Schools

First, here are some photos.

The library in the primary school. 

The play yard in the primary school.

The principal’s office, primary school

Biology class, high school.

Music room, high school. (guest conductor, me)

 I saw two schools for about two hours each.  (ecole primaire and a lycee) Some things seemed common to both. I don’t know if the commonalities are nationwide, though, but I will tell you what I saw and you can think about the things you know, but this is one thing I am not going to generalise about..I am just going to let you know what I saw.

Are we clear on that?

OK. Schools in France are not exactly like schools in Adelaide, or possibly even in Australia. There are some diferences between the two.

The day is longer

There is a long lunch hour

The teachers in the ecole primaire do not do yard duty; they have paid non-teaching staff to do that.

Chalk and talk seems to be the main way of disseminating information.

The computer set up in the ecole primaire in Vichy is light years behind the computer setup at Bellevue Heights PS, SA. 12 computers of mixed descent running one cartoon building program compared to 40  modern 60 Gig machines off a server running everything from easy graphics to music notation. There is no comparison.

There is no play equipment used in the yard at lunch times. Kids talk, run, scream, play chasey, etc.

I saw no swings, no climbing frames, no balls, only some painted-on hopscotch lines in the primary, and nothing at all in the lycee at Vichy. I felt very sorry for the students.

There seems to be a feeling that if the child does not want to learn, too bad, though there is a  lot of testing done to establish benchmarks, and at tertiary level there is great concern about children who can’t read well. Yet the year 2/3 class I observed had a small number of non-working boys who did absolutely nothing in their maths lesson, and nothing was done about them. And, sorry everybody, but that simply wouldn’t wash in SA. We’d be on at them and we’d get them working.

The French tertiary staff turned up their noses at our education system, sniffing at the idea of sport in schools. Guess what? You need to come over here and get to know us. We might be able to teach you something.

The comments box is below, fire away…..

The paradise of dissent

We were very lucky to see a bit of real life protest and street marching; something the French do very well, especially on a fine weekend in Lyons. I heard about one demonstration (Manifestation) in Paris but didn’t get to see it, though if you have a photo to send I will put it up here.

The manifestation I saw in Lyons was a large and well organised protest about an autoroute that was about to demolish part of a town. At about 2 pm on a nice dry Saturday afternoon, as  the population was shopping at the soldes, a group of bright green drummers appeared on the main shopping road and started up. Behind them came wave after wave of people with very nicely made protest signs.

I’d gone in all inconspicuous in my day glo orange jacket and black tracky daks, so they figured, when I pulled out the ubiquitous camera, that I was a reporter, and they were glad to be noticed and photographed..

The general population took the manifestation in its stride, crossing the road or not as it suited, and many stopped to watch; the drummers were excellent. I don’t know how many folk were in the march, a few thousand maybe; Lyons was packed that day and all I can say is the whole thing took about 15 minutes.

 As I was leaving I saw a man sitting in the road refusing to get up, doing his own personal protest about something that was unclear to the rest of us. He had a policeman or two in attendance, plus a friend, who gave him sips from a water bottle. He didn’t like me taking a photo of him, but as I yelled back, ‘If you do it in public the public will notice,’ so here he is for posterity.

And that’s it for the famous French strikes and manifestations.

(The autoroutes, by the way, are excellent; well constructed toll roads that enable one to scoot along at 130k and cover ground fast. You pay as you leave, which is clever, and there are snack bars at frequent intervals as well as little picnic sites every now and again.)

Nom d’un chien

Just so you you know, that phrase means something like “my goodness!’

Which is what a lot of people say when they see how dogs are treated in France..rather like children. Elegantly dressed ladies will crouch down to pat a dog.

Dogs sit in restaurants, visit pubs,

hang around the St Nectaire cheese caves,

have special doggy toilets in the parks,

and seem to be permanently in good moods and very sociable. I only saw one dog fight and that was between three of them; as they were small they were quickly dragged apart.

Dogs have friends, who come to visit. They are polite, and well organised. They do not beg for food from the tables. It is a far cry from many of the ignored, yet spoilt,  yappy little monsters we tend to raise. Food for thought.