidly that, although self control was not his forte, I should have realized he had never intended to beat his feminine adversary to a pulp, whatever he had promised her at the time. Enfin he reminded me in a hurt tone, he was not the sort of guy to hit a girl. Needless to say, I took heart at this, I mean it's nice to know that there are a few romantics left in the Land of l'Amour.

Well enough of the Gallic wars in room two hundred. Talking of romantics, my evening programme was just what I needed after this little adrenalin rush. A rendez-vous with Schumann's Lieder at the Lyon CNSMD, one of France's two Conservatoires Supérieurs, proved the perfect sedative for my frayed nerves. Home to a number of pillars of French culture, Lyon is proud of the fact that composer Olivier Messaien once taught at the CNSMD, and cellist Anne Gastinel, a former student, still does. It attracts music students from all over the world, some of whom have already begun to establish their musical reputations , and about 300 concerts are given every year, often on the Conservatoire premises. These are situated in a beautiful seventeenth century convent building, which was initially converted into the world's first veterinary school after the revolutionaries recycled yet another bit of the country's religious architectural heritage. So I forgot about the day's tensions, sinking back in my seat, soaking up the melodies, the soft German syllables, the rippling chords of the piano, and reminded myself that tomorrow is another day!

Parent and Teacher ... Role Playing

2010-03-23T12:15:00.020+01:00

http://www.panix.com/~pro-ed/

Late this week, am stricken with blogger's block and a teeny bit tetchy as it 's Tuesday and time to steel myself to a suitable mindset for this morning's battle with the Barbarians. And, unlike last week, there's no sign of the Sports Association saving tomorrow's lesson. Those Wednesday ski outings usually attract the more dynamic elements of the class, leaving the rest of us free to get on with some work and presumably keeping the sports teacher on Olympic form. Hopefully the Conseil de Classe last night will have subdued their high spirits though. Even the Barbarians are not insensitive to that moment of truth when teachers consider and comment on the term's work before sending out reports. Pupil and parent representatives take copious notes, to be relayed to waiting classmates and families. They also defend any performance or behaviour that is under attack by the prosecuting pedagogues. This results in good conduct and hard work being rewarded with appropriate school report comments whereas the reverse is sanctioned by less appropriate but eminently politically correct patter.

Speaking of parents, a meeting with a Barbarian's Mama this week served as a necessary reminder to my currently less-than-patient self that I shouldn't forget the importance of discussing the problem kids with those who know them best. It often turns out that their closest of kin do not conform to the defensive union representative image that the parents associations tend to project. And this one was certainly neither a padded hairband person nor a save the country's social conscience campaigner. She was just a parent, a courageous single mother, whose son uses school as a bargaining chip to get his distanced Papa's attention. So I did my bit as teacher turned therapist-for-tormented-parent, and this morning I shall return to being nursemaid and whipping boy for problem pupils. The teacher's role covers a lot of activities which don't figure in the lesson plan or the curriculum and were certainly never covered in the training dispensed by the soon to be dismantled and little lamented IUFM*. At least that's one point of the latest French education reform that I agree with!

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*Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres (Teacher Training College)

Greeting French People ... Tactile, Time Consuming and Charming

2010-03-18T23:46:00.185+01:00

Borrowed from: http://blog.blueskyfactory.com/

Adapting to French traditions has been a long process and one of the cultural challenges when I first came here, thirty-odd years ago,was getting used to the mandatory handshaking and kissing-on-both-cheeks routine. At my first job in a small French agro-chemical company, my boss would pop into my office every morning and wait around with a pained expression until my British brain registered that he was expecting me to extend a paw. Of course my working environment has changed since then, but the rules remain the same. Indeed in the Lycée it's part of the the Head's public relations routine to shake hands with teachers he passes in the corridors and he makes regular appearances in the staff room for that sole purpose. Although my fellow teachers are less tactile, strict rules still apply to the first encounter of the day, when a well articulated Bonjour is obligatory and a mere wave will not do. On the other hand a second Bonjour later on will earn you a stern reminder that greetings have already been exchanged and you are left feeling branded as brain dead!

Borrowed from: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/210-french-kissing-map/

In a social context, the handshake is frequently abandoned in favour of the bise, that perfunctory latin kiss on both cheeks, that can be repeated two, three or even four times, depending on where you live. Personally I've spent most of my life in an area where we are content with a modest two so it can be pretty disconcerting to meet somebody from Normandy who, expecting four, lunges forward for the second round. Then there have been controversial occasions with politicians like Bernard Kouchner, who, at the beginning of last year, made a last minute diplomatic decision, transforming a handshake with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni into a bise. And even our Nicolas's Carla attracted attention for skipping the greeting with Obama in favour of his wife.

Of course all societies impose a system of etiquette but it is frequently subjected to modification by the nation's youth. So there is something rather charming about the way pupils in a French school make a point of respecting the rules of Gallic greetings when they meet their classmates. Nonetheless, as I made my way down the long corridors in the lycée this morning, it crossed my mind that my colleagues in a British comprehensive would probably be striding along at a far faster pace than I. My progress was constantly impeded by pupils pausing to exchange bises or manly handshakes before resuming their leisurely stroll to their classroom. And with Spring fast approaching and l'amour in the air, there's a good chance that greeting gridlock will bring the whole educational process to a grinding halt even if the strikes don't!

Bicycle Tour of the Dombes

2010-03-15T23:33:00.023+01:00

Borrowed from: http://ladombes.free.fr/

Since Cartesian Daughter has booked us on a bicycle tour in Provence in April, this weekend struck me as a good time to get the bike out again, despite the unseasonable chill to the air. My Golden Mountains seemed a bit frightening for a preliminary pedal so I put the bike in the car and headed for the Dombes in the Département of the Ain, half an hour east of Lyon. It's an area which is famous for its thousand étangs, or huge ponds, which make it an ornithologist's paradise and, in times gone by, home to a plentiful frog population that kept the local restaurants supplied with the French national dish.

http://www.labicyclettebleue.fr/

On this occasion I went with Armstrong and his much loved vintage bike, a relic of his Parisian past, which is living on borrowed time and valiantly fights for its life every time it's out. Fearing it might finally succumb to the new season's return to the road, I took the precaution of heading for La Bicylette Bleue, a family restaurant in the village of Joyeux, which hires bikes as well as serving leisurely Sunday lunches. On our arrival though, Armstrong was protesting and peaked about my lack of faith in his velocipede, so he zoomed off into the horizon, leaving me weakly following in his wake. Hiding my humiliation, I silently resolved to improve my exercise routine and resigned myself to going solo.

However, my solitude was cut short sooner than I had expected because as I rounded a bend a few minutes later, I found him pumping despondently at a flat tyre, which remained obstinately and undeniably as deflated as its owner. Had Armstrong been English, I suppose I might have consoled him with a beer but it seemed to me that the best way to comfort Gallic gloom was to feed it. And it turned out to be the best plan since an hour later, we were reconciled, restored and raring to get started, now equipped with a splendid blue hire bicycle and a great route map lent to us by the team at the Bicyclette Bleue.

This time though we set off at a more peaceful pace along tiny lanes between grey expanses of untroubled water, which gleamed like window panes through the tracery of the naked tree branches. Only the sound of the birds and the whirring of other cyclists whizzing past us intruded on the silence of this other world. And the gently undulating scenery contrived with the wooded areas to surprise us as we came over a slope or emerged from the trees to discover yet another expanse of glistening water. This is the perfect place for a bicycle in France ... Lyon's garden, an undiscovered, unspoilt paradise for princesses, the Land of the Frogs!

Reforming Education or Parents?

2010-03-11T22:04:00.282+01:00

Borrowed from: http://www.la-croix.com/Neige--vers-un-retour-a-la-normale-dans-le-Sud/photo2/2417762/4085

At first glance this hasn't been a good week to live in France. I mean Nicolas and Carla seem to be heading for ze roques, Perpignan's palm trees are still poking out of the snow and the Barbarians are experimenting with tribal warfare … their Gallic tribe against the Anglo-Saxon tyrant. Which is probably why an article in Le Monde yesterday set me off on an unrestrained, enraged rant.

First of all Monique Sassier, Mediator for the Ed Nat¹, declared that it was important for parents to be taken into account as « actors in education ». This interesting statement was prompted by parental protests about a shortage of teacher replacements. Now in most areas 90% of replacements are taken care of but in action packed places like Seine-Saint-Denis, it's true that the shortfall comes closer to 30%. As a result the high minded FCPE² parents association are currently threatening the Government with legal proceedings for failing to respect their children's right to an education. Not that anybody would dispute that education is a right but, whether it be Ofsted who pronounce judgement over less than outstanding schools or the FCPE¹ who deplore the shortcomings of the Ed Nat, nobody seems to be asking the fundamental questions. Why are schools failing to come up to the standards set by Ofsted and why are there more teachers to be replaced in Seine-Saint-Denis than in my leafy area of Lyon?

This very funny sketch by the Inconnus is not recent but still relevant!

The answer to both questions would seem to be the same. In areas where teachers face impossible classroom conditions, they cannot do their job properly and the ensuing depression, anxiety and exhaustion result in prolonged periods of sick leave and replacement problems. It doesn't seem to occur to those parents in the FCPE that if they want to be "actors in the education of their children" they might start by cultivating a minimum of manners, respect and discipline in the home. The climate in the classroom would be radically different and the achievements of their offspring as well. We live in times when a spade is seldom called a spade and common sense is sacrificed to political and educational jargonese. The problem is magnified in Seine-Saint-Denis but it is prevalent throughout our educational systems in the UK and France. In a nutshell, parents need to be schooled in parenting!

http://www.chateaudesaintbonnet.com /visite.php

Luckily though, there have been some good bits to the week to appease my teacher's tantrum about the French school system. So for my sanity I'm going to concentrate on remembering that lovely lunch with Son-who-Does-Sums and lovely lass in the Monts de Lyonnais, a beautiful annex of the Central Massive half-an-hour west of Lyon. The weather conditions were Siberian but we sat by a log fire, light years from the Lycée, eating dreamy, threatenened-with-extinction French cooking. Cuisine the way it was when I first came to France before they started letting in aliens and their foreign influences!

