Schools Around the World: France
Remy de la Mauviniere/AP
Nationwide strikes in France hobbled public services from transport to schools, Tuesday, March 23, 2010.
The headlines have been full of news on the unemployment rate in France; above 10 percent, France has an even higher unemployment rate than the United States. How has the recession affected education in France?
As early as November 2008, thousands of people protested against education reform plans, especially plans to cut thousands of teaching jobs, Euronews reported.
By January 2009, the economic crisis had forced the French government to make job cuts, and announce reform plans for primary and secondary education. In response, thousands of teachers went on a one-day national strike. Job cuts were at the top of strikers’ list of grievances, along with “the end of teaching hours on Saturday mornings, which means they have less time to do their work,” The Guardian reported.
Massive job cuts in the education sector will certainly sound familiar to educators in the United States. But what about an emphasis on food and culture? This may be where the French education system differs most profoundly from the American system.
“While the country is cutting public programs and civil-servant jobs to try to slash a debt of about $2.1 trillion, no one has dared to mention touching the money spent on school lunches,” Vivienne Walt wrote for Time magazine in February.
According to Walt, whose son started nursery school in Paris in September 2009 at the age of three, public schools in France “are overcrowded, rigid and hierarchical,” and parents aren’t encouraged to visit classrooms. By contrast, “the laws governing meals are sacrosanct and are drummed into children before they can even hold a knife.” Walt explains that at every school in the country, the lunch menu is posted on a wall outside the school every Monday.
“The variety on the menus is astonishing: no single meal is repeated over the 32 school days in the period, and every meal includes an hors d’oeuvre, salad, main course, cheese plate and dessert,” Walt writes.
This emphasis on the dining experience in early education in France is echoed by Bonnie R. Hurless, an assistant professor of early childhood education at Dominican University in Illinois. Hurless traveled throughout France on an international study grant in 2002, speaking with individuals in the education system. She visited a French preschool (called an école maternelle) and watched as 25 three-year-olds gathered for lunch. Lunch was a four-course meal, with breaks between courses, of “sliced tomatoes in vinaigrette dressing, Salisbury steak in mushroom sauce, and … chocolate mousse.”
Whereas “[i]n the United States we would give them chicken nuggets, french fries, and carrot sticks and be done with it in 20 minutes,” an American mother observed to Hurless, in France, lunch is seen as an opportunity to teach valuable lessons on proper etiquette at the table.
“The main purpose of the école maternelle is exposing children to and immersing them in the French culture,” Hurless writes. “Academics are a secondary goal.”
Cultivating French culture is also emphasized at the high school level in France. Laura Geggel, reporting for SnoValley Star, explains how students at Mount Si High School in Washington are pen pals with English-language students at France’s Notre Dame le Menimur school. Geggel shares “unedited impressions” from the French students on the differences between schools in the U.S. and France.
“Food is an important part of our culture and so we have lunch from noon to 1:30 pm,” the students wrote. They shared details of a strict dress code at school, a lack of extracurricular activities after school and the ease with which students can buy cigarettes and beer, even as early as 14 years of age.
“We never have multi-choice tests,” the students wrote. “We have to write all of our answers and justify them each time. Our school system is harder than the American one.”
For an overview of the education system in France, visit Discover France, a site dedicated to French tourism, culture and the arts.
