French Twist (23 page)

Let’s head back to the classroom to feed my infatuation a bit more. It’s there you’ll find that French teachers aren’t big on praising effort, improvement—or even perfection. Just about every lesson is graded out of a possible twenty points. That big twenty is rather elusive, though. One French mom told me that she thought it was illegal for teachers to give a twenty out of twenty. Having grown very accustomed to smiley faces and “Good Job!” stamps on everything that comes home, this sounds overly rigorous. On the other hand, I don’t want my kids thinking that school is supposed to be fun. It can be, and that’s great. But there is also work involved.

In speaking with Americans who have moved their families to France, the primary concern I detected for their expat kids is consistently the French schools. It’s not that these transplants worry their children won’t get a good education (oh, they will); rather they fear the rigidity of the system. And rightly so. There is not a lot of time spent assessing learning and behavioral disorders in French schools. Anton, a father of two French schoolchildren, recalled, “I laughed when my daughter came home and said that she wanted to be a street sweeper. I guessed that her teacher had said that if you do not work hard at school, you will be a street sweeper. My teachers would scare us with the same thing when I was a young student. Maybe this teacher didn’t know it could sound like a fun job to a six-year-old.”

Cute story, kind of … but I can see why some non-natives might have trepidation. Pressure on a kindergartner? Anton later added, “They do not look for things like the ADHD and learning disorders here in the same way as in the United States. To these kids, they say, ‘Do better so you can pass your
bac
, or you will be sweeping the streets.’ ” The
bac
, short for
baccalauréat
, is the greatest weight on young Frenchies. It is a qualifying exam that most students take after they complete their secondary education (like high school), and the score determines if and where they can go on to further studies. In other words, this test determines the rest of their lives. But no pressure.

Let’s take stock. In my perfect, French-American hybrid world, I would incorporate some of the inbred focus and seriousness on education, the genius school hours,
and, of course,
les cocktails
. I’d leave behind the enormous pressure, humiliation, and possible overlooking of kids with special needs.

To reiterate, the French aim to raise expert little
raconteurs
, but the classroom is definitely not the place to practice their storytelling. The teacher does the talking and the kids do the listening—unless the teacher calls on them. I frequently heard from folks with a foot in both countries that the type of open dialogue common in the United States, with children encouraged to ask questions and challenge ideas, does not exist in the French classroom. As one American mom with kids in French school put it, “There isn’t much emphasis on individual thinking, teamwork, or building self-esteem.” The French teacher knows all. When I toured schools in France, I noticed that often, especially at
les collèges
and
les lycées
(middle schools and high schools), the teachers stand on a platform so they are slightly elevated and, quite literally, looking and talking down to their students.

As strict and hard-edged as this may sound, there is some value to such differences in the teacher-student relationship, the foremost of which is that a French student must respect the
professeur
. At least to the teacher’s face. In France, it is not the teacher who is graded and ranked by performance, it is the children. If a student does not study hard enough to pass on to the next level, this will not be considered the fault of the teacher. That child may just become a street sweeper. Actually, for those students who do not perform well on the
bac
test, the French government
also provides further education in the form of technical schools. Great in theory, except for the fact that all of this is determined in their teenage years. It appears Robert Frost was not talking about France when he wrote: “College is a refuge from hasty judgment.”

The French are hasty when it comes to learning, and children had better catch on quick—or suffer some of that notorious humiliation. My heart broke when I heard my American friend describe her ten-year-old’s trials at school in Paris: “As the French schooling system commonly does … they seize any opportunity to use a student’s poor performance as an example of what not to do. And that’s exactly what happened. Poor Rita. She reported that the teacher repeated, staccato style,
‘Vite, vite, vite!’
when she was laboring at the board, and when she wasn’t ‘getting it’ quickly enough, her teacher turned to the class with upturned hands, a shrug of his shoulders, and a roll of his eyes. Then the class laughed at her. She was mortified. Fortunately we had forewarned the girls, at the beginning of the school year, that their days of the ‘nurturing the whole child’ mentality were over.” Again, I prefer to leave the humiliation in France.

I took a look at the corresponding curricula for French and American schoolchildren. On paper they are not so dissimilar, outside the fact that the French begin the mastery of a foreign language (or two) early on, and, on a recent curriculum for French kindergarten, they listed “Civics and Morals,” where “Students learn the rules of politeness and social behavior.” So not surprising.

The real difference is in attitude. Luckily for the American kids, there are such things as second chances.

These top priorities listed by my French confidants are all so sound and significant that it made me wonder why it took studying child-rearing in France for me to elevate them. This, in turn, started me thinking about why we are so divergent in the first place.

For example, on the first day of school this year, a few of my friends who’d opted not to have children were griping about their Facebook feeds being inundated with back-to-school photos. Due diligence had me immediately wondering how this played out in France. Turns out, French parents do not post as much about the adorable and daffy shenanigans of their kids. This is due, probably, to a combination of factors: The French are more private to begin with, they tend to keep their family lives separate from their social lives, and—the clincher—they are not so consumed with the lives of their offspring.

So it goes.

