Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

French university tuition averages 175 euros per year for a BA and 235 euros for a masters

 Attention bargain shoppers!  

Each university student costs French taxpayers 9132 euros on average per year, while tuition fees amount to only 175 euros for a bachelors and 235 euros for a masters. As a result, the number of foreign students--in particular from China--has been rising. In 1999 2000 Chinese students enrolled in French universities; this year it's 22,000! 

Jean-Pascal Gayant, writing in Le Monde, asks if it still makes sense to subsidize relatively affluent foreign students in a time of economic crisis. China has evolved. Perhaps France should too.

Don't count on French universities to be able to discuss this calmly and come up with a solution, he warns. Their budgets depend on the number of students, and they have no incentive to risk ruffling feathers by suggesting tuition hikes or quotas.  A former university vice-president, Gayant suggests that it may be time for law makers to get involved in order to preserve the tradition of welcoming foreign students in universities that have become "Chinese auberges"*.

*"Il est donc opportun que le législateur s'empare de cette question et que la tradition d'accueil d'étudiants étrangers en France ne soit pas remise en cause, à terme, par les errements d'une Université devenue auberge chinoise…"

French university libraries to open longer !

 In excellent news, President Sarkozy's BIG LOAN (grand emprunt) will finance longer opening hours for France's university libaries.

One of the big mysteries for foreign students in France is why the libraries are so frequently closed. According to Les Echos, France is well under the European standard (less than 60 hours a week compared to 65 in Europe).  When you factor in strikes and real availability, it's probably even worse.

Students had been quietly complaining about the state of the libraries for years, even staging a pyjama sit-in at the Law library in Nancy (see Le Monde).

Valérie Pécresse, Minister of Higher Education, is expected to announce the details of the plan soon.

Top French intellectual survives stunning Botulism attack !

 It was too good to be true. BHL, France's top philosopher-star, quoted extensively and repeated Jean-Baptiste Botul, well known author of best seller, The Sexual Life of Emmanuel Kant. For this he won the dubious honor of the "Prix Botul", delivered each year by the "Botulism Foundation".

I first read about Botulism forty years ago (I'm that old) in a terrifying Reader's Digest article about a can of killer peas. "Minutes after Jane Doe swallowed the first pea," it stated breathlessly, "her vision blurred and she was dead!"

Dead! From peas!

No, the article calmly explained. From Botulism.

Well this terrible blight claimed another victim last week when it was revealed that Jean-Baptiste Botul never existed. Not just in the philosophical sense ( What is existence? Dasein? I doubt therefore I talk a lot...), but in the he-was-never-born sense. BHL speaks English, so the name should have been a tip off. But French intellectuals snub humor. Just don't get it.

Now, of course, all the BHL-bashers are having a field day. He's taken it like a man, however, complementing the clever rogue who tricked him. Christophe Barbier of l'Express has even come to his defense, which is kinda sweet. 

French debate whether to teach tolerance for homosexuality in nursery schools

 Hercules himself would collapse under the pressure of so many tasks! 

Under attack for reproducing social classes, failing to promote equality ,incompetence in replacing absent teachers, poor results in foreign language teaching and declining basic skills in spelling and French grammar, France’s public schools are now facing a new challenge: should they or should they not begin introducing lessons of tolerance for homosexuals in nursery school?

 What sparked this latest debate? Luc Chatel, Minister of Education, decided NOT to show a film entitled “Le Baiser de la Lune” in primary schools. 

"It’s premature to talk about homosexuality in nursery school and primary school,” he said, pointing out that the film was a private initiative, not sanctioned by Education Nationale.

This provoked an immediate reaction. The director of an ECOLE MATERNELLE (ages 3-5) and Doctor of Education Science named Gäel Pasquier wrote an article in Le Monde arguing that it was a “necessity” to talk of homosexuality in nursery school, starting with the “petite section”, that is children 2 to 3 years old.

 He lists 8 points which you can read here.

What's a school to do?

 

French parents spurred to revolt by absent teachers !!

 

In an unusual role reversal, French parents revolted yesterday, demonsrating at the Ministry of Education.

The rallying cry? "Replace teachers who are absent!"

In France, students currently lose ONE YEAR of school due to absent teachers who are not replaced.

National Education's chronic inability to perform this basic task of administration has poisoned relations between schools and parents for years.  And caused inestimable harm to children whose parents can't afford private tutors.

And yet, every possible solution has been shot down by teacher's unions.  Xavier Darcos floated some innovative ideas--including a kind of separate agency for managing substitutes, but they were disavowed and he's gone.

Luc Chatel, the current Minister of Education, is giving it another try. His solutions?

1) report absences immediately (instead of waiting 14 days as is the current practice)

2.) More flexibility in assigning substitutes geographically (the current system is rigid and impractical)

3) Let each school identify potential substitute teachers including calling up retired teachers and university students.

None of these ideas are particularly radical. All could help ease the situation. (One astute observer called them a "heaping helping of DUH")

Other countries manage to get substitute teachers into the classroom. Why not France?

For more on the parents' revolt against absent teachers, see:

Le Figaro: Absentéisme des profs, les pistes de Luc Chatel

Elle: Le ras-le-bol des parents contre les profs absents

Le Parisien from January 19 (double page feature)

What if you threw a strike and nobody came?

 Five million were invited. 

But by midday, only three guys and a dog  had shown up.* 

Not a great score. Though, to be fair, it was the dead of winter.