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¹ Education Nationale
² Fédération des conseils de parents d'élèves

School Open Day: Plugging for the Lycée

2010-03-08T23:33:00.040+01:00

Borrowed from: http://www.kchristieh.com/blog/

Involvement with parents always seems a rarely-resorted-to option in French school culture possibly because, with the longest school day in Europe, pupils and staff make themselves pretty scarce when the last bell rings at six o'clock. Nonetheless, French parents' associations are a serious affair, as marked by their political affiliations as faith schools by their religion. Depending on their politics, families enrol with the padded hairbands of the PEEP¹ or the ferocious socialists of the FCPE². However nothing in the names of these organizations, and little in their behaviour, conveys the idea of parent teacher collaboration.

So last Saturday morning it was a novel experience to find ourselves hosting an open day to counter growing competition from surrounding schools. I have to admit that initially the English Team's response to their Lycée's moment of need was less than enthusiastic since we would be competing not only with other schools but with other departments in the Lycée. This is because, for some reason best known to the upper echelons of our enlightened educationalists, our Lycée has « European sections » offering history and geography in Spanish, Italian and German but NOT in English. Now while intellectuals and politicians all agree on protecting France from the anglo-saxon linguistic assault, most parents in the workplace don't give a jot about political correctness or the niceties of cultural balance. Clearly we had our « beak in the water », as they say over here. It was going to be a tricky job explaining to our potential customers why their children could get more advanced teaching in every language except the one that they absolutely need.

Borrowed from: http://myapologies.wordpress.com

Luckily though, the Extraordinary English Team had a moment of up-to-the minute marketing inspiration. This was clearly the time to create our own Tea Party Movement to lobby for our department and our Lycée. A revolution indeed in a country where the teabag beside the cup is endemic and eating between meals is a moral misdemeanour. But the Extraordinary English Team is nothing if not determined and Saturday was a proud moment as we set up our stand complete with teapots, tea cosies and tupperware of flapjacks. And we breathed a sigh of relief when parents accepted our offers of tea with enthusiasm, described the flapjacks as exotic, and listened intently while we extolled the virtues of our teaching methods and the delights of the Lycée. Then, just as we were beginning to relax, the mood changed.

Borrowed from: http://photoshopcontest.com

I had been engaged in a lively conversation with a Papa who turned out to be the father of twins. Perfect, I exulted to myself, two in one go. He was an excellent linguist and seemed delighted to be able to chat in English about the French educational system. Then, in the middle of my explanations about our small language classes, his attention was suddenly distracted. "Tiens tiens", he murmured, frowning at my tin of Twining's tea,"the dosage of bergamot is excellent Madame, but I should tell you that I work for Tetley". Heavens I wailed inwardly, a French tea specialist. It was certainly obvious to anybody watching that my blunder over the beverage was causing him such mental anguish that the likelihood of his entrusting his sons to us was now extremely remote. I looked around in desperation for a way to save the situation. And there, next to the laboratory sink, was a box of my English colleague's Tetley's tea bags. Triumphantly I poured him a cup of hot water and carefully placed the teabag next to it as the local custom requires. He beamed. As for me, I made a mental note to bring Granny's tea caddy along next year.

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¹ Parents d'élèves de l'enseignement public
². Fédération des conseils de parents d'élèves

French Teenagers ... Beating the Baccalauréat

2010-03-04T00:00:00.015+01:00

The French Bac, which rewards seven years of secondary education, still creates a certain excitement and tension, whatever the theories about lowering standards. From the teacher's point of view of course, the lower the standards, the greater the challenge. And getting students through oral and written English exams, with two dozen words of vocabulary and an accent like Maurice Chevalier, is guaranteed to get the adrenalin rushing on all sides. In our lycée, mock orals are organized on our return from the holidays at the beginning of March.

So this morning I steeled myself for three hours of tedium and thumb twiddling. However, as usual I had forgotten that these moments en tête à tête with people forty years younger than me can be both entertaining and enlightening. As I glimpsed my first candidate hurrying across the car park to the building where I was waiting I supposed that she must have rushed straight to school from the local nightclub. Waving shiny red finger nails and showing off a near-to-navel-neckline, she managed movement in a black skirt that would have challenged Houdini. Mystified as usual by adolescent insulation systems, I muttered something about pneumonia but was reassured that the cold was irrelevant and what counted was that the outfit should suit the occasion. I adjusted my mindset to this piece of information and reflected that if I was ever called for an interview I might want to have a look through my wardrobe.

Clothing considerations aside, we settled down to the job in hand. The exam consisted of giving the candidate a document related to one of the themes studied since September and asking her to comment on it. Among these themes was internet and related technologies. Of course, like the rest of her classmates, Miss Nightclub Girl was a fan of Facebook. I listened to her extolling its virtues but when I asked why she didn't just use the phone instead of writing her friends messages, she looked at me in puzzlement. You no understand she explained patiently to the old fossil in front of her, oll of my friends zay no 'ave ze eenternet on zeir phone. Of course I had meant that she might use her phone to actually talk rather than writing messages on her computer. However, it seems that to her both options involve typing phonetically spelled messages and surfing the web. By all accounts, the ante deluvian days of real live conversations are on the wain. Maybe it's the Irish bit of my genetic heritage, but I find this worrying.

Borrowed from: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:LondonCctvIrony.jpg

However, what struck me most was that although my pupil recognized the dangers of internet in terms of prowling paedophiles, she was largely unquestioning of the invasive nature of this kind of technology. The French media constantly remind us of the sinister CCTV epidemic which, has spread across the Channel like an IT version of mad cow disease, while the British fuss about the threat to freedom posed by ID cards. Yet to British or French youth, Big Brother is simply synonymous with reality TV and they dream of parading images of their private lives in front of the world. As Canadian journalist Josh Freed points out in The Gazette, they seem completely hooked on a kind of twenty-first century Glasnost. I decided to argue the point. Surely, there is a risk, I began, I mean imagine if I was on Facebook, you would all be visiting my page. There was silence, followed by a flurry of red finger nails as Mademoiselle suddenly whipped out her i-phone. And, before I could say tweet, she was giving me a lesson in the finer points of virtual social networking. Sometimes teaching is a two-way street, and now I'm off to check out what she showed me!

Cultural Identity: Theirs, Mine, Ours

2010-03-01T00:07:00.032+01:00

Borrowed from : http://www.francesoir.fr/societe/2010/02/19/halal-quick-roubaix.html

My French ID has been unexpectedly put to the test recently in the battle which has been raging over the sale of exclusively halal meat by fast food chain Quick, in Roubaix. What was initially a purely commercial strategy has given rise to yet another debate on national identity, animal rights and islamism. National Front vice-president, Marine Le Pen declared the situation scandalous at a breakfast with the media ten days ago, pointing out that 99% of Quick's capital is held by the state-owned savings bank La Caisse des Dépots et Consignations. Yes, clearly we are heading for an Islamic takeover and folk like me, who grew up with reds under the beds, will now be on the look out for Muslim meat in MacDonald's.

Borrowed from : http://discerningtexan.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html

As I consider this dire state of affairs however, it occurs to me that there are perhaps still a few crumbs of comfort out there. I mean, when it comes to animal rights, the Ministry has perfectly good rules and regulations for ritual slaughter and maybe the detractors of halal should pay a visit to those Périgord geese. Anyway, there have been Kosher and Halal restaurants here for decades! Fadela Amara, Secretary of State for Urban Affairs, also pointed out that the well worn debate on secularism did not apply either in this case. Quick is simply responding to the marketplace, doubling the number of its customers and, despite the Caisse des Dépots' involvement, it is not a state-run public institution. People are free to buy their groceries or their meals where they choose and grocer's and restaurants are free to decide what they sell. However, this did not stop Roubaix's socialist mayor, René Vandierendonck, taking legal action against Quick, who agreed on Friday to settle out of court, offering to serve haram, or unlawful food, alongside halal.

So why do I feel tested here? Well, what really scared me was when I went onto a forum frequented by a bunch of educated, French philosophical types who are normally out defending people without papers. Surely, I thought, they would support cultural diversity and the right to a halal hamburger. Not so however! Worse still, having posted a reply defending the Roubaix restaurant, my pseudonym quickly identified me as an Anglo-Saxon communautariste and, despite my «excellent French», I was promptly relegated to enemy ranks. France's culture, they informed me, is perfect as it is, and has nothing to gain from the nations of immigrants like me. And these are the people who read Le Monde and L'humaninité! Rebuked and rejected, I consoled myself that this was as good a time as any to seek out a Lyon pub and some Anglo-Saxon society. Did somebody say something about communautarisme?

Needless to say, I have lived here for long enough and know my adopted compatriots sufficiently well, not to suppose that the whole of France wants to throw me back to where I belong on the other side of the Channel. But the absurdly icy chill I felt at the virulence of a few anonymous replies put me very briefly and very uncomfortably in the place of those whose dual cultural identity comes habitually under more attack than mine. An article in Newsweek that I read on Monday described the increasing number of muslims world wide who are turning their backs on radical islam. The best way to help them along this route is surely not to turn our backs on them.

