I post this as a safeguarding PSA for other parents looking for AS/A level French language intensive courses being run in France.
When we sent our daughter for a week-long A level French intensive course with an expat couple on the outskirts of Dinan this half-term, we expected her to be immersed in the French language, with the couple's website promising "dinner en famille" followed by games and/or songs. We did not expect her to receive lectures on why allowing immigrants in will lead to a race war, how vaccines cause cancer, how burqa-wearers are often terrorists or men, or how non-white people have benefited from slavery and colonisation. Yet this white-supremacist rhetoric was what she was subjected to during the compulsory two-hour dinner sessions every night, along with off-colour ‘jokes’ about women being hysterical husband-hunters and the one young man in the cohort being offered as a hostess 'gift' for a local adult woman.
No matter what your views, there is no place for personal politics in a teaching environment, and those working in education (of which I am one) should be aware of the need to be especially careful in contexts where students might feel more vulnerable, such as being on their own in a stranger's home in a foreign country. The fact that these people seemed unable to resist goading the young people into argument—provocatively using and repeating the n-word and describing the students as ‘liberal extremists’ for pushing back—suggests a malignity I find hard to fathom. The shocking lack of professionalism was compounded by verbal aggression from both partners, culminating in a screaming verbal assault by the husband that left the students shaking with fear and distress. Our daughter was made to feel under threat from adults clearly unable to contain or control themselves. Had it not been for the bravery of another student physically interposing himself to protect our daughter, I shudder to think how much more out of hand things might have gotten. The whole cohort made emergency arrangements to leave, cutting short the trip by three days.
#French #language #Alevel