My feelings on Clinton’s win in PA are best expressed by this video…
Bret’s Angry Dance, Flight of the Conchords episode 12.
On par with Napoleon Dynamite, I think.
On school
Miles posted this article called Against School, which I read this morning just after reading an opinion piece in the New York Times called Clueless in America. The two articles make an interesting juxtaposition. Clearly, something is wrong with our public education. I wish I could say I had been surprised by either of them, but I was frustrated with public school long before I read these articles. Why else would I have dropped out?
I went to a Montessori school from pre-school to fifth grade, and I loved it. In the Against School article, the author talks about his grandfather slapping him for saying he was bored. One teacher at our Montessori school, still one of the best teachers I have ever had, used to tell us “Only boring people get bored.”
When I entered public school in the sixth grade, I used to go home from school in the afternoon and cry. I can remember having a conversation with another desperately bored Montessori graduate, that same year, about how the only possible purpose of school was to keep us occupied for seven hours a day so we wouldn’t cause too much trouble out in the world.
I heard some parents talking recently about their elementary-school age child who had recently stopped going to a Montessori school and started going to a public elementary school. He, too, would come home from school and cry. After a few weeks, his concerned mother asked him if school was any better, and he responded “I think I’m getting used to it.”
When I arrived at the conclusion of the “Against School” article, and even before then, I was thinking of Maria Montessori’s educational philosophy.
Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society. - Maria Montessori, Education for a New World
Let them manage themselves, indeed.
More moments from school
[This actually happened a long time ago, but while I’m writing, I might as well share it.]
The woman at my school in charge of all the finances, the intendante, is very sweet. I’ve been to see her a few times to buy lunch at school, so she knows who I am. She is always smiling and very talkative, and she doesn’t like to pronounce my name so she calls me “la petite.” As in, one day when I was in her office, she said to herself: ”Oh, la petite, quelquefois je la vouvoie et quelquefois je la tutoie!” (Oh, the little one, sometimes I call her “vous” and sometimes I call her “tu”!)
A lot of the professors and staff at school refer to me as “la petite,” actually, since that day the first week when I was sitting in the teachers’ lounge before class and they demanded to know what a student was doing in the teachers’ lounge. The German assistant is equally petite, but apparently the title is mine.
One day I needed the key to the régie, the little room full of TVs, computers, CD players and other equipment at our school, so I could show my students a film clip. The woman who is normally in charge of the keys was out, so the intendante came upstairs with me. She unlocked the door on this dusty closet of technology, and gasped as if she had stumbled into the Cave of Wonders: ”Mais c’est quoi, tous ces trucs!” (”But what’s this, all this stuff!”)
Joe and I have adopted this phrase and we say it often–entering a cathedral, opening the fridge, admiring a view on a hike, sweeping out the dusty corners. Tous ces trucs indeed.
And one last little tidbit: This morning I offered my class of secondes (sophomores) the chance to name their own teams, given that yesterday so much joy was taken in changing the team numbers. The first match was the Dream Team versus the Kebab Team. The second was the Best Team versus The Winners. Also in the first match, I had a member of the Kebab Team say to his teammates, exasperated after a poor showing, “Maintenant, eux, ils vont faire du speedage!”
Speedage! I thought that was great. The whole sentence could be translated as something like “Now, they’re gonna go really fast!” but I don’t think that has as much character as “du speedage.”
A moment from school
Yesterday in class, I had my secondes (sophomores) play a game in which they were divided into two teams. This particular class is composed entirely of sportifs, students who are seriously involved in a sport in high school and who take four years to finish instead of the usual three. My school is special because about a third of the students do this four-year sports program, and some of them come from other regions of France just to study there. So the easiest way to make these kids participate is to make them compete.
I was keeping score on the board, where I had written “team 1″ and “team 2.” When my third group of students came in, one of their first questions was “Madame, can we change the team name?”
“Okay,” I said, “but nothing vulgar.”