Dual Citizenship ... Dual Points of View

2010-02-25T23:01:00.119+01:00

My dual identity is to be tested again tomorrow. Inspired by a recent viewing of Invictus I am actually going to watch the start of the France Wales match. Of course, none of the players will be a patch on Matt Damon but Land of My Fathers will be a moving moment, so moving in fact that I know that I'll have to switch off. I mean my grandfather was Welsh, my maiden name was Welsh and my Son-who-Does-Sums was named after the Welsh patron saint. The problem is how to reconcile la mère de famille française with the child of the Welsh fathers. How to make her remember this is sport, not civil war!

borrowed from - http://www.philippetastet.com/attentats-londres-presse.aspx

While we've been waiting for tomorrow's match of course we've all been following the news about Gordon's tough dealings with his staff. This has perplexed my French friends who see the general rumpus as a departure from the legendary flegme britannique, and all because of a raised voice or a playful shove in the office. After all, in the Clearstream case our Nicolas is reputed to have promised to hang his future prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, from a butcher's hook. Yet Dominique took it all in his stride. Face tanned to perfection, silver hair perfectly in place, he simply reminded us that it was all Nico's fault but, when acquitted this month, he magnanimously declared that he bore not even the teeniest bit of a grudge. Those Grandes Ecoles obviously breed a tougher species of civil servant. Perhaps Gordon should be looking into training courses for his staff in Paris.

borrowed from - http://sarkostique.over-blog.com

That being said, harrassment at work is a common enough complaint these days, on either side of the Channel. I suppose it's true that the modern-day obsession with cost effectiveness makes for a worrying workplace and consequently less implication and loyalty on the part of workers. Added to this, management by consensus precludes authoritarian dealings with staff. So in some ways the rumoured rebellion at Number Ten is maybe understandable. On the other hand, any MP will tell you that running a country isn't always consensual and presumably, if the job is to get done, pressure has to be applied sometimes. The adrenalin rush is what made us successful hunters and it still hurries things along. However does this really mean that the PM is guilty of bullying? Or is it the growing disregard for authority that alters the perception of pressure and transforms the workplace into a Stalinian goulag?

Surely for any group operation to work, be it a mountain expedition or a marketing department, there has to be someone in charge and the team leader's sometimes rough and ready authority has to be accepted. Which is why those rugby captains tomorrow night certainly won't be worrying about some tough talk with their team mates!

Back and Forth through the Channel Tunnel

2010-02-23T01:14:00.026+01:00

Another pocket-sized and belated post as I have just got home and am pleased to report that I survived the Eurostar Experience despite delays today at St Pancras and having to queue in freezing conditions in Lille Europe. Presumably the architect who dreamed up that station's unique draught system actually intended to deter travellers from coming to the city by ensuring deadly temperatures. Perhaps Chill out in Lille is designed to compete with the Getting Lost in Lyon concept.

Being back in Britain was great. I found myself making the most of the moment to nurture my other national identity, revelling in being smiled at by people I didn't know and loving the Londoners for giving up their bus seats to people less able to stand. And it was wonderful having sausages in a pub and looking out at the acres of snow-covered fields from the windows of Mid-sib's house. My schizophrenic notions of home were given full rein as I enjoyed the place of the present while not losing sight of the hearth I'd left behind.

Returning from my roots of course means that my suitcase is discharged of its load of difficult-to-find French foodstuffs, now delivered to my francophile family. Fromage blanc moulé à la louche, BN out sized custard creams, and chocolate-tipped Mikado biscuits, have been replaced however by Cadbury's cream eggs, Port Merrion Botanic Pottery and various pots of chutney. The cream eggs of course are a throwback to the confectionary of childhood, yet on this occasion they seem a sad salute rather than a mere madeleine. The sale of Cadbury's to the US firm Kraft is doubtless a sign of the times, but what times when not even the cream egg is sacred!

As well as catching up with Mid-sib, Young-sib and their families, I looked in on Music-and-Marketing-Son. MMS's French Ecole has allowed him to do his Erasmus year at Aston University and, as I have lost track of higher education in Britain, it was interesting to hear him talk enthusiastically about the excellence of the library facilties, the lectures and the accommodation. A university education works out more expensive for UK students but it seems to me that they get their money's worth and the French universities who are currently upping their rates probably have a point. And let's face it, when a student is borrowing money to pay for his education, he makes sure that he's on the right course and is a lot less likely to embark on Uni Tourism, so popular in France. I was also left wondering about the usefulness of the two-tier French system in which Universities play second fiddle to the Grandes Ecoles, which cream off most of the best students as well as the funding ... but this is a subject for another day!

Food Identity ... One Man's Meat

2010-02-18T00:00:00.049+01:00

Nearly time for a brief return to the motherland, and I find myself thinking about the changes that have occurred in my adopted country since I first arrived here over thirty-five years ago. One noticeable development has been the addition of foreign foodstuffs to the French art of cuisine, with supermarkets stocking breakfast cereals and ketchup that were previously the exclusive reserve of the épicerie fine. Not that trading cereals for croissants and crusty baguette was exactly the toughest time in my integration process. But probably as a result of all this, most French kids nowadays are more comfortable with cornflakes than tartines*, and ketchup has become an ingredient used by chefs. My French readers are allowed to give vent to a few anglophobe feelings here in defence of their food identity!

So it's funny that despite the way our food flies twice round the world before arriving on our plates, there are still a few items in the EU that never get across a border, which is why I was really excited in my local hypermarket the other day. As I was strolling past the jars of pesto sauce and guacamole spices, I caught sight of a little pile of those unmistakable green and gold tins piled neatly beside never-before-seen digestive biscuits and rarely-seen HP sauce and baked beans. Clearly, either the Dordogneshire cricket club had moved to Lyon or the French palate had suddenly acquired a taste for the best of British tucker. As I stocked up with enough golden syrup to ensure that flapjacks would be on offer for the next ten years, I hoped that our Nicolas would appreciate this new phase of my integration process. For according to France's Haut Conseil à l'Intégration, far from being guilty of the unpardonable sin of communitaurisme, the sharing of an immigrant's culture with the rest of the host country is beneficial to the whole community. And if curry in the UK is anything to go by, the flapjack might be set to become a national dish.

It's a sad fact of life though that, despite the cornflakes and ketchup conquest, prejudices and myths here about English food are mean and manifold. If my French friends are to be believed, there is an unnamed territory somewhere in Middle England where the inhabitants boil legs of lamb, serve them with jam and dish up jelly to follow. So when I first started cooking for French guests I would spend hours trying to produce something that seemed as local and un-British as possible. However, with time, I have discovered that recipes from my ancient Hamlyn and Delia Smith cookbooks hold their own, even in this culture of cuisine. And the strangest thing is that when Marks and Spencer closed in Lyon, nobody gave a hoot about the frumpy frocks but everybody was devastated about the disappearance of the food hall, the only place in Lyon where you could buy a proper British Banger and a Christmas Pud!

Marks and Spencer, when are you coming back?

* bread spread with butter or jam

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For the Tourist in France : Visiting the Lyon Tourist Trap

2010-02-15T18:27:00.056+01:00

Well the tourists in France will be fighting their way through Lyon this week ... it's the holidays! The battle of the microbe is still raging but new, more powerful ammo seems to be making a breach in the enemy lines. With capitulation hopefully imminent, the only worry now is that this new WMD might finish me off along with the microbe. However, it's worth the risk because on Thursday I'm signed up for the latest in extreme sports, the seventeen-hour Eurostar experience. Have packed my survival blanket, avalanche transceiver and 24 hours of survival rations. If anyone can think of anything else I might need, please let me know.

photos borrowed from :http://dvalot.free.fr/pictures/escaliers.htm

On Saturday I was intending to visit the modern art exhibition at the Musée des Beaux Arts, which is housed in a beautiful seventeenth century former convent. Cartesian daughter's parents-in-law were joining me and,if we had time, I planned to do a quick visit to the silk screen printing workshop, on the other side of the Place des Terreaux. Rather surprisingly, despite tough competition, Lyon has managed to maintain its silk industry and the Croix Rousse, once the silk weavers' quarter, still has traditional workshops one of which renovated the Chambre du Roi in Versailles.

It seemed like a good plan... but it wasn't. This is because it failed to take into account the school holidaymakers who were heading for Lyon and the ski resorts, resulting in a solid stream of cars and huge traffic delays. Then of course the term « tourist trap » takes on a totally different, more sinister meaning when you reach Lyon. A secret city, little known beyond the Golden Mountains, it's a gem, hidden from the world, jealously guarded by two rivers and four tunnels, with a one-way system and an outer ring road to deter all but the most tenacious traveller. In effect, anyone coming dangerously near the city centre is immediately redirected through tunnels and across rivers, swept along by the flow of traffic in the direction of Marseilles, Paris or Chambéry, never to be seen again by the Lyonnais.

photos borrowed from: http://dvalot.free.fr/pictures/escaliers.htm

Yes, for a tourist in France, Lyon can be tricky. This is why I feared the worst when I received an SOS call from outside a tunnel. They were heading uphill, they informed me helpfully. Would this be alright? Lyon is actually composed of several quarters, such as the Croix Rousse and Fourvière, which are perched on hills overlooking the city centre. So this, I fretted, was hardly encouraging news. A note of urgency crept into the conversation, the mobile phone charge was breathing its last,then ...silence. Short of having a couple of distress flares in the boot, this was presumably the end of communication and possibly the weekend. However, after a while a second call came, this time from Balmont, one of Lyon's less than bourgeois banlieues. Apparently, the phone had momentarily resuscitated and there was just time to reassure them that I was about to mount my own single handed search party, when we were cut off again. There followed a long and lonely moment but, fortunately for me, CD's in-laws are of that rare breed that can beat the Lyon defence system. Half an hour later they emerged miraculously on top of my Golden Mountain, too late for Picasso but in good time for a glass of Vendanges Tardives!

How do you nominate someone for the Légion d'Honneur?

