💾 Archived View for sdf.org › icemanfr › 2023 › 04.gmi captured on 2023-09-28 at 16:28:49. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-09-08)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I'm starting this series of posts today. The idea is to explain what is going on in France, or how French people react to the events in the world. Sometimes I'm very surprised by the reactions of foreign people like Americans, Turks, Germans or Serbians for example. It's often cultural differences that can explain our behaviour and reactions. And I know that French are often seen as dirty (true...) and arrogant (not entirely false...) people in the world. It's my way of explaining how complex things are in my country.
For this first post, I'm going speak to speak about the start of the new school year. There are two main facts this year : The inflation on the school supplies and the History Curriculum (an english word that I didn't know...except for Curriculum Vitae in french or latin) :
In France, the inflation rate for school supplies is 11,7% (source : Confédération Syndicale des Familles). This may not be as high as in other european countries but in France it's higher than inflation in general. In France, Inflation is quoted at 7% but for many products, it's sometimes an increase of 13% between 2022 and 2023. To help the poorest, some local authorities provide some financial support. The French government also helps every year with a back-to-school bonus for 11 million households. An annual controversy because far-right parties say that some household use the bonus to buy TVs or game consoles. That's obviously fwrong because there are no statistics on TV sales to prove it. The other controversy in France about school supplies comes from teachers' lists of furniture, always strange with some colours, sizes or models of products impossible to find. I remember my childhood with the wardrobe full of cheap supplies for several years of schools, like notebooks, double sheets of paper, rubber etc..Of course, I didn't have any fashionable products or school bags but something cheap or something durable and hard-wearing. I didn't have many products from one of the best paper companies, Clairefontaine (no, they don't paid me...), because they were expensive. But when I was older, I bought a few notebooks to write or draw in. What a moment of happiness.
I don't have any children and people are buying school supplies earlier than they used to, sometimes in June or July and sometimes online. It's not the same magic when supermarkets were full of those school products with colours, heroes of our teenage years on every product. I went to a supermarket last week and there was only a small aisle for it, as if it was a normal month. So sad ! … And at the checkout, we can see more and more people who are stuggling to pay, asking to have products removed because it's too expensive. If you add some digital products to that, it's a two-speed school system that we might see in some cities or regions. Fortunately, digital has shown problems and some countries are going back to paper, like Sweden this year. Ok, if it's not like in Brazil, to teach a controversial history.
The strangest thing about this in France is that was not the Minister of Education who announced the changes but ... Emmanuel Macron, our president, in the summer, just before the start of the new school year. The change ? A chronological curriculum… But his former (and much despised by teachers...) minister Blanquer did that 6 or 7 years ago. Not very efficient...Or maybe is it the advice of Mrs Macron, a former private school teacher ? Just a few months ago, the minister Pape NDiaye was sacked by Macron ...and the current minister, Gabriel Attal, is seen as the Macrons' «toy boy», perhaps too young for some people but with a certain talent for communication. It's difficult to explain why it was not Attal who announced this «non change». But of course, history teachers are shoked by that, especially because of the date, just 2 weeks before the start, and the lack of precision. History is something very sensitive in France. In the 19th century, politics wrote a «national novel» or a national myth, the way for history to create a real nation, to create national symbols. It's often not so true and difficult to teach 2 centuries later. But it's not a problem for right and far right. In France, everything is politics.
When I was young, I read some of my mother's history books (written in the 50s and 60s). So I was very familiar with Charlemagne, Clovis or Louis XI, for example. And when I studied history in secondary school, it was of course very different, with not so many dates to learn but more about understanding the causes and consequences of the great events of history. For me, the two ways of teaching history were complementary. It can understand the criticisms of both. It was no problem for me to study the 19th century one year and the 17th century the next. I knew the chronology of that, by myself. But maybe was it a problem for other students sometimes. The real problem with this 1950s way of teaching is the lack of understanding. By teaching the dates, the chronology, you can also forget the relationships between historical periods. That's one of the problems for most of history teachers. I don't know how history is taught to students in other countries. Of course, I know some facts in dictatorships or the way extreme right-wing parties want to revise history in some countries or US states.
The deepest problem is that Emmanuel Macron and his goverment see school as an enterprise to produce docile workers. PISA ranking, in which French do badly, is the excuse ...But is it really a good ranking for everyone or everything? I don't think so. When I talk to young people, I can certanly say that it si bad for most of them. For France, and of course for the rest of the world history. Bad at dates and bad at explanations. Unfortunately, this new history curriculum won't change that fact.
or by a reply on your blog