I hesitated to say that last part, worried I might be giving them ideas, but this class has proudly demonstrated their large vocabulary of English curse words in the past. The third group is also particularly notable for silly stunts–these two footballeurs who sit together in the back, the ones who were pushing for the team-name change, have been insisting to me for weeks that one was raised in Madagascar and the other in Brazil. The first boy has given me a lot of details on his fictional upbringing in Madagascar, and he has also recently informed me that he is the best player on Dijon Football Côte d’Or, the League 2 football team in town. I usually play along with these lies because they are always in English.
“No, madame, we just change the number.”
So one kid from each team came up to the board and teams 1 and 2 became, respectively, teams 4 and 7.
The new numbers were still on the board when my fourth group of students entered. There was some whispered discussion of the odd new team-numbering system.
I explained: ”The last group wanted to change their team numbers. If you want to change your team numbers, too, you can do that.”
Two boys in the front of the class, both rugby players and both smart but also big goofballs, conferred for a second and then one of them said, very solemnly: ”No, no, we are not the children.”
A moment from Corsica
Preserved here before I forget the whole dialogue, all of which has been translated into English.
“You’re going to the Reserve–” I started to ask one of the three men hanging around the dock in Porto. I had planned on finishing my sentence with of Scandola and the village of Girolata today at 9:30?, but one of them saved me the trouble.
“Absolutely.”
“Get in,” volunteered another.
“Well, I’m waiting for my boyfriend, he–”
“Oh, you’re waiting for your boyfriend? Well, then you can’t come.” He grinned.
I laughed but it was mostly because how the hell else was I supposed to respond? The three men were silent for a moment while I anxiously looked up the street for Joe. He was at the other end of Porto, which is a small town, but a long one, stretching almost two kilometers from the sea to the top of the nearby hill. He wasn’t with me because neither of us had any cash and the cash machine was a long way off. We were short on time, so I had gone down to the harbor to find the boat and make sure we could get on it, a task which possibly included begging them to wait a few minutes for Joe to arrive.
The men on the dock, too cheerful and chatty to let me worry in peace, picked up our conversation again. ”English?”
“No, American.”
“American, yeah!” said one. I’m sorry for the lack of distinguishing description of these guys, but I was squinting into the sun and they were all sort of scruffy and lanky and cheerful and friendly while still being just the tiniest bit lecherous. Anyway, back to the conversation: ”Las Vegas!”
“Yeah, I want to go to Las Vegas,” said another of the men. This is a familiar sentiment, because my students talk about Las Vegas fairly often. They don’t seem to be able to differentiate it from Los Angeles, or have any idea where it is or that its most famous attractions are forbidden to high school students, but boy do they want to go.
“Where do they have the guns and the cowboys?” He mimicked pulling a pistol out of a holster at his hip. ”Texas?”
“Yes, Texas.” I thought about adding something here, about my family maybe, or how Texas is really beautiful in some parts, but I didn’t. A lot of the students and teachers at my school have asked me about guns in America with a mixture of curiosity and horror, and I didn’t really feel like tackling that topic with strangers. I’m a quiet person in French. (Maybe you think I’m quiet in English, too, but believe me, you ain’t seen [heard] nothing yet.)
“I want to go to Texas!”
All three men nodded and laughed. I shouldn’t have been surprised, having seen the piles of shotgun shells collected in the roadside ditches around Porto. Hunting is clearly popular in Corsica. I suppose guns must be, too.
After this revelation, I smiled at the men and briefly turned around to look for Joe. When I turned back a second later, the next question contained a French word I had never heard. Ee-la-ree. Ilari?
Half a second later, on hearing the word Obama, it dawned on me.
Oh. Hillary. Lots of people at school have asked me questions about the US elections, but very few seem to know who John McCain is. My students think it’s a only contest between Clinton and Obama, and they love Obama. McCain is the name of a brand of frozen French fries here, so my students always giggle if I mention him.
“I’m going to vote for Obama,” I said. The question had actually been “Who’s going to win?” but the answer to that is a much less interesting “I don’t know.”
“Good,” said my Las Vegas- and Texas-loving dock friends. ”That will bring change.”
Corsica
We have returned from Corsica. We went hiking every day, tried regional specialties like brocciu and vin de myrthe, stuck our feet in the Mediterranean, met local characters on the bus and saw hundreds of lizards. It was great.
The rest of my pictures are on flickr, as usual, and Joe’s will be available once he goes through all 800 and carefully selects the best. I’m not making up that number, by the way.