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Eskimo Talk

2010-02-11T23:51:00.018+01:00

The evil microbe is still winning against my hopelessly inefficient immune system. Banished from my breathing apparatus by an army of antibiotics it has now migrated upwards, reducing the cerebral process to a slowness approaching stop. To make matters worse, I spent an hour and a half yesterday afternoon invigilating in a miasma of the microbe's multiplying and mutating cousins. Readers are therefore warned that this will be a pocket sized post.

These are exciting times. Angie and our Nicolas are going to save Greece and the Euro, French teachers in Paris's educational hotspots Seine-St-Denis, Val-de-Marne and Seine-et-Marne are still striking after another pupil stabbing last week, Iran is super enriching and a small war has broken out in the English Department. Then in the middle of all this angst, Météo France announced an orange alert on Wednesday and school transport was cancelled again as we battled with yet more snow. Worse, when I was in the newsagent's yesterday, The Progrès, our local newspaper, headlined that Lyon had only three days of salt left. Should we be rationing how much we put in the pasta and potatoes?

Coming back to the snow, it's funny how different the big sticky flakes are this time, compared with the light powdery ones last week. I mean, the flakes are even sticking to the vertical bars of the railings, and the trees look as though someone had taken a Christmas aerosol to them. This of course, my befuddled brain told me, is why the eskimos have so many words for snow. I even googled eskimo-words-for-snow to see exactly how many there are. And that was the end of the well worn myth. As it turns out, eskimo explanations for why the world is white are not rooted simply in an endless list of synonyms, but in their sentence structure. This means any sentence involving snow can be expressed in one single word, constructed around the lexical item snow, with all the other necessary vocabulary playing the role of prefixes and suffixes. Thus a nice neat eskimo expression would be :

« thesnowissostickyitisevenstickingtotherailings ». The number of "words" is conditioned by the number of contexts and is therefore potentially infinite!

Of course our snowfalls are kids' stuff compared to Washington and New York at the moment. There are even whisperings that those scientists have got their sums a teeny bit wrong and people are beginning to stop believing them. Meanwhile, back at the Lycée, super cool adolescent Ipod posers have reverted to being excited six-year-olds, frolicking in the fresh snow with the enthusiasm that has presumably animated young people since the last ice age. And if I survive that mean old microbe there are still the WMDs that threaten any unwary member of staff who attempts to cross the car park!

School Discipline: Clash of Civilizations

2010-02-08T23:43:00.023+01:00

Today was the beginning of the mock Baccalauréat exams, which will go on all week for the Upper VI. As usual, we started with a four-hour Philosophy paper, which is compulsory for everybody, whatever Bac they are doing. By the time I took my turn at invigilating however, the candidates were already pretty thin on the ground, apparently lured by lunch and the canteen, from the preoccupations of Kant. This had the advantage of leaving me pretty free to get on with the pile of marking that I have accumulated as a result of my own end-of-term testing. In fact with everybody else busy getting their last marks in, there has been quite a rush on the exam room recently and as a result of this my beloved Barbarians had to share it last week with a sixth form Baccalauréat S class. The difference in their perception of school classroom rules was edifying.

The "S", for scientific ... or studious, class were having a history and geography test and I have to admit that they were impressive. In less than a minute after their arrival, heads were bowed and fountain pens scratched, interrupted only once by a low pitched respectful voice inquiring about the question paper. This, I marvelled, is a people in peril, an endangered species, a cause for UNESCO or the WWF. It was also clearly a clash of civilizations. At the back of the exam room was an oasis of enlightenment, where France's future scientists were broadening their minds with the cold war and decolonization. At the front, stretched a cultural wilderness, occupied by students who sauntered past my desk, apparently tossing up between staging a strike or starting a riot.

I was both irritated by their slowness to settle and bemused by their apparent fearlessness of the freezing temperatures. Presumably their mothers are all blind, I fretted, or have as little control over them as I do. Boy wonders, sported low-slung under pant-revealing jeans, which were occasionally tugged waistward but seemed ever in danger of falling to the floor. Their female counterparts, clad in hot pants and black tights, were presumably counting on the lengths of scarf coiled round their necks to heat the blood that would eventually find its way to their frostbitten thighs. At any rate, I concluded, reluctantly removing my duffle coat, their insulation system was clearly far superior to mine.

Finally however, jeans and hot pants chose their chairs and the rare breed at the back breathed a sigh of relief. For nearly an hour I waved my whip and watched and waited until at last it was time to set them free again. Why I wondered, for the two hundred-and-thirty-ninth time this year, do they come to school at all? But crumbs of comfort come from unexpected quarters. Still getting to grips with the New Wave, I recently watched "400 blows", full of envy for the the perfect professional and the the superb classroom scenes, where everybody seemed to know the behaviour rules. Then suddenly the oh-so-strict school master suddenly proved himself to be a dab hand at ...un deux trois soleil. And of course one of the Barbarians in his classroom, was the young Truffaut, whose childhood was largely inspirational in the making of the film. That is comfort indeed!

Handball ... Football ... It's just not Cricket!

2010-02-04T23:56:00.145+01:00

This post is short and late, as I have been stricken by a particularly evil microbe. In fact I must have looked close to expiry yesterday because even my pupils expressed a mild curiosity about my state of health, their school survival instincts sensing a rare opportunity for rescheduling the next test.

This week, a handball coach, who is doing a few months as a trainee in the Lycée, asked me to help him to prepare for an interview for a job in Norway, where he is hoping to work with eight-to-thirteen-year-old Norwegian football hopefuls. I must admit, even in the era of the prof polyvalent, the logic of this was not immediately clear to me. However, the Scandinavians were doubtless impressed by Thierry's novel approach last year and they must think that a French handball coach will soon have Norwegian youth au fait with the new technique. Then of course the French victory in the European handball championship this week, is bound to help his application along. In addition, the Norwegians being less sensitive about their linguistic heritage than Allgood et al, they don't have a problem with training their kids in English. They probably even feel it's great for developing multi-tasking skills. In fact I'm thinking of taking my young trainee into my classrooms so that he can explain all about Allgood's mistake.

That being said, my baby handball coach, a victim of French linguistic protectionism, has a bit of a way to go yet before he can make a significant contribution to the Norwegian footballers' fluency in English. In the meantime, to help things along, I've got him working on « Lagahan ». For anyone who doesn't know the Bollywood masterpiece, it includes an absolutely gripping game of cricket. I spent half an hour with him at lunch explaining the rules of this ultra-civilized sport so that he wouldn't miss out on the suspense during the match. He looked at me in disbelief when I explained that a match could last three days but once the initial shock had passed, I felt a stirring of curiosity. Maybe those Norwegians are in for a few more innovations than they'd bargained for.

Weekend in Lyon : Music and Molehills

2010-02-01T23:29:00.133+01:00

After all the angst last week about the reform it was a relief to switch off and get on with life outside the Lycée. The nice thing about the Lyon area is the way it offers a remote and rural environment minutes away from more sophisticated city activities. This weekend was pretty typical of how well this combination works.

Take Saturday evening, which found me at a concert in one of Lyon's rare Baroque churches, La Chapelle de la Trinité . Originally the chapel of the Lycée Ampère, it was consecrated in 1622, and in fact still belongs to the school. However, with French state education being strictly secular since the end of the 19th century, it has served a number of functions and at one time in its history was even a gymnasium! Now, however, it is rather fittingly home to Lyon's prestigious Baroque Music Festival, which takes place every year between November and May. This weekend Pierre Robert's Motets for the King's Chapel were sung and directed by the Students of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse, (CNSMD). As I sat in the Baroque chapel, I found myself completely absorbed in the all-encompassing sound of early musical instruments and the harmony of human voices, finally drifting off into a delicious time warp. It was only when I was outside again, that I reluctantly returned to reality and said goodbye to the Sun King under the feathery white flakes that were softly descending on the city. Yes , snow again. But at least I marked another point with the winter tyres!

Having made the most of Lyon on Saturday, I was looking for some fresh air and chlorophyll on Sunday and, as I hunted for my sunglasses, it seemed clear that the outlook for the day already far exceeded my expectations. The walk I was going on was organized by the Club Alpin Français which, as its name suggests, usually organizes its activities in the Alps or Central Massive. So their decision to conquer the north face of one of my neighbourhood molehills was a marked departure from their usual commitment to the dénivelé. I've never found an adequate translation for this neat French word meaning the measurement of the number of meters climbed.

The chain of hills where I live is known as the Golden Mountains because of the saffron-coloured stone that was quarried here in the seventeenth century and from which the local villages, and much of Lyon, were built. They are surrounded by beautifully wooded, unspoilt swathes of countryside, and a few isolated vineyards. The relatively unintensive agriculture allows wild flowers to flourish and mysterious underground military installations prevent any serious building. It is a magical area less than ten kilometers from Lyon and obviously it's a great place for a walk. However, with our highest summit, the Mont Verdun, culminating at 625 meters, finding a decent dénivelé was clearly going to be a challenge. And if the molehill was to be promoted to a mountain we would need to monitor a few up-and-down detours on the altimeter. In fact, given the dedication of the group, it occurred to me that we might even be up there all night if we failed to clock up the requisite numbers.

Fortunately though, there were other things to take my mind off this worrying thought, as we made our way up from the Saône, through the woods to the Mont Thou. The sun was shining on the previous night's snowfall that had cloaked the countryside in shimmering white. Our feet scuffed through a myriad of white fluffy crystals as we passed under tunnels of snow laden branches, with the creamy yellow village of Poleymieux, hugging the hillside below us. This had to be nature at its most perfect. And although when we finally arrived at the top, we didn't exactly feel as though we'd conquered Mont Blanc, a glance at the altimeter indicated that we had in fact climbed three quarters of a mountain!

Education Reform in France ... Pupils or Programmes?

