violence in french schools

[Patf]

https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2018/10/26/2895618-encore-affaire-braquage-profs-bientot-policiers-interieur-ecoles.html

It looks as if France has similar problems with discipline in secondary schools to the UK.

Read the comments for some ideas how to cope.

[idun]

Been quite a bit on french news about this recently.

So what do people on here think about reintroducing corporal punishment, Ie caning or as happened in my primary school, slippered on the back of the legs or backside.

Even young children seem to be quite aware of hitting another child to hurt it. And yet, children are to be treat with kid gloves even though they can physically hurt adults, with impunity. All seems strange to me, that we have got to this strange.

Is not old fashioned fear of corporal punishment a good way to install discipline????

I cannot think of anything else. Exclusion from school, means lacking education and I am AGAINST that. Reasoning, well, ah yes, just saw a flying pig.......

And that is how I feel about it.

ps when my kids were in french primary school in the 1980's, the male teacher would clip kids around the ear......... and I am against that too. No one ever said anything incidentally, and it didn't happen to mine so I said nothing.

[EuroTrash]

Reminds me of a conversation I had just recently with a wacky friend of mine in the UK who used to be a teacher, she's just retired and was remembering the early days of her career. One of her memories was that as a new teacher she was very strict on discipline and if they broke her rules she used to punish them with a ruler across the palm of the hand. One day she'd called a misbehaving child out for a whack with the ruler and she suddenly had an epiphany moment, she said she looked into his eyes as he stood there and thought "Why am I doing this, he's a child and he's waiting for me to hurt him, I shouldn't be hurting children" so she told him to just go and sit down and behave. And then all the other kids started shouting "Miss, miss, that's not fair miss, you punished the others you should punish him too" so in the end in total confusion she called him back out and rulered him. (She's a lovely person but she should never have been a teacher!)

Point being, that back then kids obviously saw justice in that if you were naughty you deserved to be punished. When did it change?

[nomoss]

[quote user="EuroTrash"] ................. Point being, that back then kids obviously saw justice in that if you were naughty you deserved to be punished. When did it change?[/quote]

Possibly when people became weaker, softer, and more compliant, and didn't have the guts to do what they had promised.

And everyone became more worried about what others would say about them than what they really believed they should do.

[alittlebitfrench]

This is not a problem with children.

You could argue it is a parent problem.

I would argue it is a French 'cultural' problem.

You have no idea how many kids in school come from broken families. One parent families, divorce, this that and the other.

I said to my OH it must be at least half the class if not more.

Yes, (believe me) there are a lot of psycho kids in French schools. But it is not their fault !!!

Parents are on waiting lists to put their kids into catholic schools or into private education. Even Muslim families want to put their kids into private catholic schools to escape state schools.

French 'life' puts such a burden on families that marriages break up. It is 'French life' that is the problem. Unemployment, the COST OF LIVING, bureaucracy, TAXES ...etc etc etc. It is hard to live in France. The strain on family life is immense and kids suffer.

Most people at OH's work are divorced !!!

Don't blame the kids.

Idun, have you read about Grenoble recently. It seems (according to La Figaro) that it is become the drug capital of France. Large parts of the city are lost.

Brits looking to live the 'dream' need to have a reality check when it comes to France.

[EuroTrash]

" Unemployment, the COST OF LIVING, bureaucracy, TAXES ...etc etc etc. It is hard to live in France. The strain on family life is immense and kids suffer...

Brits looking to live the 'dream' need to have a reality check when it comes to France."

To be fair ALBF, Brits who come here to retire and live the dream are not going to be bothered much by any of this. Cost of living obviously but hopefully they've budgeted for that, and the only bureaucracy they're likely to encounter is CPAM and the tax office, which they probably find plenty but CPAM and the tax office are the easy ones, they don't have the likes URSSAF, CAF, CIPAV etc to contend with. Their reality is not the same as the reality of the average French family.

[nomoss]

[quote user="EuroTrash"]

To be fair ALBF, Brits who come here to retire and live the dream are not going to be bothered much by any of this. Cost of living obviously but hopefully they've budgeted for that, and the only bureaucracy they're likely to encounter is CPAM and the tax office, which they probably find plenty but CPAM and the tax office are the easy ones, they don't have the likes URSSAF, CAF, CIPAV etc to contend with. Their reality is not the same as the reality of the average French family.[/quote]

But the French family has the great advantage of being able to speak and understand French![;-)]

[EuroTrash]

Very true... well that backs up my point really, it is a different reality with different challenges.

That said, speaking and understanding French doesn't necessarily help very much with CIPAV (my current bête noire) because they seem to speak a language all of their own.

[alittlebitfrench]

[quote user="EuroTrash"]

To be fair ALBF, Brits who come here to retire and live the dream are not going to be bothered much by any of this. -[/quote]

Well they blôôdy should be bothered !!!