Also thanks to Joe for helping me make the little ten-pointed star image that now appears next to the post title. Go math!
Poisson d’Avril
Some of my students have spent the morning taping paper fish to the backs of other, unsuspecting students. That’s what the French do for April Fool’s.
I considered tricking my students but since they often don’t understand me when I’m telling the truth, it seemed too mean. Instead, I tried to explain what happens in the English-speaking world on April Fool’s, but I didn’t have any good examples of hoaxes. What I needed was this list.
Food blogs, dream jobs
I have really been enjoying The Traveler’s Lunchbox, a food and travel blog that I just discovered. It’s not only the good writing and photography that draws me there, but also envy of the author’s life–she’s a freelance food and travel writer who also has a PhD in linguistics.
When my students are good–as they were today, which I should mention so you don’t think they’re horrible all the time–I love my job. When the secondes fall all over themselves to be the first to answer a question, and when the terminales walk out of their mock oral exams grinning instead of trembling, I feel good. Even when the students are bad, it’s still a good job because I only work twelve hours a week and I have a lot of paid vacation, and I live in France. But getting paid to write about food and travel? Yes please. And I wouldn’t turn down a chance to study linguistics.
There’s nothing stopping me from being a freelance writer, except a nagging feeling that I am neither good enough at writing, nor do I possess the dedication necessary to improve. Ever since confirming my acceptance at the University of Wisconsin, every other option suddenly has a shiny new appeal. Writing, law school, investment banking, you name it–if I’m not remotely qualified to do it, I’ve thought about it.
But the light at the end of the long, long tunnel of dissertation writing is that maybe some day my real job would be like the assistantship, except better. And since I’m just barely qualified to go to graduate school in French–sometimes my students smirk when I mention my plan to teach French, due to the enormous amount of mistakes I make in front of them, and also the fact that smirking comes naturally to them–I guess that’s what I’ll do.
On a slightly different subject, but connected to making French mistakes in front of French adolescents, this Wednesday a group of American high school students on a spring break tour of France stopped by my lycée. They did make me feel a little better about my French, if I didn’t think too hard about the fact that I’ve had twice the amount of education they have. They did not, however, make me feel better about my ability to motivate my students to speak in English.
Apparently I’m too old. What I needed to break the silences, all this time, was a group of American sixteen-year-olds to come to the classroom. They danced the Soulja Boy, but thankfully did not explain the lyrics, and said things like “Noo, um, boovay, um, BOW-COO lay weekends!” and my students could not have been more smitten. I was proud of my students and their comparatively excellent English. I was also proud of the American students for being so openhearted and eager to meet new people. We’re a nice country, we really are. Not to say I wasn’t a little bit embarrassed about my country’s attempt at foreign language education, because I was. Also, Soulja Boy. I’m embarrassed about that too.
My other favorite part of the day was playing interpreter for some of the adult chaperones as they went on a tour of the science classrooms. The discussion did not take long to turn to evolution, and the way nobody bats an eye about teaching it in France. That was the most difficult part to interpret, but also the most interesting.
Many of the students volunteered to accompany the visiting Americans on their walking tour of Dijon, just to talk some more. It was great to see them so interested in speaking English. In their words, “C’était trop bien!”
Iraq
Reading these excerpts from John McCain’s speech on foreign policy made me uncomfortable. I don’t know what the best thing to do about Iraq is–part of me wants the war to be over right away, for all the obvious reasons, and part of me feels like we made that mess and we’re responsible for cleaning it up.
I’m not going to vote for McCain, but I do regret that he’ll be the Republican nominee eight years too late.
Weekend in Grenoble
Joe and I went to Grenoble for our long weekend. There was snow, as you can see, so Joe’s desire to hike in a snowy forest was finally satisfied. We hiked up to a river called–no joke–La Pissarde. There were waterfalls and snowballs.
Other moments:
(1) Tartiflette followed by chocolate fondue at La Fondue. Talk about a punch in the heart. Tartiflette is potatoes, cheese, cream, and sometimes lardons or other pork products all baked together until the top is crispy. I had some regrets about eating too much after this meal, but it was irresistible at the time.