2010-01-28T21:14:00.038+01:00

Yesterday afternoon was free, as are all Wednesday afternoons in the Lycée. This is because in the French education system pupils need a half-day to recover after the Monday/Tuesday eight-till-six schedule. They also need to get on with the homework that has been accumulating and revise the lessons of the the two previous days. So, faced with the prospect of a pupil-free afternoon, I was nearly inspired to copy one of my favourite bloggers, who always writes about Thankful Friday. I mean I could have done Whoopee it's Wednesday. I quickly discarded this idea though. First of all, I blog on Thursdays and then Wednesday is when I do battle with the Barbarians at midday, when most of the Lycée has already gone home. How about Woe on Wednesday?

That being said, yesterday's lesson got off to a good start. Four or five were down with the latest lurgy which, I thought hopefully, should reduce the noise level by a few decibels, and I set about the usual ritual to get the lesson underway. First there were discussions about the endless lengths of wiring which link the devices in their pockets to their ears. From their point of view, the I-pod /I-phone type toy is a distraction from the boredom of the lesson and an invaluable source of information in tests. While I was dealing with the wiring systems, a general conversation was taking place, school bags remained firmly zipped up and faces registered mild surprise when it was suggested that necessary materials should be on desks. Then ensued a lively game of Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil. This you may have known as Grandmother's Footsteps, Red Light Green Light, Sly Fox, Peep Behind the Curtain, or Black Pudding. We've all played it in the playground but the contemporary French version takes place in the classroom. It consists of the teacher writing on the blackboard and then executing a 180° lightening turn at regular intervals to see who's misbehaving. They just love it!

Unfortunately, it is an alarming fact that most teachers would agree about the increasing numbers of this type of pupil. They have little interest in our school programmes and have attention spans that are adjusted to I-pods and computer games. And yet at our Lycée's General Assembly this afternoon, the Inspector assured us that the reformers' decision to maintain the longest school week in Europe, was deliberate. But then, the people who decide how and what we should be teaching live in their ivory towers in Paris, where the accepted dogma is that there are no difficult classes, only bad teachers. This is a convenient notion as it means that almost any modification can be made, or not made, to the programmes.

This week the focus on the reform has shifted from the coming changes in History and Geography teaching to a discussion about the introduction of Economics and Sociology in Year Ten. The previously optional three hours a week will be reduced to a homeopathic dose of an hour and a half, which will be compulsory for all pupils. Personally, I have doubts about the wisdom of forcing a subject like economics on pupils who have not chosen to study it ,and Economics teachers are concerned by the reduction of the programme content itself. However,they are even more worried about the fact that the sociological aspects of the subject which pupils are most likely to relate to (unemployment and purchasing power) have not been included. This is presumably where the school of life comes into its own, with unemployed, new-poor parents, helping their offspring to make up for the missing bits of programme. And my colleagues will be free to get on with teaching abstract notions such as « price elasticity » , which are apparently as riveting as the Lyon Telephone Directory.

It would be handy to hang the blame for all this on the Cartesian culture of our decision makers but, if the Times Educational Supplement is anything to go by, Empiricus fares no better in education reform. Indeed the inadequacy of the response to our problems in the classroom seems to be the same whichever philosopher inspires our educationalists.

Has anybody got any ideas?

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Oh to live in France!

2010-01-25T19:35:00.027+01:00

The British press regularly publishes articles about the steady cross-channel flow of Britons to idyllic destinations in Brittany, Provence or Dordogneshire, where they become writers of blogs about My life in France. As I was a bit under the weather this weekend, I started browsing the amazing number of websites and forums which offer helpful advice to these would-be pioneers of Utopian living. And I found myself wondering why so many people seem attracted to the French Dream. After all, if Baroness Coussins is anything to go by, speaking the language is not high on the national list of priorities and relationships between the two countries have never recovered since Joan of Arc. So what is it that makes the insular Brit think he will be happier here, away from his green and pleasant land and its handy language? Could this be a twenty first century version of Henry VIII's Irish operation? A last bid for Calais?

From the French point of view, the less sinister species of settlers are of course those who come to join their Gallic soul mate. This must surely be the ultimate entente cordiale for overcoming all those linguistic, philosophical and culinary barriers that have plagued our two countries over the centuries. The two turtle doves go on to live happily ever after, contributing to the success of international diplomacy and the government's politique familiale. Their motivations are obviously much clearer than those of the blogosphere homesteaders who appear to have broken with all the usual patterns of immigration. I mean this new breed of immigrant actually have perfectly comfortable established lifestyles in the UK. Then, for no obvious reason, they suddenly abandon it all, uprooting themselves and their children to « live the dream » in the most remote and rural outposts of France.

That being said, for a small minority of bloggers, it seems that the dream can turn into a nightmare. They evidently forget about those warm, wet westerlies, when reading about the sunny climate of the South West. So Madame, resplendent in green wellies, finds herself struggling with the smelly septic tank, French people whose accent is different from the one she learnt at school and paysans lacking in the urban and urbane refinements of her other life. Of course it's also just possible that she wouldn't have been any happier in a remote country area in the UK. Oh well, hopefully, when these disillusioned cases finally give up and go home, they feel a bit of sympathy for the foreign imports with shaky English who have difficulty adapting to our ways.

However, if the blogs are to be believed, this tale of woe seems to concern only a small minority of the Anglo-settlers. The others succumb to the charm. They enjoy a style of urbanisation which prefers apartments and preserves the countryside. They love the bakeries , the local markets and the French diet. They take advantage of the seemingly endless unspoilt open countryside that makes France a paradise for cycling and walking. They are enthusiastic about the health, education and transport systems. They even discover that their English accent, is considered charmant and sexy, so they start to talk to their neighbours and discover the joy of My life in French.

Actually, now I come to think of it, it's pretty obvious what makes them come!

Vive la Révolution : French Education Reform ... again

2010-01-21T17:15:00.020+01:00

Borrowed from: http://chroniques-d-izzie.over-blog.com/article-reforme-histoire-geographie-termninal-s-39925515.html

Today is the annual confrontation between the Ed. Nat. Workers and their Big Boss, Luc Chatel, heir to Xavier Darcos and his failed reform last year. Reform in the Ed. Nat. is a long ongoing process giving rise to revolutions and counter-revolutions until a diluted version of the original idea eventually finds its way into the statute books. After which everybody returns to work and pretends that nothing has happened. It's an interesting fact that teachers rarely strike about salaries. Dinosaurs rather than mammoths in fact, they remain astonishingly far removed from the values of our increasingly materialistic society

Borrowed from: http://lewebpedagogique.com/histoiregeo/

I'm not sure that I've grasped all the ins and outs of our Luc's reform and I can't make up my mind whether I should be out waving banners with my colleagues or not. One aspect that has mobilized a number of French intellectuals is the suppression of history and geography in the final year of the Scientific Baccalauréat, by far the most popular of the three General Education Bacs. This is because the Bac S, for Sesame it seems, is seen as the course that opens all the doors, regardless of the candidates' talents in science! This of course reflects the French maths based selection system but it also shows an attachment to a well-rounded education as pupils in « S » have to study history and geography, philosophy, and two foreign languages as well as their scientific subjects. My pragmatic Anglo-Saxon mind might be tempted to argue that a broad-based curriculum is not the best option for today's pupils but, this argument aside, I actually can't see how the reform is going to detract from the current syllabus. Extra hours in some subjects in the Lower VI will ensure that, over two years, the teaching content remains basically unchanged. And this has the added advantage of making it easier for us to pretend that nothing has happened!

Borrowed from: www.martinefaure.fr/index.php?post/2007/11/20...

So I'm not too concerned about the new programmes but there is a niggling worry about the role of private education, usually synonymous with faith schools. Clearly, when it comes to religion, France is not short of a contradiction or two. As a trainee teacher, I was intrigued by the ferociously secular character of state education, as though Catholicism, in a largely Roman Catholic country, was a suspicious sect. Pagnol's schoolmaster father would have eaten his blackboard rather than set foot in a church at Christmas, and yet state-run primary schools fit their timetable round the Church's catechism schedule by leaving Wednesday afternoons free! That being said, in these days of inter-cultural tensions, I have come to appreciate the idea of secular education. Leaving religious beliefs at the faithless school gate seems to me to be the best way to foster understanding between young people, letting them see each other as individuals and not as part of a predefined group.

That's why I was a bit alarmed in the staff room the other day when my camarades in the union produced figures showing that a reduction of teaching posts in state schools is to be accompanied by a massive increase in private faith school posts. Surely, in a country where the secular is sacred, this is a heresy that is worth a few paving stones. Mind you « private school » is something of a misnomer in the Ed. Nat., since the salaries of teachers in contracted private schools are paid by the government. In fact, one might even be forgiven for asking what defines a private school. There is of course a vaguely religious basis and parents pay modest income related fees but, mainly, they are perceived as a safe haven from the rough and ready realities of the classroom and playground. As a result, in recent years more and more parents have been voting with their feet. These parents adhere to the belief that education is important and that those who dispense it know what they are about. And they generally impart this valuable information to their offspring.

Thankfully, many parents, currently with children in state education, also adhere to these beliefs. However, as our credibility dwindles, it is to be feared that they will take the private route, leaving those who, having not done their job as parents, expect us to do it for them. So my feeling is that instead of arguing about how many teachers are being sent to private instead of state schools, maybe we should be agitating to be allowed to study and perhaps apply some of private schools' methods!

French Countryside and Culture : Stars, Walks and Wagers

2010-01-18T23:58:00.177+01:00

Culture in Lyon this week included Jane Campion's new film « Bright Star ». I can't make up my mind whether Allgood's influence is on the wane or whether the linguistic bath, heavily promoted by all those language schools, has finally borne fruit. Anyway, whatever the reason, there are suddenly more cinemas offering original version films. The result of this happy state of affairs is that I was able to see "Bright Star" in English, which was certainly to the advantage of Keats's verse.

