Angers Education (JL)

Education in France has a few similarities with the United States, but for the most part things are very different here. For example, both France and the United States have a requirement for school until a certain age or degree. In France, schooling is required from ages 6 to 16, and in the US grades K-12 are obligatory. Like preschool back at home, France offers optional schooling called école maternelle for children ages 3 to 6, as long they are able to use the toilet on their own. After école maternelle, there is école primaire (elementary school) from ages 6-11, collège (middle school) from 11-15, lycée (high school) from 15-18, and université.

Francois Hollande (right) and his minister of
Education, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem (left)
Image from images.google.com

As I mentioned in my previous blog, there has been a lot of hype in the news about the new reforms to education. President Francois Hollande, Prime Minister Manuel Valls, and Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem are defending their decisions to make changed such as removing dead languages (Greek and Latin) from the curriculum, pushing back the age gate to start learning a second foreign language from 11 to 13, and putting a slight emphasis in history classes on the subjects of slave trade and colonialism. Political parties on the right with more Christian roots have also expressed malcontent with a rise in the teaching of the history of Islam in schools. There is still much debate over what is to be obligatory and what is to be left up to the teachers for subjects like history.  

France has a very awkward relationship with religion and schooling.  There have been numerous laws created or amended in hopes of solving the age old problem of religion in schools. France has very Christian roots; one only needs to looks as far back as the late-19^th /early 20^th centuries to see Catholicism in the government.  While the Church and state have been officially separated since 1905 and religion was removed from the curriculum in public schools, there are still changing laws about nitpicky things like religious symbols and school meal plans. There was never a problem over the past hundred years when a student would wear a large cross to school, the problem only started when Christian parents became upset at Muslim girls who wore the headscarf to school. It was apparently because it was not the children’s idea to wear the headscarf and therefore follow Islam, but it was the parents who forced these ideas on their children before they were old enough to make their own decision. That sound an awful lot to me like parenting, but I’m afraid I just will not understand the French sometimes. As the very vague law of laïcité (separation of religion and public schools) stands now, it is states that you can only wear a religious symbol to school if it is discreetly small, which essentially rules out headscarves but allows Christian cross necklaces, which are easily concealable.

High school options with higher, more distant degrees at the top

French schooling lessens up on its obscenely vague and sometimes unnecessary rules after lycée, which is essentially high school. The school system also branches out into 3-4 different major paths that a French student must choose at age 15/16. For example, there are specific lycées that you should go to if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a scientist.  Most US college students have no idea what they want to do with their lives when they are about to graduate, let alone when they just get into high school! Students are 15 and 16 when choosing a lycée program. However, they are not as rigorous as a university is to get into, and you are always guaranteed a spot in a lycée. The case is not the same for university, where everyone can get in (to public and state schools) but the drop-out rate after the first year is roughly 2/3. Professors very rarely give outstanding grades to first year university students because there are just so many of them. In the end, it all works out because there will be a normal number of students after the 66% drop out. Education in France is different than in the United States in many other ways, and I would need another few blog posts to write about them all. Even though there are many things I think need to be perfected with the French schooling system, I am thoroughly enjoying the education I’m receiving in Angers! And right now, that is what matters.