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No technology please, we're French


SaligoBay
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Came out shell-shocked from parent-teacher meeting last night, the one where the parents sit at the desks and the teachers come in one by one to introduce themselves.

All was fine until the French teacher arrived, then all hell broke loose!  His crime?  Sit down for this....... he does a small part of his lesson...... on....... COMPUTERS!!!!!!  

Now we're not talking ancient, illiterate, besmocked peasants here, we're talking people in their 40s with young adolescents going through collège, living in the Montpellier Agglo, a young, vibrant, booming, "middle class", 4x4-driving, etc etc etc.

Boy, were they upset!

"Some people are morally against computers."  Huh?????  

"We have a computer in the house, but I've never taught my daughter how to use it."  Why not???

"I had to type my son's homework in for him."  Why?  He has a brain in his head and the correct number of fully-functioning fingers.

"They won't know how to hand-write a lettre de motivation."   Wahay, off into fantasy land here!

"Computers don't help dyslexic people.  You have to make them write, and then they learn properly."   Speeding out of the far end of fantasy land by this point!

The other thing that kept coming up was about learning "real French".  It was bordering on a religious mantra!  Real, true French and computers are somehow incompatible, apparently.

By chance, the entire anglophone contingent (4 children out of 800) are in the same class, and we were sitting there in complete disbelief.   We talked to the teacher afterwards to tell him we saw no problem at all in what he was doing, and he said he did wonder if some of these people wrote with quill and parchment at home.

It was like being catapulted back about 20 years.  I wanted to sing "Let's do the Time Warp again", but I felt there was enough of a cultural barrier there already! 

 

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Only twenty years Saligo? Often felt to me that it was a 100 years I had been time warped back and much to my surprise I sort of had been.

I had 13 years of school council meetings as well as just parent teacher meetings. I used to come out feeling as if I had had encounters with aliens and that the kids were the last thing on the agenda.

Nice to hear that there is a teacher who wants to get the kids IT savvy, there are some good'uns around, it never felt like there were enough.

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Nice to hear that there is a teacher who wants to get the kids IT savvy, there are some good'uns around, it never felt like there were enough.

There was one other one who stood out, the Science teacher.   So enthusiastic, so modern and ALIVE, I wished I could come back during the day so he could teach me some Chemistry!

Tresco, I know people SAY they want France to remain in the past, but what they MEAN is "traditional France with computers, with ADSL, with satellite dishes, with 21-century medicine......." 

 

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Tresco, I know people SAY they want France to remain in the past, but what they MEAN is "traditional France with computers, with ADSL, with satellite dishes, with 21-century medicine......." 

Yes. All that and modern (dare I say 'British' style) education too).

It seems to me that the major cause of severe dissolusionment for Brits with school age children is the education system and the effect it has on their children who have spent some time in school in UK. That's the impression I have. I wouldn't have had the guts to come with the boy still little, anyway, and I have only learnt about these things since that possibility was in the distant past.

The 20 years behind thing bugs me a great deal, but as far as it's effects on education go I don't have to personally face it every day as I have no nippers here.

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Twenty years ago, my eldest daughter started primary school in the UK.

When we went for the look around before the Big Day, the Headmaster actually apologised that they would have to teach them how to read and write and do maths. . .

Hillock.  No.  Well, something like hillock

 

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My wife is head of a large primary here in the UK.

When we were over last Whit, she went off to the local village school to introduce herself and ask for a look around, which was granted with enthusiasm.

She loved the school and the kids and teachers, but was shocked that even a tiny school had only one computer.

Having said that:

Anyone tried e-mailing French companies

Anyone been in a French police station

I think they're about 20 years behind, but then, my kids always said they were 10 years behind in Fashions too

Alcazar

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"Anyone tried e-mailing French companies"

Yep no problems, no replies though (Well not true as we do get quite a few replies, especially if it isn a return email)

"..Anyone been in a French police station" Yep, not a happy place and the food has to come from home or be paid for to the nick !

"...I think they're about 20 years behind, but then, my kids always said they were 10 years behind in Fashions too"

But let's be honest here, even I have to say the girls/women "can" look a lot more stylish here than what I often see on my returns to the UK and I have to say I am rather impressed by the way Daughter and her mates look on nights out....steady Miki how many tines have you said "what do you look like Lyndsay"

SB, I think you may have to wait until child goes up to Lycee perhaps? Daughter found the college here had a lot more computers than in her old college in the Doo Don and and in both her Lycée's, computers are well truly part of her school work but some others around here report a distinctly poor ratio of pupil per Computer ratio. Probably depends on the course work I guess.

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My husband works in the IT industry and we have three children in Primary School here in France.  We are very happy that they are not sat in front of a computer for the best part of the day as they were in the UK.  They are learning to write, spell, read and calculate sums without the aid of a computer.  They are very happy and doing very well.  They are doing some work with computers and that is good too, but I am a firm believer in them learning the basics well, before they go on to work more closely with technology.  Hopefully then, when technology fails them some time in life as it invariably will, they won't go to pieces like so many youngsters do because they don't have spell checker or a calculator in front of them.

I don't think these forward thinking teachers should be frowned upon but I don't think we should look upon computers as the be all and end all either as they seem to in English Primary Schools.

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SB, here's a mantra to repeat to these parents "B2I" This is the Brevet Informatique et Internet. All pupils are supposed to be at level 1 by the time they arrive at collège (yeah, rigt with no computers in primaire) and at level 2 by the time they leave. It should actually appear on their bulletins in 3eme. Frightening details here: http://eduscol.education.fr/index.php?./D0053/accueil.htm

It's one of those wierd situations, all teachers are supposed to validate their abilities but computing is no longer part of the technologie programme, so we're not sure where they are supposed to learn the abitities we have to check, nor exactly how we are supposed to check them.