I went with a couple of English-speaking friends, and it was immediately clear that the rest of the audience were much more serious cinema goers than us. Their tutting and shushing, provoked by our whispered exchanges during the Eskimo icecream advert, were a credit to the advertising company. Much to everybody's relief, though we were soon completely entranced by this « ode to hot English chastity»,* to such an extent, in fact, that we remained riveted to our seats until the final credit, not wanting to miss a single syllable of Ben Whishaw's recitation of « The Ode to a Nightingale ». Oddly enough though, it was at exactly this moment that the Eskimo advert fans chose to file out of the cinema absorbed in noisy conversation. Linguistic baths of course have their limitations and it seems that even Keats without subtitles is akin to Serbo-Croat.

My self-congratulatory mood about the snow tyres has been on the wane lately, with only a few frozen leftovers draped over the garden greenery to remind us of last week's fluffy white blanket. However, the upside was an outing with my local walking group, who not only organize interesting hikes but accompany them with relentless interesting conversation. Not that conversation is a French monopoly but, as one fellow walker pointed out, the fundamental difference between you and us is that we are never together for more than five minutes before the conversation turns to food. My duality was a bit dented there.

However he's right of course, even if on this occasion, after all the end of year feasting, food was quickly forgotten in favour of filmmaker Eric Rohmer. And this turned out to be another of those you moments. As the entire group enthused about "Claire's Knee", I shamefacedly admitted that not only had I never seen any of Rohmer's films but I come out in a rash at the the mere mention of New Wave. One of my companions, on the other hand, confided glowingly that his first born child had been named after a character in one of Rohmer's films and assured me that nobody could remain unmoved by the discussion about Pascal's wager in "My Night with Maud".

Well I hope our Nicolas will be impressed by the great leap forward of my French national identity this week because, as I write these words, Amazon are processing my DVD order. In the meantime though I'm making a few mental adjustments. I mean it looks as though I'm going to have to read up on BP's theory about man being a thinking bullrush, before I can watch a romantic FILM! Could this be the end of the tea cosy?

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* A.O. Scott, New York Times

Solutions for Discipline Problems in the Classroom

2010-01-14T23:17:00.035+01:00

Anybody who read my last post will be relieved to learn that, for the moment at least, I'm done with slaying dragons and mammoths. This is all the more true since Philippe Watrelot caught my attention with his blog entry about a project in the Academy of Créteil, one of Paris's educational hot spots. Thanks PW for this crumb of comfort! Créteil was actually congratulated by our Nicolas for their mallette des parents, a sort of bag of tricks and remedies for parents who need to be educated with regard to their parental (cont)role. As many of you probably know, this is a subject that is close to my heart. The basic idea is that education is the responsibility of schools but upbringing is up to the parents. We don't require parents to do our jobs for us, but they need to give more thought to theirs and in Créteil, the schools are helping them to do this. Of course it would be handy if such essential training could be put in place before their offspring descended on the hard pressed Ed. Nat., but at least it's a start and, according to an article in Le Monde, there have been some encouraging results. Hopefully the concept will spread southwards.

However, despite a slight lightening of mood, the preoccupations at this time of year still tend to be around discipline and the procedures necessary to ensure it. In order to sanction a pupil a certain number of steps not only have to be taken, but have to be seen to have been taken, before « sentence can be passed ». Failure to produce bad behaviour reports and evidence of detentions results in contentious parents hiring lawyers and taking our head teacher to the Ed. Nat. « court ». They have even been known to win, thus preventing the suspension of their maligned and misunderstood progeny. It seems a pity that so much parental energy is channeled into asserting the unlawful and ill-deserved nature of the penalty while completely overlooking their own part in their child's predicament.

Perhaps as a result of these first rumblings of disciplinary proceedings, the staff room is buzzing with exasperated teachers swapping stories and pupil profiles. Not that these are necessarily dramatic but they have nonetheless evolved over the past ten years or so. Take the quasi disappearance of the paper dart, for instance, an epitomy of another age, when books were the main source of information and homework was cribbed from encyclopaedias that lived on shelves. It has been largely replaced by that most-hard-to-handle classroom intruder, the mobile phone. For despite all the efforts deployed, there seems to be no way to prevent the exchange of text messages, the recording and photographing of teachers or the loading of information for future tests.

As a result, in the staff room the other day, there was much discussion about how to neutralize these unwelcome interruptions, when suddenly it seemed that we had found the solution. A beaming colleague proudly brandished his newly purchased scrambler which, he assured us, would not only confuse the phone signals in his classroom but in the dozen or so surrounding ones. It seemed like a great moment, until one of those finely honed philosophers' minds came up with a thought that hadn't occurred to me or anyone else. With all the cell phones scrambled, and their users reduced to a state of enforced idleness, we were going to have to work our socks off to get them interested in our LESSONS!

French School Violence: Muscling the Mammoth

2010-01-11T20:43:00.039+01:00

There has been a lot in the press recently about violence and school and the problem was brought home to me more forcefully when I returned to the land of the mammoth this week. In addition to getting back to my pupils,the new term has also meant the arrival of the baby teacher whom I have been asked to look after and impart a few teaching skills to. I find this frankly terrifying and so does she although, fortunately for her and what's left of my career, she isn't going to be sitting in on my "dynamic" class.

Unfortunately my baby teacher had less than encouraging news. For some reason best known to the upper echelons of the Ed. Nat. our newly qualified colleagues are frequently sent to do their teaching practice in some of the roughest schools. This is rather like learning to drive on the Champs Élysées. Needless to say their teaching technique becomes an insignificant detail as they struggle with adolescents that make my classroom agitators look like choirboys. Over lunch today she told me of a young colleague who had been struck by one of her pupils on a school outing last week, while another had been hospitalized at the beginning of the year following an act of violence in her classroom. On both occasions the culprits were suspended for a few days, the ultilmate punishment for kids who probably play truant anyway. However, some of the worst violence, she said, was among the pupils themselves. One was the victim of an attack with a bottle last term, but the attacker could not be expelled because there had already been too many expulsions since the beginning of the year. As we headed for the coffee machine I wondered if I should be offering her something stronger. And I began to feel very angry.

Tomorrow the Lycée Darius Milhaud in Val de Marne, will observe a minute's silence in memory of eighteen-year-old Hakim Haddi, who died of a stab wound inflicted by a fellow pupil last Friday. As often happens, this individual tragedy has become politicised and mediatised, with our Education Minister Luc Chatel rushing to the Lycée Darius Milhaud to publicly denounce the increasingly widespread violence in French schools. However, the Minister reassured the public that plans are under way to make schools « sanctuaries », thanks to airport style walk-through metal detectors, and for good measure a meeting with head teachers will be convened this week. All very bracing stuff, but I suspect that many of us in education felt he was missing the point.

That being said, I don't actually see anything wrong with our top political figures highlighting this affair. And I disagree with the head teacher on France Info who dismissed the media coverage as a misleading image of our schools even if, in my leafy Lycée, nobody so far has found a use for knives outside the canteen. To me, it's a question of facing up to the facts rather than being politically correct and pretending they don't exist. Indeed today's lunch with my trainee teacher was not really a surprise as our peripatetic replacement teachers regularly describe their experience with uncontrollable classes, violent situations and, yes, even stabbings. However, the most worrying part is the reluctance of those concerned to voice their fears, a pattern of behaviour which permeates the entire institution, regularly exemplified by the rose-tinted spectacles worn in the conseils de classe. Teachers hesitate to admit to the violent or antisocial behaviour of their pupils for fear of being sanctioned for not controlling the class. Head teachers will play down episodes of violence and indiscipline for fear of appearing ineffectual. And of course in the worst cases, there is the underlying fear of reprisals from the pupils who have been punished.

So yes, having ministers on site, letting us see that they take the situation seriously is reassuring. And yet surely what most people in the Ed Nat. need is simply to be allowed to admit that, on occasion, they cannot do their job properly because of the unruly, threatening or violent behaviour of pupils. They then need to feel that they will be supported by the system that has thrown them into the arena, instead of which they are reprimanded. Educationalists have a vocation to educate, they are not military dictators and they cannot be expected to solve all of society's problems. The more young people lack a secure family framework, the more they try to find it at school, and the more they discover that our hands are tied with complicated disciplinary procedures, the more they test us, until on occasion they are expelled. At this point some have actually talked about joining the army, where the expression of authority, they say, is more muscled.

Of course I don't think anybody in the Ed. Nat. would advocate American style Boot Camps, but I think many of us would agree that the ostrich has got its head firmly stuck in the sand. Surely if school violence is to be reduced it has first to be admitted to freely, by all concerned. It is interesting that a number of my colleagues refused to see Jean Paul Lilienfeld's "Skirt Day" (La journée de la Jupe), or Laurent Cantet's "The Class" (Entre les Murs) both of which portray different aspects of violence in French collèges. Perhaps, understandably, they felt ill at ease with the content of these films, as though the recognition of a certain reality might be construed as an admission of guilt!

Return to the Land of the Mammoth in the Snow

2010-01-07T00:16:00.018+01:00

Our side

Your side

By all accounts on either side of the Channel, the Gulf Stream is breathing its last and western Europe is on its way to becoming the new Greenland. In fact I even heard on the news the other night that the magnetic north pole's on the move. Maybe we should be looking into alternative scenarios and forgetting that old tale about the Bordeaux vineyards moving to the South of England.

