by Charles Darwin Joe Yeager

I have uncovered the true and sinister purpose behind the foreign teaching assistant program here in France. I present it now to you in its entirety, or at least what elements I have been able to discover. Even more disturbing truths may still be hidden.

First, some observations:

• -The program seems to employ approximately 25% males and 75% females.
• -There was a great resistance to placing Rachel and myself in the same location, only overcome through months of persuasion.
• -We only work 12 hours a week, giving the assistants ample time to socialize with French citizens.
• -Our pay is meager enough to make many assistants look for other ways of supplementing their income.

Are you prepared to know the horrible truth? Please, make sure there are not any children or people with heart conditions in the room.

The abundance of single young English-speakers brought into France by this program with little to do except look for romantic prospects among the French population leads to one simple concusion - the whole program is designed to foster intercultural couples who will have children and then raise those children to be bilingual! The clever program administrators even hid their goal of universal multilingualism in plain sight, but it is not the current generation that the program seeks to make bilingual, it is the next!

As those familiar with the doomsday scenario explained in Dr. Strangelove, those seeking to build a new population quickly and efficiently need as many women as possible, while only a relatively small number of men are necessary to maintain genetic variety. This explains the relatively high proportion of women selected for the program. With only just enough money to scrape by, the assistants are offered the attractive prospects of social time with French singles and, eventually, a relationship with shared finances. The easy-to-obtain French civil union (the PACS) only encourages this formation of couples. With all of these English-speakers settled in France with their French spouses, children will eventually result and create a new generation of polyglots.

Now that your mind has been exploded to its fullest extent, I will leave you with one troubling question. Eventually the hidden powers that control the Program relented and allowed us to live and work in the same city. Were they pessimistic about the future of our relationship or overconfident at the ability of their citizens to seduce one or both of us? Possibly, but I believe the real answer is that we are here to encourage the other assistants to form couples through jealousy, empathy, or both. We may be two pawns joined together, but we are pawns still.

Posted in English, France, French, Joe, funny, oy vey, teaching by joe