French School System

I started observing classes at the high school last Tuesday. Their school system is soo different than ours. They take school very seriously. No one ever goes to the washroom during class, no one ever asks to leave, no one ever forgets their books and if they do, the teacher gets very upset with them and they will never do it again. They always have their homework done and if, by chance, they don’t.. the teacher yells at them and they never forget to do their homework again. At the end of their high school career, they have to take a country wide test to make sure that they are at certain level to continue on in university. This test is very stressful and quite a few people fail.

The other day, Jenn (who is also doing her internship for teacher’s college in Dijon) and I were observing a French class where the teacher is especially strict when it comes to homework. Not only do the students have to have their homework done but it has to be neat. The title of the homework has to be underlined and the title has to be capitalized. She went around and checked homework at the beginning of the class and there was a student who didn’t have their homework done and the teacher asked the students if he thought she was an idiot. She gave him an afternoon’s worth of detentions and went on with the class. Later on in the class she realized that the same student and the student beside him didn’t have their books with them in class. She asked them why they didn’t have their books and they replied that the one boy has lost his book and so the boy who didn’t have his homework done at the beginning of class had lent him his book. The boy who had borrowed the book had left the borrowed book at home by accident and so that left them both without a book. The teacher gave the boy who didn’t have his homework done and who had lent the other boy his book another detention (an afternoon’s worth) because he was stupid enough to lend someone a book and not ask for it back.

It was pretty intense.

your francophone, Mandy