Yesterday it seemed that Sunday's hike in the Pilat had finally got the better of me - unless it was swine flu. Anyway it's too late to go for the jab, just when the government are putting their ninety million excess vaccines on ebay. Maybe they should take some marketing advice from those snow tyre people. I might add that if it was swine 'flu the old immune system seems to be less threatened by Alzheimer's than my brain. I have nonetheless lost all interest in the racket walk in a snowstorm, planned for Sunday, and wish courage and fortitude to my comrades in the CAF*

Still with regard to snow, Radio 4 has put a lot of emphasis recently on how you in the UK are less well equipped to cope than we lucky people « on the continent ». Well, all I can say is that our return to school was a pretty dodgy business. This only goes to show that it's not enough just to have the right equipment. Take a village a couple of miles north of here. It had lots of superbly cleared roads all of which apparently finished up in dead ends. It was a bit like one of those cracker games with a maze and a little mercury ball. People drove hopefully in and out of housing estates and then back onto the apparently circular route before trying out another dead end. Presumably those who never found their way out are still waiting for the thaw.

This doubtless contributed to the yet more depleted classes back in the Lycée, while the ailing heating system threatened to finish off the few of us who had survived the journey in. The good news in all this, however, is that I have finally managed to locate two out-of-season snow tyres which will be fitted if I arrive at my Renault dealer before 7h22 tomorrow morning. Presumably any time after that there will be a Soviet style queue, but it will be worth the early wake-up call. More of the white stuff is forecast for the weekend and I was beginning to resign myself to socks for tyres!

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*Club Alpin Français

Into the New Year

2010-01-03T20:45:00.072+01:00

The last couple of days have seen a return to the Inuit disguise. And today's hike in the Central Massive was interrupted by a mad dash to a nearby village café, a timely escape from frostbite after an ill-advised picnic. Comforted by coffee and freshly baked brioche, we were like marmots who had emerged momentarily from hibernation, taking in the white wintry sky and the crispy crunchy paths and then withdrawing to our snug retreat to savour it all. However, unlike our furry friends, we soon had to return to the arctic temperatures and the two-hour walk back down the mountain!

All my recent posts appear more like a letter from Lyon than an account of me and the Mammoth. However, tomorrow's return to the neolithic will doubtless channel my thoughts back to the Ed. Nat. Certainly with the holidays drawing to an end, yesterday seemed a good time to clear away the Amazonian jungle that had latterly taken over my sitting room. And as always when I'm busy, I listened with half an ear to Radio 4. So, in the course of the morning, I heard an interview with Patricia Cornwell, whose work regularly appears in Lycée textbooks. She explained how her writing was a way of compensating for a childhood spent in an uncommunicative family, comparing herself to a canary, which only sings if there is no other canary to keep it company.

An interesting thought and, in an uncharacteristically introspective moment, I got to wondering about my blog. The twitterings of an English-speaking old bird in a French cage, trying to remember the half-forgotten tunes of its youth. Doing its best to find the notes but not necessarily getting them in the right order and achieving only a clumsy harmony for want of practice. Yet returning again and again to that time before migration, resigned to the squawks that replace what once was song.

All the best for the New Year from the crow!

The Ehrman Abode of Chaos: Destruction, Deconstruction and Duduism

2009-12-31T10:28:00.111+01:00

The other day I had another of those face to faces with philosophy that creates a problem between me, our Nicolas and my identité française. Accompanied by my daughter, we had set off for a walk through the woods to the small village of St Romain au Mont d'Or, the unlikely site of our local contemporary art collection. Its owner, multimillionaire Thierry Ehrmann, is also the founder of Artprice.com. However, although his name is a byword in the world of art market data, in St Romain it's as muddy as the footpaths around the village. For Mr Ehrman is something of a philosopher, a Derrida and Deconstruction fan, and this has led him to transform his seventeenth century home and offices into a kind of Dantesque Disneyland. Now for Cartesian 20th arrondissement daughter, this isn't her first encounter with Derrida and she takes it all in her stride. For me on the other hand, it's pretty bewildering stuff. So it's a comfort for my French identity that the inhabitants of St Romain also seem to be having trouble distinguishing between Deconstruction and just plain Destruction.

The contrast between the old village buildings, the ancient public drinking fountain, and Mr Ehrman's Demeure du Chaos, is arresting to say the least. To start with, the property is surrounded by charred and tagged walls, an inditement apparently of the ills perpetrated by our consumer society and its wars. It's already a worrying sight, but it's nothing compared with the post Armageddon graveyard that lies beyond. Burnt out military equipment, giant human skulls, rusty ironwork and innumberable black and white portraits of the great and the ghastly compose a neogothic nightmare. It would be difficult for even the most dedicated 2012 eschatologist to dream up anything more apocalyptic. The whole thing seems to encapsulate the post nine eleven anxieties about nuclear destruction, environmental disasters, financial crashes, Nibiru, and ladies in burkas . A reflection of the ambient pessimism of the times I suppose.

The process of Deconstruction and the subsequent emergence of the Demeure du Chaos has taken ten years. Some three thousand works of art are on display, including a few by Ben, and it has cost several million Euros. There is certainly no denying the generosity of Mr Ehrmann, who opens his museum to the public every weekend free of charge, attracting over a quarter of a million visitors so far. However, the problem is that in the leafy area of the Monts d'Or, you can't put up a bird table without submitting the plans to the all powerful Architectes des Bâtiment de France. So the installation of an apocalypse stage set in the Ehrmann back yard is considered as a gross injustice by the Mayor and his villagers.

Mr Ehrmann on the other hand argues that his site is recognized as a work of art and as such is protected and not subject to planning permission. Nonetheless, after ten years of legal battles, and petitions on both sides, it looks as though the whole lot will have to come down and the charming stone relai de poste restored to its former glory. That is of course unless the final appeal to the European Court of Human Rights decides otherwise. In the meantime, next-door-neighbour Monsieur Allardon is fighting Deconstruction with Duduism. All along the wall of his property he promotes Mayor Dumont, the eponymous gourou of the Duduist movement. And, for good measure, giant fake flowers turn to face the forces of darkness, alongside a jolly Disney-like Madonna.

I suppose it's the Gallic equivalent of an Anglo having the neighbour round for a cup of tea: a little chat about Derrida and Dudu over the garden wall.

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Christmas in France: The Sacred and The Secular

2009-12-28T17:19:00.077+01:00

Christmas in France! Snow, the Christmas cook-up, throngs of shoppers, an acute shortage of snow tyres and the return of offspring to the family fold. It's been non-stop ever since term ended, and blogging has been momentarily forgotten. How do you other bloggers keep it up in these times of manic activity?

During the run-up to Christmas, Lyon was not a place where we felt much concerned by the goings-on in Copenhagen. Snowmen stood around like so many global warming sceptics and an acute shortage of snow tyres put paid to plans for mountain sorties. Snow tyres are much the same as cherries, they have a short season and once they are finished you haven't a hope of seeing any more till next year. Since the season finishes at the end of December, and I was a bit slow off the mark this year, I came close to achieving a double back flip from my steep driveway over the lavendar bank, in my Inuit disguise. But somewhow I did manage to keep focused on my mad mission and I did arrive at the Christmas market.

Christmas in Lyon begins rather later than the Harrods August version, with the 8th December Festival of Lights. It's an event which now attracts several million visitors every year, paralysing the city for three or four days. The origin of the festival dates back to 1852, when a firework display in honour of the Virgin Mary had to be cancelled because of bad weather. The people of Lyon were apparently so disappointed that they did their own thing, putting candles on the ledges outside their appartment windows to mark the event as best they could. The tradition has continued ever since, which has been great news for the local shopkeepers who do a roaring trade in traditional little glass jars and funny cup-cake shaped candles. During the last few years, however, the festival has acquired an international dimension thanks to more sophisticated animated and coloured illuminations projected onto the facades of the city buildings and statues.

This confusion of the sacred and the secular has inevitably provoked grumblings by Catholics and atheists alike, who take a dim view of the municipality promoting and commercialising a religious festival. Indeed, much is said generally about the erosion of the true Christmas spirit, worn down by shameless commercial exploitation of our primitive hunter gatherer instincts. Yet, however much we may tire of the commercial hype that surrounds one of the most celebrated religious festivals in the world, there is something rather heartwarming about the sight of French Catholics queuing alongside French Muslims for their Christmas tree. Sharing the festivities, whatever their nature, brings people together, and if the sacred nature of the festivities gives way to a more secular version, well so be it!

Perhaps because of the separation between the French state and the Roman Catholic Church over a century ago, Christmas traditions are less visible in France than in Britain. And of course Christmas cards, carol singers and many of the other Yuletide trappings that came to Britain thanks to the Victoria and Albert tandem, are totally absent here. As a result, I have to admit to an occasional spot of nostalgia for things British. I mostly deal with this by putting on my Kings College Christmas CD. Or alternatively I sneak off for a rendez-vous with the Christmas cake produced en famille in October, to the consternation of participating French friends and neighbours. They wait expectantly every year for us all to succumb to food poisoning.

There are, however, certain advantages to spending Christmas in France. Cards are sent for New Year and not Christmas and they are despatched after the 1st January. This may be another victory of the secular over the sacred of course but, whatever the reason, it leaves me a whole week before I have to send mine in reply to yours!

TEFL : English Language Culture in France

2009-12-20T07:00:00.026+01:00

It is pretty much an inescapable fact of life here that the English language classroom is not an option. It pursues young people through school, into the spheres of higher education and from there into the world of work. In addition, it ensures employment for people like me, so I will certainly not be spitting in the soup, as they say. Even our Nicolas famously took English lessons before his State visit to Britain two years ago, presumably traumatised by his efforts in English as Minister of Finance, or possibly Gordon's French.

Yet, paradoxically, this surface acceptance of English as the lingua franca, accompanies a deep-seated insecurity about the so-called Anglo-Saxon linguistic hegemony. A cultural quandary arising from the need to ensure the survival of French businessmen in international communication, while protecting the national identity, and its oral and written expression, from the Anglo predator. This ambivalence is regularly expressed by certain friends and various political figures, in typically Gallic outbursts of linguistic patriotism. As far back as 1994, Jacques Toubon, the then Minister of Culture, attempted to pass a law forbidding the use of English in the media, advertising and other aspects of everyday life. This earned him the sobriquet Allgood.