I'm in BDR and things are a lot easier since every 4eme and 3eme has a laptop on loan from the conseil general. Of course, we get the opposite problem; parents expect us to use them all the time...

 

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Although from the IT industry I think having few computers in schools is a good idea. Very few teachers are actually capable of teaching IT and then to any level of excellence and in general know only what they read in magazines. One only has to look at the SIM's system that schools use, written by a bunch of teachers and boy does it show. So if that is a sample of teacher quality program then god help the pupils. What it can show an employer is that the person has some ability to understand IT. When hired the employer promptly sets about 'de- programming' the school taught stuff and sends them on training courses to teach whatever skills the employer really wants properly.

There is one plus side of having computers in schools. While the pupils are busy tapping away they won't notice the schools selling off the playing fields to property developers and reducing their staffing levels by sacking the games master because of lack of interest and no fields to play games on.

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See T thats the difference, nearly every town has a municiple Stade and they make the kids walk. Don't suppose thats why all the kids look slim and healthy here by any chance. Bit like banning junk food from UK schools really. Did nobody ask why they were selling it in the first place? Still it's good TV in the UK "Honey we are killing the kids" program or whatever it's called comes to mind.
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Well very few walk to school and that walk to the stade or salle polyvalente is maybe once a week which cuts down their time doing anything when they get there remarkably, so hardly a great factor in keeping the kids thin and healthy.

Maybe it is those great institutions of the assoc sportif, that keep the kids fit which sadly too many parents treat as cheap child minding, but do in fact mean that the kids at least do an hour or two of sport per week

I have my own views on kids and their weight which I prefer not to go into now.

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Tresco, I know people SAY they want France to remain in the past, but what they MEAN is "traditional France with computers, with ADSL, with satellite dishes, with 21-century medicine......." 

SB,

Oh,the medicine's 21st century alright it's just the attitude of the doctors that's still in the 19th.  Well, my experience anyway.

Val   

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When I taught in a UK college Nothing but Nothing was standard on the computer - even they were non standard. Network could be brought down by a 5 year old and often was (I am talking about mentality and not real age). When we did BTEC courses and the students saw what they were supposed to be working on they thought they had come into the dark ages.

Having seen the handwriting of both my sons (both over 21) and the handwriting of an 8 year old English child who is at school in France, plus the way his younger brothers are learning how to write, I know that my sons would have benefited from more help with their writing abilities. My youngest has great problems writing but can sit at a PC all day and is fluent in the shorthand of mobile phones. The problem is that the ability to write is seen by most employers as elementary. My youngest son is actually doing a job that does not involve a computer at all and he finds the writing he has to do very difficult.

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Just spoken to our eldest, also aged 12, she said they use their computers in Technologie about once per week and are allowed to use the ones in the library for research on the internet also, not had our reunion yet, must cadge a lift , see if our backwater parents have the same reaction.

Went to youngests reunion last week and the main problem seemed to be that the parents had `forgotten` how to write capitals in `fancy` if you understand me. Most of these parents couldn`t be more than 30 years old, so either they do not write much or they are computer techos .

Mrs O

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...or, like my husband, abandoned the fussy capitals as soon as they could in favour of simple capitals that are quicker and easier to write.

My view of computers in schools is that some take it too far and attempt to teach everything with them, in the misguided belief that they need to be 100% techno-literate by the time they're 8, and others that try to claim that computers per se are harmful to a good education. Properly used, as a backup to help children understand concepts that are otherwise difficult or abstract, they are A Good Thing. Badly used, they are nothing more than a gimmick.

 

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the parents had `forgotten` how to write capitals in `fancy` if you understand me. Most of these parents couldn`t be more than 30 years old, so either they do not write much or they are computer techos .

Or they have not used "fancy" capitals since they left primary school. We're happy that last year's maitresse gave the kids a print out of what they're supposed to look like, since my husband can't remember. He does use the computer but he writes a lot too. he just doesn't do the capitals anymore

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

It is reported in today's Times that QCA (Govt's Curriculum watchdog) is considering whether in the future, children could learn how to send text messages and surf the internet rather than read books and write essays uynder radical proposals to reform English lessons.

The idea, it would seem, is to make English lessons reflect the impact of technology on the way people speak and write.  Lessons should take account of the new language of text messaging and the effect of the internet on reading skills.

The proposals in Meeting the Challenge represent a fundamental rethink of the teaching of literacy.............

In the same paper, the CBI and other employers are complaining that most of the young people in work cannot speak properly, write correctly nor cope with basic maths.

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Be fair, Rosie - the report says that new uses of languages should be reflected in classroom practice, not replace older forms. Where do you think the Times gets the fundamental rethink bit from? Grinding an axe...

In fact, I quote:

"The Government’s curriculum watchdog said yesterday that English classes must change to reflect the impact of technology on the way people speak and write.

Lessons should take account of the new language of text messaging and the effect of the internet on reading skills, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said.

The proposals in Meeting the Challenge represent a fundamental rethink of the teaching of literacy at a time when the Government faces mounting criticism over standards of reading and writing in schools.

The QCA said that while books were “not defunct”, children would need “new literacy skills” to cope with the effect of technology on English in everyday life. It gave no timetable for reform, but said that it would be “entering dialogues on curriculum modernisation” with teachers, parents and employers in the coming months."

A complete non-story, recycled as part of the shock-horror education genre, I'm afraid.
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