I just logged on to Facebook for an honest assessment, and there is obviously some truth in what my kids have been repeating of late: I am not French. We are not French. My wall is awash in photos and videos of Oona and Daphne and little else. Mac is more diverse than I with his postings, but I wouldn’t really say that he’s gone French here either, especially as he has a Twitter feed devoted to the whimsy that often springs forth from Oona and
Daphne. We can’t seem to help ourselves. But I don’t want him to. If Mac had gone full French, he never would have Tweeted these gems, among many others:

Then again, if we were more efficacious in the good French fight, my kids wouldn’t have said 90 percent of the above. But they did, and I’m not French. I’m just doing my best to uncover the useful bits of France’s child-rearing ways—and along the road I’m reminded of all the things I love about my homeland, particularly our big messy humor and pluck. To borrow a turn of phrase from Royal Tenenbaum, another of my cinematic flames, we’ve got a lot of “grit, fire, and guts” going on in this country.

So how is it that we ended up so different from the French, anyway? No one can deny that our relationship with them is
un peu
fraught because of these disparities. For many, it’s a love/hate–type situation. Kind of like the little boy and girl on the playground who spend all of their time pestering and claiming to loathe each other, but nestled down in there amid the conflict there’s also fascination, and a bit of a crush.

I turned to journalists Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow and their book
Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t
Be Wrong
(
Why We Love France but Not the French
) to try to get a better understanding of why this is. Nadeau and Barlow spent two years in France on a mission to define for us non-natives what makes the French so very … French. The authors point out in the very beginning that much of this clash stems from the fact that we judge them by our own standards, even though “Different things move the French—as if they had different ropes, gears, and springs inside them. Oddly, Anglo-Americans can see that the Japanese, the Chinese, and the Indians are different, and that these fundamental differences shape national characters and the way things are done in those societies. Why can’t we do this with the French?” Although I scrutinized the French in a desperate attempt to get a grip on my wayward parenting practices, I’ve found it helpful to keep Nadeau and Barlow’s observation in mind; we are very different cultures coming from very different perspectives. There needn’t be a winner here (yet there’s no reason not to poach a few French practices that can bring a little tranquillity to my home).

The most common French stereotype that comes to my mind is that of pomposity. The words “French” and “snob” are almost as linked as “Nutella” and “baguette.” Wait—am I the only one who links those two words so often? Now that I’ve dipped deeper in, rather than “snobby” I would describe the French as “particular” (apologies again, Madame Prideux). And this makes sense if considered in a historical context. Whereas we Americans are very comfortable trying out new things—we are a nation
of frontierspeople, after all—it’s not so natural for the average French citizen, who’s been living in a country that’s steeped in traditions, many of which haven’t changed for centuries. Nadeau and Barlow point out that “The ancestors of the French go back several ice ages. They are not a people who, like North Americans, arrived in the midst of a primitive culture, erased it, and started over. They have always been there. There was plenty of upheaval throughout French history, but no definitive break with the past …” and when we “are faced with France’s peculiar way of doing things, [we] do not reason that [we] are dealing with an ancient people who have their own way of doing things.” When it comes to doing things like making their kids obey, I’m all ears.

And a little perspective is always a good thing as well. Take, for instance, the French approach to money, which is very different from our own. Whenever I’m in France, I marvel at those big, beautiful shutters on the multitudes of old buildings. I find them very romantic, yet I always wonder why they are so huge. It wasn’t until I read Nadeau and Barlow’s theory about the old system of taxation in France that I saw how these charming facets of French architecture have a much deeper purpose than making me light-headed or even keeping out the sun. Hundreds of years ago, taxes were assessed on “apparent” wealth. Tax spies, working for the despised “tax farmers” (
fermiers généraux
) would look in the windows to do the assessing, leading to the theory that these enormous shutters functioned, at least in part, to block out prying eyes. The heads
of more than a few of these
fermiers généraux
were lopped off during the Revolution, but they still managed to leave a long-lasting mark on the French psyche. Indeed, this has informed how the French relate to money, and they are still less likely to make it obvious who has it and who doesn’t. This probably has something to do with why they are generally more private than we are.

I learned about this cultural difference the hard way at the end of a wonderful lunch in Paris. A friend of mine had gathered a few of her colleagues for me to question. The food was of course lovely, and the conversation was so interesting that I lost track of time. It had been my intention to pick up the tab as a gesture of thanks, but I ended up having to rush out to make another meeting across town before the check arrived. So I did what any American would do: I left a wad of cash on the table, instructing my friend to please pay on my behalf. Not good. It was as if a record had been scratched on the giant turntable of life. And then silence at the table. Thankfully, many of my lunch companions didn’t speak English, and my friend was able to tell me, as sotto voce as possible: “Put your money away. Money is taboo here. You can’t do that.” If you’ve ever wondered how you, too, could feel like an international
imbécile
, this is the way. After I left, those ladies must have found some discreet, classy way to divvy up the bill, but it’s still a mystery to me.

And what about the staunch French defense of their language, also responsible for some “snob” slinging? I have been made by French waiters to repeat the word
(words?)
“l’eau”
over and over and
l’eau
ver again in an attempt to get a glass of water. Many tourists think this is just an overt attempt by
le garçon
to make us look stupid—and stay thirsty. However, there are some roots to this insistence on the correct pronunciation (even though that server knows exactly what you are talking about). The French are very serious about their French. In 1635 they established L’Académie française, an organization dedicated to the conservation of the French language and rigorous oversight of any changes to the French dictionary. This might not seem so significant, until you realize the kind of power they have. For instance, the French subsidiary of an American company was once slapped with a $650,000 penalty for proffering software in English only (and not French) to its employees. They are not messing around.