Fortunately, however, the French are as much attached to the idea of freedom of speech as they are to protecting their lexical heritage and the law was refused in its initial form by the Conseil Constitutionnel. More recently, in March 2006, Jacques Chirac walked out of a Brussels summit in a fit of pique because Antoine Seillère had addressed the assembly in English. And less than two years ago, Nicolas called for a halt to France 24's broadcasts in English. Such protectionism presumably accounts for the lack of interest in original version films on TV and the dubbed purrings and growlings of George Clooney and Brad Pitt. It certainly leads to a less than propitious TEFL* environment.

English, on the other hand, did not become the modern-day Latin by refusing to adopt foreign words. There are hundreds of common French expressions in current English usage, and bandying them around is even perceived by some to be a superior form of articulacy. See unsuperior examples in above paragraph and in title. Modern English is the result of an evolutionary process wrought by the passage of successive civilisations, each one leaving its mark on the existing vocabulary and grammar. The end product is a very resourceful language, which makes it a handy communication tool in any circumstances, regardless of its imposition by the global economy. And let's face it, if the ancient Britons had applied the rules of l'Académie Française and Jacques Toubon, we'd all be speaking Welsh!

So the much heralded victory of the publishing group La Martinière, after three years of legal proceedings against the giant Google, left me frankly dubious. Google will have to pay 350,000 Euros for infringing the copyright of 321 works it has put out illegally on the web. The Elysée apparently politely declined Google's generous offer to plunder the country's heritage further by putting the entire contents of the Bibliothèqe Nationale on the Web. Of course, it's very laudable to protect authors' rights but it could also be argued that having extracts of books available on the internet can only boost interest in the works themselves, their sales and the language in which they are written. In short, surely, the best way to save the nation's linguistic assets from the English language culture and an Anglo-Saxon takeover is by seeking maximum public exposure. And what better way to reach a readership than on the World Wide Web!

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*TEFL: Teaching English as a foreign language

French Culinary Considerations at Christmas

2009-12-17T20:00:00.009+01:00

Only one day to go till the French school holidays, although the depleted state of my classes leaves me wondering why I don't just just shut up shop right away. Yesterday half a class was wiped out by a ski outing, tomorrow we're doing careers advice and today it was the 'flu vaccination. Those pupils who were not already at the infirmary had their thoughts for the day firmly focused on the products of Pasteur and Mérieux and my chances of interesting them in the lexical field of physical disability were pretty slim. Even my mind began to stray, as I considered my degree of preparedness for pandemic 'flu although, by all accounts, my senior immune system has been there and done most of it already.

However, as the end of year festivities grow nigh, concern about swine fever is receding and it is more the pleasures of the table that are uppermost in French minds. Not that their preoccupation with things culinary is merely an annual occurrence. Whatever the time of year, whatever the activity, and whoever the participants, the conversation on this side of the Channel will inevitably stray to food, wine, recipes and restaurants. In fact, in the land of cuisine, the art of the table is considered to be on a par with anything in the Louvre, so it is hardly surprising that Christmas lunch at the Lycée was the high point of the week. Indeed, our head teacher, clearly recognizing a case of force majeure, cancelled all lessons between midday and two for pupils and teachers alike. And I have to say that the Ed. Nat. did us proud. Back in the staff room, a teeny bit regretful about my high principled refusal of the foie gras, infinitive clauses and my afternoon teaching schedule were not high on my list of priorities.

Nonetheless, it was rather appropriate that, with my digestive system in top gear, the afternoon started off with some individual oral testing on the subject of ze jank food. This turned out to be a purely linguistic exercise since, despite the reputedly expanding French girth, nutrition is not a field where the French youth in my class need to be educated. They all know perfectly well of course that ze heigh fet end shoogarr leads to ze helss problems . Thus, when I asked about visits to McDonald's, as practice for the forthcoming Baccalauréat, the girl I was examining nodded sagely and replied with conviction. Of course she was a regular visitor, once a month,or even once a week, but between visits she would be eating plenty of légumes, certainly. This was the difference she added pointedly between the Anglo-Saxon and the Gallic attitude to fast food.

I began to have a sneaking suspicion. Was she, I wondered, trying to educate me?

The Mammoth's Calling: Why and How I got to work in French Education

2009-12-13T20:00:00.048+01:00

What makes you teach? I found this question in the Times Educational Supplement and instantly began musing about who had asked it. Visions spring to mind of a classroom riot victim, a head teacher being sucked down into a quicksand of Ofsted documents, or a disillusioned colleague, toying with the idea of taking off to the Larzac to graze goats. However, if I consider the question seriously, I have to admit that my reasons for becoming a teacher were essentially pragmatic. I needed a job and reasoned that, since English is a compulsory subject throughout French secondary school, there must be a fair demand for people to teach it.

There is of course, but I soon discovered that securing employment with the Ed. Nat. was not going to be a pushover. As civil servants, French teachers have to overcome that omnipresent Gallic hurdle, the concours. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the system, the pattern of the French civil service examinations is pretty similar whether they are selecting a postman or a Préfet. Candidates sit a variety of papers, the relevance of which is not necessarily obvious, and then the selected happy few go on to do what is basically an oral version of an essay. In the case of the Ed. Nat., oral and written examinations can last anything up to SEVEN hours. And with orals frequently taking place in the height of the Summer, the sweltering heat and absence of air conditioning are presumably intended to serve as a reminder that education is primarily about survival. Or at least that's how it seemed during my first few months of teaching, when I began to take stock of the situation after the initial euphoria of success had subsided.

Thus, as I battled with unruly fifth formers, modal auxiliaries and the uncompromising demands of teacher trainers, I realized somewhat belatedly, that beating the selection process did not obviate the necessity of a vocation. Furthermore, it occurred to me that I had never at any time been asked to give the reasons why I wanted to teach. Rather fortunately, fifteen years on, I would now be able to provide quite a few. Probably the first one that comes to mind is simply that regular contact with young people serves as a constant reminder that the world is a changing place and that we have to keep up with it. Moreover, education is frequently a two-way street. My pupils taught me to turn off my mobile phone, send text messages and, more recently, offered to teach me to pirate films. Their desire to please and win approval, even if this is sometimes rather less than obvious, can be touching. Take yesterday, when I found my books standing in a pool of sticky goo at the bottom of my school bag. Too late, I realized that the green slime had once been one of my pupil's home-grown kiwis, donated at the beginning of a lesson. Even the apple, it seems, moves on.

Nonetheless, most of the time one has to accept that teaching is not a job where one is regularly rewarded by expressions of customer satisfaction, or at least not in the form that one might hope for. This was very clearly the case the other day, when a young lad stopped at my desk as he was leaving the classroom. Beaming at me, he told me how much he enjoyed my lessons, and went on to explain that this was because, unlike his other teachers, I didn't prepare them. On enquiry, I discovered that he had reached this alarming conclusion because it was the oral work that he enjoyed and he assumed that I made it up as I went along! Then a few years ago another of my fans, when being taken to task by the Deputy Head for causing severe anguish and gnashing of teeth, was asked about his behaviour in English. The response was immediate. His respect for me, he reassured her, was unfailing. Intrigued by my apparently superior teaching skills, the Deputy sought to know more. Well it was obvious, he explained, his English teacher was just like his mother ... old!

On second thoughts, it's probably not so much the vocation that counts the most. The trait that any recruiter should be on looking for in a personality for teaching has to be a sense of humour.

Dual Nationality: Duality and Nationality

2009-12-08T23:50:00.042+01:00

As the debate rages on about what constitutes the French national identity, our Nicolas is frantically trying to close Pandora's box. In Le Monde today, he reassures us all than an identité nationale is the antidote to all those dangerous -isms, not only the nasty one with a "C", but tribalism too. Now I'm no fan of Burkas, Hijabs and Niqabs, but if tribalism is some kind of oblique reference to islamic traditional dress, well I think that's a bit extreme. But then with 46% of the French population backing the Swiss, I suppose he has to keep everyone happy.

All this brought home rather sharply that I myself am just a member of another minority group, once put to the test after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, but ultimately part of French mainstream society. I am also an immigrant and I seem to have spent most of my life getting to grips with the French language. However, I rarely give much consideration to my foreignness in a country which gave me French citizenship as soon as I asked for it, and at a time when my husband and I would almost have qualified as asylum seekers. Maybe this is why I fail to identify with books and blogs which trace the portraits of valiant British expats battling their way through French bureaucracy, popping out to buy the odd baguette and marvelling at the quaintness of the natives. Of course people often appear quaint when you don't speak their language.

That being said, however hard I try to transform my foreign imported self into something that resembles the genuine French article, I have inevitably remained strongly attached to my roots, my mother tongue and my tea cosy. This feeling of duality, as I try to keep both my passports happy, engenders a condition sometimes bordering on the schizophrenic. Take the classroom for example, where I confuse bemused students by using we and nous indifferently when referring to the British or the French. Then there are my children. They have inevitably grown up with a foot in each culture. They put plates on the table for breakfast and have a penchant for Cadbury's cream eggs but they are essentially characterised by a Cartesian Frenchness, pure products of the Ed. Nat and that nebulous educational area, le supérieur. However, it is doubtless in language that the split is the hardest to manage. For although it is true that I am at last able to pass for a native speaker, le français will always be the adopted child, never the mother tongue.

So, yes, my cultural identity is a bit divided and yet, despite that, as the adoptive parent of le français, I cannot believe that France was not mine from birth. Why else would I feel nostalgic for the France of the forties and fifties, which I never knew, but which I love to watch on films as though it were the country of my grandmother?

No, I cannot deny my Englishness, but my Frenchness is undeniable.