Is France just becoming just one big retirement home ?

What are they retiring too ?

Why do expats/immigrants retire to France ????

Why 'do' people retire to France ?

[EuroTrash]

Why should they be bothered? I thought the whole point of retiring, was not to have to worry about all that carp any more, whatever country you're in.

I'm trying to retire, and if I ever manage it I will be very happy to draw a line on worrying about all those things. Except that between the UK keeping upping my retirement age, and CIPAV keeping losing my cotisations, it's worse than walking through treacle and probably easier to just keep working until I drop.

That's my reality at the moment. I guess we all have our own version but they're all equally valid.

[richard51]

[quote user="alittlebitfrench"]

Idun, have you read about Grenoble recently. It seems (according to La Figaro) that it is become the drug capital of France. Large parts of the city are lost.

Brits looking to live the 'dream' need to have a reality check when it comes to France.[/quote]

Why retire in France? Perhaps to dream in Grenoble.

[idun]

Ah Grenoble, well it always did have more than it's fair  share of no go areas, just like Chambery does. Annecy not so bad, but not all of it is 'good' either.

And Grenoble always was bad, the Maire, died in a hunting accident?, another Maire jailed for corruption......... all the 'gang' related shootings/killings on a regular basis, and then there were kids shot by the police, yes, you don't need to even hazard a guess, they were not white, usually maghreb.

And yet, it is particularly bad at the moment, really bad, and yet there are some really good things happening there, and when all is said and done, it is beautifully placed sat in the valley with three mountain ranges surrounding it.

[idun]

ALBF, unless someone speaks really good french and knows France I have not got a clue as to why anyone would move to retire.

It has always been beyond me.

We knew that for our dotage we wanted to be back in the UK and as France had changed over the many years we were there, we knew that the UK had to and wanted to adapt before we were too old.

I simply did not fancy juggling with a foreign language in my old age......... and yet with Brexit, we may well end up back in France....... and that will be OK too. It wasn't as if we were unhappy in France, but I would rather be in the UK now.

The only thing I truly hated about France was the education system and sometimes when I watch the news, I think that things may have improved and then I see that some things have not and I feel so sad about it.

[nomoss]

[quote user="alittlebitfrench"]

Why 'do' people retire to France ?[/quote]

We retired to France after spending almost 20 years of our working lives in Spain because we were fed up with the tourist crowds where we lived, and already had a small place here.

We decided to stay permanently in France after 3 years because we had found the bureaucracy here easier to deal with, especially in the case of anything involving cars and driving.

[EuroTrash]

"unless someone speaks really good french and knows France I have not got a clue as to why anyone would move to retire"

I suppose that its main attraction for a few/some/many retirees, is as a well-earned extended holiday. Much like in the UK's pre-EU days, going on a world cruise was the aspirational thing to do when you retired. I seem to remember that being what a lot of people blew their lump sums on. Then joining the EU made it easy to retire to places like France and Spain and people latched onto that instead.

I totally understand that people need something to look forward to to keep them going, a kind of light at the end of the tunnel to keep them beavering away year after year, otherwise what's it all for (I say that as someone who never stuck a proper job for more than a couple of years - the light at the end of the tunnel never did it for me, but I admired people who had more sticking power than I did).

The problem being that when you go on a world cruise it's obvious you need to keep a home to come back to, whereas when you move to France or Spain or wherever to enjoy your first taste of freedom, there is no return date on your ticket so you don't think about it.

Maybe post Brexit world cruises will come back into fashion as the way to spend the kids' inheritance.

[idun]

It doesn't matter where you are. Often people do not consider the implications of no longer working and how they are going to fill their time.

And the very idea that ALL people move abroad and learn the language, the culture or even try and understand how things 'work' the bureaucracy etc is apparently not what many do, or have the intention of doing.

Just look at how many posts we get about finding Drs or Dentists that speak english, and english speaking this that and the other. And how does this that and the other work........... and these days it is ALL on the web and for France amazingly in french[Www], not like the dark ages pre internet.

As I have always said, the move to France or where ever, is too often beyond my comprehension. And sometimes I do understand it.

[Patf]

I like this one:

"Bonjour.

Les policiers et gendarmes n'ont rien à faire dans les écoles et lycées.

Ils ont assez de travail sur la voie publique et dans nos campagnes.

L'éducation Nationale a une solution.

Mettre deux grand " gaillards " devant leurs établissements.

Afin de surveiller et de faire respecter la discipline à l'entrée.

Casquettes enlevées.

Le bonjour de rigueur.

Pas d'écouteur dans les oreilles.

Tenues respectables.

Les téléphones se rangeront dans une armoire de sécurité.

Et si ces consignes ne sont pas respectées, une exclusion d'une semaine sera prononcée.

Non mais !!!."

