French education system
OK, the last couple of entries have been a bit serious so I’ll share a couple of more light-hearted anecdotes today. Curiously I heard a couple of amusing stories related to education yesterday so I’ll start with them (and probably finish as well, because I’m supposed to be mowing the grass).
We have a friend with a daughter who wants to be a physiotherapist, and has just started her training. Now apparently for the first year this course is combined with the first year medicine course, so she is in the same lectures as all the doctors-to-be. So far, so good.In France, rather than have a strict admission policy to medical school, a wider range of students are admitted, but then the first year acts as a kind of test, which a lot of the students fail. So it is performance during the year that is important, rather than previous schooling ability.
Again, sounds reasonable. Another aspect of the French education system is that at most levels of education it is possible to ‘redouble’. This means that if performance during a year is not quite good enough, the entire year is retaken. This is pretty common from infant school level and right up to university, and there is no particular stigma attached to needing to retake a year.
OK that’s enough background, back to the young lady taking physiotherapy. There is a lot of pressure do be in the top part of the class in the medical school. And the class contains quite a few people that are retaking the year, having not been up to the grade last year. Now, you would think that would lead to a heads down, work harder kind of attitude. Well apparently not always.
A significant part of the students who are retaking the year have made it their goal in life to disrupt the lectures, so that the new entrants can’t pay attention, with the hope that they ultimately fail. To the extent, apparently, that invigilators are now employed to sit around the edge of the hall – which often contains several hundred students – and try and enforce some kind of discipline on the group. Not always with complete success, apparently.
Still that problem is some years away for us at the moment. While I was helping the older daughter with her maths a couple of days ago I was telling her how excited we had all been when I was at school and someone invented LED calculators and watches. “Ah yes”, she said, “someone in my class keeps getting into trouble because of their calculator”.
Apparently, she has a talking calculator, and can’t work out how to turn the sound off. So everytime they are doing a maths exercise, this girl’s calculator is announcing the calculation to the whole class. Apparently it is becoming a bit distracting and driving the teachers mad.
Our last education related challenge at the moment is related to what is known as ‘stage’ – work experience. For one week this year our daughter has to find work in a real company, and go and experience the big wide world. But first we have to find somewhere suitable.
Now, we don’t exactly live in a metropolis, and to be honest most of the employers around here are shops and farmers, with a few local banks and small offices. We thought we had it worked out, and approached the nursery school (she likes children and talks about being a teacher occasionally, when the idea of being a top model or a pop star slips out of her mind). Unfortunately rules are rules and 13 year olds can’t do training in schools.
So we’re back to the drawing board. We say architect office, she says beautician; we say town photographer, she says hair stylist; we say local radio station, she says clothes shop. So we are not making much progress. Hopefully during the next week or two we’ll have some inspiration. Otherwise I’m going to wrap her in an animal skin and take her up to the Dordogne where they are always looking for people to play role models in the prehistoric ‘re-enactment’ villages. She might even learn some history.