Une Autre Philosophie

The understatement of the year was when I was pouring my little heart out about life's professional frustrations (like not having any of the resources I need to teach despite being a teacher) to my Spanish teacher/friend and he commiserated and replied, "c'est une autre philosophie."

That's for sure. I don't even have the energy to discuss how French and American higher education systems are polar opposites. In the US, students have more resources than they need, like gluten-free stir fry night at the cafeteria, study abroad opportunities in places like Uganda (really?) or on planet neptune and like 5 macbook pro Ipads per student and they pay outrageously inflated tuition.

The biggest culture shock I ever had in France was when I started teaching in public universities outside of Paris, which I've done off and on for about 3-4 years, due to the lack of resources.

In France, students and teachers have virtually no resources whatsoever in public universities, and tuition is practically free. I appreciate how democratic this system is-- no application process, anyone who passes their bac gets a place in their local university. Yay, for easy access to higher education. But as a teacher, it's the most frustrating thing on earth to have zero resources. In a real school. In a developed country. Not on the JYA program in Uganda or on Neptune where having no resources would be part of some Authentic Cultural Experience. (I'm a little wary of sending university students to developing countries for study abroad-- seems a little voyeuristic/tourism of poverty to me...)

But anyway, the system needs more money, either from the state or in slightly increased tuition fees. For example, the tacit understanding in my department was that teachers should pay for their own photocopies, which is absurd. We're supposed to post documents online for the kiddies but the department doesn't have a scanner we can use to scan hard copy documents. In most of my classes on the first day (and even 2nd and 3rd days), we didn't have enough chairs for all the kiddies. My class sizes average from 30-45. Even for listening and speaking classes. I buy my own markers for the whiteboard. If I want to do listening comprehension exercises with my kids, I have to bring my own computer and speakers. To avoid using paper, I wanted to use powerpoint, but none of the projector/computer connections work in the rooms where I teach. A teacher friend of mine bought her OWN projector so that she could use powerpoint in class.

Great Books?

Instead of a great books curriculum, it's more like a great copy card curriculum. Students learn from photocopies (teachers cannot require them to buy textbooks because it would discriminate against lower income students who couldn't afford it. Really). Call me insensitive to socio-economic factors, but I don't understand how someone can be university educated without reading books.

While it's great to have affordable tuition fees for French public univesities, I think there should be some kind of selection process in advance. Like minimum language requirements to do a language program, for example. I have kids who can't even form proper verb tenses on the first day. Like "he going." Or "he's go."

Under the current system, the first year can be a big waste of time for freshmen and their teachers. It's a big weed out year, the teachers' mentality is that 65% of the kids enrolled "don't really belong here" and that teachers are doing their jobs by failing over half of the entering class. (There are also probably underlying economic reasons for this, too. It would be way to expensive for the state-- which already seems to have little money for education-- if everyone who started university actually finished).

Like in the US, there's a huge divide between the public and private. I tutor some kids who attend a private middle school where they study Greek and Latin and have 35 hours of classes a week (with maybe only 1-2 hour of homework total per week). The university degrees that are the most respected here are, of course, not from public universities, but private elite schools called Grandes ecoles which impress the hell out of the French.

I don't think I'll ever understand cette autre philosophie, the origin and evolution of public education in France. An emphasis on both democratic equality and individual academic merit doesn't necessarily seem as compatible as the French system would perhaps like. It's a challenging system for the kids. Like I once taught a phonetics class (I did not choose the curriculum) that seemed specifically designed to fail first years by giving them ridiculous words to transcribe like "unmarrigeable." Really? What purpose does that really serve?

To me, it's a very underfunded system, although I recently read an article which said that French education spending was considered high for Europe.

I find it a strange place to work but I'm trying to cheer myself up with the fact that there's something to be said for being a 'global citizen,' whatever that really means and learning about different educational systems besides the British and American ones. And that in a year I can go back to Anglophone universities if I so desire...