School

I've been meaning to write a post for awhile now about the French système scolaire. You'd think I would've done it before, at the beginning, when I was the most impressionable, but I guess I just never got around to it. And now, it's become one of those things that's kind of ballooned out of control, in the sense that there are simply too many differences I've noticed, too many particularités of French schooling -- and too many anecdotes I could use to illustrate it all -- that now, the task of trying to put everything into words seems impossible with even the most detailed and descriptive of blog posts. But I'm going to attempt here, at the very least, to make a start.

(As a side note: This same phenomenon has also happened with the Martiniquan men and my -- and every single other female assistants' here -- ridiculous and inappropriate encounters with them all. I'm not even going to attempt to convey the differences in male comportment and societal expectations in Martinique on this blog. I'll tell you all about it in person, if you want to know, when I'm back in our dear old country.)

I guess we'll start with the superficial. Here's a picture of one of my schools.


As you can see, it's a nice, new, multicolored building with an ocean view. It was only remodeled about four years ago. There's a library stocked with books, a nice salle informatique with Internet and a color printer, air conditioning, office supplies at my disposal when I want them (glue, paper, scissors, markers, whatever), toilets with paper and soap (imagine that!), and a proper salle des maîtres with warm coffee every morning. One of the teachers (from the métropole) told me that, compared to most other primary schools in Martinique (which are old and falling apart -- the other school I work at, just a few minutes down the road, is in this category), this is a five-star school.

I asked her if schools in France were as nice as this one. She said they were even nicer.

I'm not sure if this photo conveys it well, but this school, which is considered large for an elementary school (grades one through five) at more than two hundred students, is quite small (enrollment-wise and square-footage-wise) by American standards. As you can see, there's not even a playground. At récré (recess), students don't even play with balls or jump ropes. They kind of just run around and scream at each other.

Which brings me to my next point. What shocked me most during my first few days at school here was the noise level, or more specifically, the tolerance of it. The din during récré is enough to burst your eardrums, but even in the classroom, students are slightly more out of control than I remember their American counterparts being. I know that kids are kids, but still. Students here bavarder n'importe quoi, n'importe quand. They talk over the teacher and their camarades all the time. I've seen the profs scold them sometimes, but it usually never works, so most of the time they're just forced to carry on like it's nothing. I find myself saying "J'attends le silence!" at countless times each day, but I've never actually heard true quiet in the classroom.

I'm not sure what the situation is like in France, but I met an American assistant from Guadeloupe a few months ago, and she told me it's the same there. She conjectured that it's because the only way the kids are called out on their bad behavior -- both at home and at school -- is through yelling (and occasionally being sent outside or to see the principal). Eventually, she said, it all must fall on deaf ears.

Which brings me to my next point, which is discipline. Many of the classrooms in primaire have a roster posted on the wall with each student's "points." Good points are earned by doing good things, and bad points are added for doing bad things. After a certain number of bad points, you start to lose classroom privileges. I'm sure there might be similar systems in America, too, but I'd never seen public lists like that, with students literally ranked against each other, out in the open for everyone to see.

And then there are the little things, the subtle differences I've picked up with respect to the way students are expected to behave in the classroom, and the student-teacher relationship in general. All teachers are addressed as Maîtresse or Maître, never by their family name. Every time the kids come in from récré, they have to line up in two lines, boys and girls, and only when they're bien rangé can they come inside. After they enter the classroom, they have to stand by their desks until the teacher tells them they can sit down. Every time an adult enters the classroom, they're also expected to stand up until they're told to sit. Sometimes teachers also yell at kids for not being in the position écolier, sitting up straight with their hands folded on top of their desks. When students want to be called on, they have to lever le doigt -- raise their hand with their pointer finger in the air. I suppose it's all just a bit more froid and distant than what we're accustomed to in America.

And don't even get me started on the ridiculous cursive script everyone writes in (a lot of them have trouble reading my handwriting because I write in print), the fact that every line and space of their penmanship must be measured and counted, every dictée must have a title. They always ask me if they should underline it or not, how many lines they should skip, and what color they should write in. I'm like, I don't care, it's up to you. But it seems they've always been told exactly what to do and how to act and how to write, all the time. It's all a little creativity-suppressing, if you ask me. My English friend who works in collège told me that she asked her students to invent and describe their own Carnival holiday, and all of them except a few simply described the traditional Carnival in Martinique. So, it seems, the tradition continues in middle school.

And then there's the fact that, if you calculate it out, French kids really aren't even in the classroom that much. Their school day is long, it's true -- it goes from 8 to 4:30 every day. But they have a two-and-a-half hour break for lunch in the afternoon, and two fifteen-minute récrés sprinkled in there as well. They don't have school at all on Wednesdays. And though they're in school from the beginning of September until the end of June, they have four 2 (or two-and-a-half!)-week breaks throughout the year -- Toussaints, Christmas, Carnival, and Easter.

Anyway. I'm not sure how to close this. This is only the tip of the iceberg, really, but all this stuff has been stewing in my head for six months and I had to get it out. I'm really curious as to the state of affairs in the métropole, though. And I might update this later, or in another post, when I've reflected some more. À plus...