Category: French Society

The problem with French secular culture

French people have a very strong sense of privacy. Many things are private, and according to proper etiquette you should never ask questions about these. Often, you don’t ask for people’s names when you meet them. You certainly won’t ask them what they do for a living, how much they earn… When you grow up in France, you learn to discern these things and to work them out for yourself indirectly, from the clues you can gather, or from someone else.

But there is one subject that make people really uneasy. this subject is religion. You never talk about religion with anyone. This is one of the most private things. It means that unless the people you meet follow a religion that has some visible outward signs, you just can’t know if people are religious or not. It makes talking about spiritual things very awkward I find.

On Friday morning, I was with our stand on the market when one of the dad’s from our children’s school came up to me and started chatting; He is very friendly guy, knows half the school. He is always a gentlemen with ladies. But I would never have thought the guy and his family were practicing Roman Catholics. They are involved in te local Parish and go to mass regularly. I can’t say I am surprised, but I would never have imagined this man was religious.

Having been brought up in a context where you never talk about faith with anyone, I just take it for granted that most people are not going to church anymore. But meeting that guy on the market was encouraging.

 

French schools and health and safety, an experience

I am still laughing about it. When I went to get the children in school on Monday at lunchtime, Maxime’s teacher came out to apologize and let me know he had cut himself while preparing a crumble. There was not much to be honest, so I just smiled. What will be of interest to the British folks is that we had not been told that they would be cooking that morning.

I imagine that if we had been in the UK, we would have been asked if Maxime could take part in the cooking that morning. We would have been asked if he could taste the result of their cooking. Then, after he cut himself, I would have had a note about what had been done as a result. That’s crazy.

That’s one of the things I like about being here. There’s much less fuss on health and safety than there is in the UK. That doesn’t mean people don’t care about health and safety. They do. But they are much more relaxed about it and accept that accidents do happen. And when an accident happen, we let the insurance deal with it.

An interesting meeting in the Mairie (town/village hall)

This morning, the residents of our estate and the surrounding streets had been invited to a public meeting in the village hall to discuss a problem of speeding on the main road. Several people had complained about the level of traffic and the speed of cars on the road just outside the estate. I went along with about 30 people from the neighbourhood to meet with the mayor and some of the other councilors. It was a first experience for me, and I really enjoyed it.

The mayor was a master at leading a meeting where everybody wanted to talk at the same time. He was quite down to earth, saying that speeding was a problem on many other roads. He also reminded us that often, residents who ask for improvement are the first to complain after the works have been done. But he is willing to do something to help. I also noticed he didn’t promise anything he couldn’t later achieve, which is fairly good for a politician.

The discussion was fun. I imagine you always find the same kind of people in this type of meetings. One was a lady who was clearly out of context and wanted to complain about something else in another part of the village. You had the specialist, a man who sounded like he knew all the laws and regulations concerning road works. I can imagine that he is retired and has time to spare to research these things. There was also the man who got worked up because he is a lorry driver and he is fed up with all the road improvements that have recently been made and make it difficult for a lorry to go through or turn.

But we all agreed in there were a number of problems on this road. amazingly, nobody knows what the speed limit is on that stretch of road. Not even the police. We agreed to have some speed limit signs put in place. It will now be 50 km/hr (30 miles/hour). We also agree that the council need to make some improvement on that part of the road where there is no pavement. They will mark a space for pedestrians so that the road seems slightly narrower and people hopefully slow down. None of these works will cost lot of money, but hopefully it will help.

If you had told me 10-15 years ago that I would one day sit in a town hall for such a public meeting, I would have laughed. But I enjoyed that experience, and it was an opportunity to meet some of the people living on our street.

The classroom

Last Friday, Jean-Baptiste’s teacher invited the parents of the class to a meeting. She was going to explain to us how she works and what the children will be doing this year. It was interesting to be back in a French classroom.

When you come in the room, there are several rows of desks, all facing the teacher. Each child has his/her own desk, with space under the table to put exercise books. And they are also facing a… blackboard. Yes, they still use proper blackboards, with chalk. There is no “interactive board”, no fancy technology around, there is not even a computer in the classroom. In France, teachers teach. I know that sounds silly to say, but that’s not obvious in some countries like the UK where computers have invaded the classrooms.

The teaching is fairly traditional. Children learn things by heart, they have writing exercises, reading exercises, maths problems to solve… They don’t decide what they want to learn, the teacher has a program to follow.

It was refreshing to visit the classroom and hear about the work they are going to do this year. Some things have changed, but overall, it seems very similar to the way I was taught.

Meetings, meetings, meetings

September is a month of meetings. Everything starts again, and there are all sorts of meetings to get things going. On Monday, I met with the secretary of the Breton cultural centre and another lady to discuss about the centre’s library and rota. Then on Friday, there will be two meetings following each other in the school. And last night was the meeting with Maxime’s teacher.

Nursery and Primary school teachers must organise a meeting with the parents within two weeks of going back to school, to explain to them what they are going to do, how they work… etc

Fourteen parents turned up last night. That’s excellent. Considering there are 28 children in the class, it means 50% of the parents came. The teacher explained how she structures the day, what they with the children do, when. She also explained her methodology with regard to learning how to write letters. She also encouraged parents to read stories to their children to help develop their vocabulary, imagination and other skills.

It was interesting and she wasn’t too long, but her intervention was followed by a long discussion with parents anxious about what they should read with their children, the effect of television, how parents could help their children. I thought the teacher had been pretty relaxed about these. But some parents seemed really concerned. I wanted to remind them that school is not compulsory until the children are 6 and that they should relax about it. But in their mindset, if you fail those initial (not compulsory) years, your child might fail in the future.

One of the contradictions of the French education system is that although nursery school (maternelle) is not compulsory, the first year of primary school builds up on what has been taught in nursery school. It means that although school is not compulsory under 6, you still need to send your children to school before because the primary school teacher will assume your child has already done the grounding work in nursery. Does that make sense?