Strikes in France can be boisterous, happy affairs. Rather like massive block parties with celebrants bussed in from the provinces to enjoy a holiday with the camarades  decked out in matching caps and blowing whistles.

But cold and rain along with a general lassitude spoiled the fête.

French unions had expected better. They wanted to protest reductions in the numbers of civil servants (by retirement, not firing) and express their displeasure with the various reforms. 

To make matters worse, yesterday, parents organized their own protest AGAINST absent teachers who are not replaced (read more on the parents' revolt) . 

It's the world upside down!!

=======================

*not technically true. The real figures  (according to France 24)  are 12.2 % for state civil servants, 3% for local authorities, and 2% for hospital personnel.  In Education, only 14% of staff mobilized.

Absent teachers hurt learning in France

Teachers in France miss twice as many days of work as workers in the private sector.

As if that weren't bad enough, a recent confidential report commissioned by former Education Ministry Xavier Darcos revealed that substitute teachers registered even higher levels of absenteeism than the people they were meant to replace. 17.4 days a year!!

As a result, 10,000 classes currently have no teacher at all.

For the full report, read the excellent article in Le Monde entitled "Two million sick days" by Maryline Baumard.

On a personal note, I remember watching an 8th grade class self-destruct over the course of a year during which the French --and home room--teacher was absent and not replaced for over a month. During that time, the kids had "perm" (left to their own devices) with no French whatsoever. At each "conseil de classe" the other teachers and the principal complained about how dissipated and disruptive the students were. But at no point did it occur to them that abandoning the kids for over a month had anything to do with this.

Why must we learn English at all? French protest

Time magazine recently published an article about the challenge of learning English in France. Students pay high fees to private schools for English lessons after failing to learn the language despite years of studying in public schools. (read Time article here)

But what's really interesting is the reaction of many French readers to any discussion of how to improve English learning.

Articles in Le Monde and CafeBabel about France's disastrous results in the international TOEFL  provoked a hail of abusive comments.

So passionate was the discussion that a mediator was assigned to analyze the remarks for Le Monde. The result? About half the respondents protested against having to learn English at all. 

The former president of the Association des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes (APLV) published a long and bitter letter denouncing, not France's poor results in English, but the media for publicizing them.

At Cafebabel the offense was even worse. A journalist who dared to poke fun at the French for their consistently poor results in every international comparison of English skills was pilloried. The curiously pro-French language Observatoire Européen du Plurilinguisme publicly denounced the journalist and called for him to be banned.

And yet, French parents want their children to learn English. They show this by investing massively in expensive and time-consuming private lessons and language study programs abroad.

How to improve English skills in France? A reasonable question, non?

Why, then, such an outpouring of intense emotion?

To be continued...

See related articles below:

APLV : http://www.aplv-languesmodernes.org/spip.php?article2613

Time : http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1932422,00.html

Le Monde : http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2009/08/25/les-etudiants-francais-toujours-aussi-nuls-en-anglais_1231684_3224.html

http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=1098783&clef=ARC-TRK-NC_01

Cafebabel : http://www.cafebabel.fr/article/31291/irish-teacher-france-english-language-paris.html

Laurel's Paris Weblog : http://www.laurelzuckerman.com/2009/08/french-still-lousy-at-english-new-study-says.html

French court rules no one responsible for explosion that killed 31, wounded 2500 and caused 2 bn euros of material damages ten days after 911

The dead factory worker wore five layers of underclothing (like a Muslim suicide bomber) and had ties to Islamist groups.

Yet France's highest officials declared the AZF chemical plant explosion in Toulouse to be an "accident" only three days after the catastrophe caused 31 deaths, 2500 injuries and 2 billion euros of property damages. Before the investigation got underway. Ten days after 911.

 For exploring the Islamist ties of a temporary worker of Tunisian origin killed in the explosion, Le Figaro and Valeurs Actuelleswere charged with "diffamation.

French intelligence services saw their investigatons stopped.

And while an "accident" was the official thesis from the start, no reconstitution of events or hypothetical chain of events was able to recreate the explosion.

Now, eight years later, a French court has ruled to aquit AZF's directors  (a Total subsidiary)  of any responsibility for the  explosion.

Raison d'état is a familiar concept in France, and one which feeds the unhealthy French love of conspiracy theories.

But this time, the French state may have gone too far: to decree a lethal explosion an "accident", and then to hold no one responsible?  

For readers interested in exploring this topic, I will be posting links to books and articles. Check this space for more. Here is the very complete wikipedia entry in French.

Swine flu H1N1 cases double in France in one week, vaccination centers swamped

"Une grippette" (a harmless little flu), as the esteemed Professor Débré so memorably and so irresponsibly dismissed the H1N1 virus in July.

Not any more.

H1N1 swine flu killed 23, put 121 in ICU and sickened 730 000  in the last week alone in France, according to Le Figaro.

Vaccination centers, understaffed and poorly organized, are overwhelmed with two to four hour waits and  inexplicable closings.

The Minister of Health calls undervaccinated medical personal, especially nurses and support staff,  "the principle source of hospital infections during flu epidemics".  (See The reasons behind France's Swine flu fiasco*.)

France has decided to switch to one vaccination instead of two for people over nine.

Respiratory infections are at record highs, and the seasonal flu season has not yet officially begun.

The spread of conspiracy theories, however, may now finally be on the decline.

* "la ministre de la Santé, en soulignant que «le personnel soignant non vacciné est, selon plusieurs études, la source principale des contaminations nosocomiales durant les épidémies de grippe».