Shyrley

I think there is an unparallelled opportunity to send letters to the Times
about the superiority of home education. They report today:

School is supposed to be boring, French Pupils told

French schoolchildren who are weary of their country's rigorous education
system were told yesterday that school was not supposed to be fun and that
they should not confuse it with entertainment.

Luc Ferry, the Minister for Youth, National Education and Research, made his
point as experts and bureaucrats met to address an epidemic of boredom that
is said to be afflicting France's centrally controlled school system.

"The culture of school is not made to be entertaining. Some apprenticeship
is difficult," he said. M. Ferry, 51, who was a celebrity philosopher [now
there's a thing!] until President Chirac appointed him to the Cabinet last
May, admitted that in his own schooldays "80 per cant of us were as bored as
dead rats".

Tedium has always been part of school and boredom in the classroom is said
to be rampant everywhere in the video age. France has made efforts in
recent years to involve pupils in more creative activities.

There's more but I can't find the link.

Shyrley

Julie Bogart <[email protected]>

--- In [email protected], Shyrley
<shyrley.williams@v...> wrote:

>
> Tedium has always been part of school and boredom in the
classroom is said
> to be rampant everywhere in the video age. France has made
efforts in
> recent years to involve pupils in more creative activities.
>
> There's more but I can't find the link.
>
> Shyrley

Shyrley, this is interesting timing. I have friends in town who are
French. I've lived in France and speak French. I went to college in
France for a year.

One of the French moms invited a number of homeschoolers
over to meet other French mothers. They didn't know anything
about homeschooling and asked us all kinds of questions. The
most startling response to all our sharing was when one mother
said,

"Even if the education is inferior and even if the children don't
enjoy it, I would not want to pull my children out of the state
funded programs to make them better than other people. We
should all have the same education and not make some
superior to others."

Well tie my shoelaces!

Right there I saw the cultural absorption of the ideals of
socialism. all the motehrs basically agreed with this position, yet
they couldn't let go of their fascination with our way of doing
things. It was enlightening.

One thing they also said was that their kids loved going to school
in the states! They loved the way the students could get up and
move around a classroom, the encouragement of group projects
and the absence of ridicule as a method of motivation (very
prevalent in France). They also preferred the way teachers used
multi media to the typical workbook program all day.

That was interesting. France made these poor kids keep up with
their French grade levels in addition to their schooling here so
these kids were literally doing two times the work of our kids in
school here. I felt so badly for them. :(

University in France was a kick! Classes began in Sept. but the
students didn't show up until mid Oct and sometimes not until
the New Year. Classes lasted all year. I actually enjoyed my
classes there very much, even though they weren't that rigorous.
I was used to UCLA which is a pretty academic school.

There is a painful apathy in French children and they are
notoriously mischevious. It's something that we've noticed over
the years (we lived in Morocco too and knew French families
there...). But the mothers are actually quite wonderful in many
ways too. They don't believe in corporal punishment, are very
affectionate and they lead rich artisitc lives compared to what I'm
used to here.

Strange mix.

All that to say that I'm not at all surprised that the government
would say school isn't meant to be fun. :)

Julie B