[ericd]

I am talking of experience. In my days, we feared our teachers (well some of them) not because they belted or caned us (that was not allowed in our schools/colleges) but because they wouldn't accept any non-sense coming from us. Of course, some idiots were regularly called in the Director's office, one even hit a male teacher one day but that was dealt with promptly (expulsion of the College for the fighter).

This teacher respect takes many many years to put in place and a couple of generations' experience has been lost by a government/parent attitude. Governments don't put any measure to enforce discipline and parents are far too protective or simply not caring of what happens to their little darlings.

In my days, you had the "Service Militaire" which in itself, was a period of discipline in group and (pardon my french...) no c@@p accepted. After 12 months' service, you generally left with a sense of respect for the others and a somewhat different look in life. This was then passed on to your children (to a few exceptions) and the system carried-on taking care of itself.

That idiot of a kid feared his father for being reported as missing from that course, let's hope he remembers which side of his face is hurting the most now.

[Patf]

Thanks for your input Eric - interesting about military service. How old were you when you did this?

And ALBF - your post about family problems. The UK isn't any different, that's why I said at the start that school problems in both countries are similar.

If it was possible, I would reduce the school leaving age to 15. But there aren't the jobs available now that there used to be.

Those last few years at school must seem pointless to many teens.  Those who aren't suited to an academic curriculum.They want to be out there earning money, trying to be independent.

[alittlebitfrench]

I have no idea about the UK Patf.

But I still make the point that 'French life', 'employment' and the cost of living in France puts too much of a burden on family life.

Hence, couples with children split up and some children become a problem at school as a consequence.

It is not the children's fault. Stop blaming the children.

[nomoss]

[quote user="Patf"]  ................ If it was possible, I would reduce the school leaving age to 15. But there aren't the jobs available now that there used to be. ................ [/quote]

When I was at school in rural Essex, the leaving age was 15, but a blind eye was turned to boys who left earlier; many were expected to work on farms, and their families needed the extra income. There was also plenty of work available for them.

Those I know who did so, in the main, were quite happy, as they had never been led to expect anything else, were pleased to get away from school, were respected in the work they did, and had at least some opportunities for promotion. I don't recall unemployment benefit being a choice after school.

According to Wikipedia ([url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_school_leaving_age_in_England_and_Wales[/url])

"Many of the age raisings in the 19th and 20th centuries were aimed at

generating more skilled labour by providing additional time for students

to gain additional skills and qualifications. In recent years,

government statistics showed that 11% of 16 to 18 year-olds were neither

continuing their education after completion of their GCSEs, nor in full-time employment or an apprenticeship, thus increasing the overall unemployment rate given many are unable to find work. The British government hoped that by making education compulsory up to the age of 17 by 2013 and 18 by 2015, it could change this.^"

[nomoss]

Continued from the above, as the last paragraphs were distorted.

^{Unfortunately, no-one seems to have thought about where jobs were going to come from, nor to have done anything about it.}

So

now, the UK has considerable unemployment, especially if one adds in

those working part time or on casual (zero-hour) contracts, and has to

rely on unskilled immigrants to do the jobs which are below the

qualifications of Brits.

Apparently

it's OK for immigrants to be uneducated, but not for Brits. But what

happens to their offspring? Are they to be educated only to a minimum to

allow them to fill their parents' jobs, or does the UK require a

constant supply of relatively uneducated immigrants?

[nomoss]

I'll try again

^{So now, the UK has}

considerable unemployment, especially if one adds in those working part time or

on casual (zero-hour) contracts, and has to rely on unskilled immigrants to do

the jobs which are below the qualifications of Brits.

 

^{Apparently it's OK for}

immigrants to be uneducated, but not for Brits. But what happens to their

offspring? Are they to be Unfortunately, no-one seems to have thought about

where jobs were going to come from, nor to have done anything about it.

^{educated only to a minimum to}

allow them to fill their parents' jobs, or does the UK require a constant

supply of relatively uneducated immigrants?

[YCCMB]

Well, I can't read that, but (literally) reading between the lines...

I wouldn't assume that people from other countries doing unskilled jobs are unskilled people. They most certainly are not.

In fact, over the time I worked with immigrants learning English, I've met mainly professionals with degrees or other professional qualifications in everything from architecture, veterinary medicine, graphic design, epidemiology, specialist nursing....,,

The fact that a majority come to the UK and work as baristas or hotel cleaners or waiting staff has nothing to do with a lack of skills. It's more attributable to having a decent work ethic and a desire to make the best of things and earn a living,

Pity the work shy Brits who seem to prefer unemployment to any form of work don't learn a thing or two from their example.

And...just saying....we don't seem to have an unemployment problem at the moment. Whether one believes the stats are massaged or not, there are lots of jobs and not enough folk to fill them. That's perticularly true of the NHS at the moment, but we have Brexit to thank for most of that...

[Patf]

"Stop blaming the children."

Who's blaming the children? I'm not.

The explanation is much more complex than that, albf.