French school woes

[justwondering72]

Just looking to vent I guess... we are an all-Anglo family living in France for about 6 years. My oldest is in CE1, he's doing great according to the teachers, his French is fine and all is well. I worry on and off about him being 'different' because he's bilingual etc, and not having a French background.

Anyway, in his class at school they just voted for 'delegués' i.e. class reps. I am kind of stunned by the way this has been done, but they seem to have collected all the votes, then told everyone in the class how many they all got. DS1 got none. While I wouldn't have expected him to be delegué (he has many lovely qualities, but not those at the moment!) he's really really sad that none of his friends voted for him. I cannot understand why the teacher / school thinks it is in any way useful for a 6 year-old to be told he got no votes. Is it meant to be character-building or what? It would never happen in the UK, and it's making me feel very hostile to all things French, to how harsh and pushy the teachers can be, to being so negative about things all the time. I can't see any benefits - unless telling a 6 year-old that he is the loser in the school popularity contest (because that's what it looks like to him) is considered to be a positive thing here.

Bleurgh. I go along thinking I / we are fitting in, getting to know France, and then something like this happens and I feel like we are living in some completely alien environment and that we just don't get it, whatever 'it' is.

It's all part of the French obsession about marks, averages, rankings etc which in my opinion gets worse and worse as the children progress through school. We are also an all-Anglo family in France, with my kids in CM2, 5eme and 4eme, and like you, I also feel from time to time that I just don't get 'it', even though we have been here for 11 years now. I don't really have any advice, but just to let you know that you are not the only one!

The best/worst situation like this that we had was when my daughter came 21st out of 35 in a Baby Gym competition. We know she was 21st because they gave out first, second and third prizes and then read out everyone else's scores and rankings, right down to the last child in 35th position. It wasn't even a competition that you could chose to enter, it was held instead of the class. This was at age 5! Only in France....

I feel for you. I worked as an au pair in France 20 years ago and my experience of French schools put me off moving back there with my dc - even though I love France and my dh would love us to all move over there.

The little boy I cared for was 5 and his primary school was awful ( although to be fair, it was private and catholic). The teachers were nasty bullies and he had ridiculous amounts of homework to do every night; I felt so sorry for him. On the first day that I dropped him off his class teacher (a complete battle axe) actually pulled me aside for a quiet word saying that she felt very sorry for me as he was such a terrible, naughty child! I couldn't believe it! That poor boy. He did gave some behavioural issues- but hardly surprising, given that he'd got some strange foreign woman caring for him and attended a school where he was emotionally abused.

French schools are not as progressive as here in the uk and, as my son has since been diagnosed with dyslexia, I thank God that he didn't go to school there.

Sorry, don't mean to sound so negative, but just so you know, it's not you, it's the system. It was completely unnecessary for that teacher to publicly humiliate your child ( and the other children!) in this way. I'm not sure what the answer is though.

frozentree - that happened recently in DSS's climbing club! They had a regional competition thing, and read out the kids' rankings from first to last at the end. They are all under 12! Incredible.

It is crap OP. This is definitely a country preoccupied with results, concours, rankings, marks out of 20, signatures on pieces of paper etc. I wish there were signs that it was changing...

Thanks all . Things have gone From bad to worse at school, DS had s meltdown last night and it came out that his so called friends have been excluding him and not playing with him, because he's English. So hes just been wandering around the playground, on his own for ages, These are children he has been with all the way through maternelle, that he has been friends with for 4 years. He is so confused and hurt, that they are taking against him for something he can't do anything about. And he's not even English - he's Scottish!

Thank goodness its the holidays!

How horrible. I'm so sorry

Kids are just mean sometimes. DSS is 100% French, but has separated parents. At his birthday party a couple of years ago both his dad and step dad were there supervising. He came home a few days later in floods of tears because his friends had been making fun of him for having 'two dads' ...

I expect it will blow over OP, kids pounce on difference but everyone is different in some way whether it's their accent, nationality, family status, size, looks, intelligence...Best of luck to you and your DS.

It was this obsession with conformity and ranking that led my parents to take me out of the French system 30 years ago! I see nothing has changed. I was at the Lycée in London, so moving to a local CoE primary was straightforward enough. I'd been youngest in my year at the Lycee (Nov birthday) and became one of the eldest at my primary. Ended up doing top year primary twice (7eme/4th year Juniors, now called Class 6) to align with my peers.

My son is 6 and at local CoE primary. I have no idea of his position in the class abilities, it's just not an issue, as long as he is doing ok. They work in vague ability groups, and have "star of the week" for being especially kind/helpful etc, but that's all.

Sorry to add to the negativity but I am French and so glad my children are being schooled in the UK. Like someone else said the French attitude to rankings and competitive schooling from and early age is unbelievable and must be awful for some children's self esteem. Good luck

Your poor ds OP. That is the French way though - all stick and no carrot, always focussing on what was wrong even if 99 percent was right. My dcs have been in the French system since they were two-and-a-half and are so used to it now that it is water off a duck's back. No advice - when they were at the Lycée in London my DH used to say the school motto should have been Fit in or F* Off. You won't change them. Where do you live? We have just moved back to Paris and our dcs are in the international section of a French school so at least they don`t have the problem of being the only foreigners. No advice - just wanted to sympathise really.

French schools are often (but not always) very bad at accommodating any sort of difference. Each school seems to have an implicit model of a perfect child (which IMO is a mentally unhealthy version of young humanity) and constantly tells each child exactly how they fail to measure up to this imaginary beast.

Yup, this is why I'm pulling my DCs out of the French system at the end of the year regardless of the horrible costs and logistics.