Frenchparents Blog: For Parents with an interest in the French Culture » Education – in the US, in France, and Bilingual schools

Lunches in French schools are a shame in the country of haute cuisine

admin — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:36:37 +0000

Yes you read it. Don’t think because you’re sending your kids to school in French schools they’ll eat succulently cooked meals, as might be expected in the Terre of Haute Cuisine… School lunches are most often these days managed by large food catering companies like Avenance, Sodexho and another one, who also run company cafeterias in fact.

But while adults have the means to complain, should there be a problem with the quality of meals served in their company’s cafeteria, school meals of extremely poor quality overall are served to a passive audience: children, at a very high price to parents – and municipalities,who often finance part of the cost in the public school system.

The cost of meals four days a week in a school in France is between 800 and 1 000 euros. Let’s take a 900 euro average cost, and see what that amounts to in terms of per meal cost. Given the number of holidays in French schools, kids only eat there about 3 weeks a month on average. So with 10 months of school, the 900 euros comes down to 90 euros a month, where kids only eat (3*4= 12) meals. That’s 7.5 euros a meal! For this price, I can get a good sandwich with protein, fresh vegetables and quality bread, followed by a desert, at any corner take out. I can also get a medium, thin crust pizza, with lots of tomatoe paste and limited amounts of cheese, the way they’re supposed to be made – making for a relatively healthy lunch- at a local pizza place.

Now let me describe the sort of things served to children at this price..

For starters: Pizza, ’saucisson’, paté

if any of you have an notions of nutrition, you may know that what is considered good practice in a meal is to start with a raw vegetable, prepared a certain way of course. IN France we are quite good at preparing our world famous vinaigrette and serving it with shredded carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, or to serve raw mushrooms with olive oil… Basically, we have quite a few options available to start a meal in a healthy manner. Fat rich pizza, saucisson ( salami) or paté made from unidentified meats are NOT part of them.

For Main dishes: breaded turkey or other types of meats, overcooked and accompanied by a highly salty and startchy sauce, and tasteless ‘green’ beans or other vegetables

To say that kids have trouble eating the stuff is putting it mildly. My daughter says she has to eat a lot of bread to help some of it ‘go through’…

For desert: highly sweetened and starchy industrial pudding, rock hard fruit, served unscliced or fruit salad out of a can with sugar syrup

Most kids dive on the desert for lack of other options, and those who try to eat the fruit give up after trying to peel it or bite into it.

I’ve seen in four schools so far in France with my children, two public and two private, and in all the parents presented demands for higher quality. Only one school responded favourably and accepted the staff take simple surveys of what was really eaten by all children there during the meals. Quite sad, really.

-> Article on UFC Que Choisir, a major consumer group, about the poor quality of school lunches confirmed by a national agency.

France’s Four Day School week: Still illogical

admin — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:02:42 +0000

France has a 4.5 day work week for students ( and their teachers). Meaning our dear little ones must rise and shine early on Wednesday morning, only to be asked to stay home after lunch time. Not very logical you have to admit. On the other hand they spend long days in school compared to a lot of Anglo Saxon countries: 8:30AM to 4 PM.
Some cities and private institutions demanded an end to this system and they can now choose to adhere to the ‘ Four Day School Week’, meaning in this case there is no school on Wednesday. These schools must then make up for the half days when the children are not being taught. The way this is done is unfortunately, as illogical as the 4.5 day School Week, most likely because the calendar is still set by the French Ministry of Education, an institution even Kafka would not have dreamed of…

For instance this year in those areas where the Four day School Week is in place, back to school day is Wednesday, August 29. Why shorten children’s summer and trouble parents who may have access to vacation rentals that run from one Saturday to the next?

Especially given that six weeks into the school year, arrives another 10 day vacation period for them, except this time its Fall, with its drizzle and cold in most areas of France. The dates are quite absurd as well: october 26 th to Thursday November 8th… Why not just break for a week? And why come back on a Thrusday? Make it a Monday!

I remember escaping to Washington, DC to see beautiful foliage and celebrate Halloween where its a fun time for kids the last time that break came around.. And of course, the children missed a couple days of school.

You want a country that likes things complicated? Choose France!

-> The official national school Calendar and a link to The Four Day School Week calendar by area ( in French)

Just so you know, the country is split up in three major zones ( A, B , C) with different school vacation dates, to limit the amount of people traveling for vacation at a given time…

The Quality of France’s Educational System has gone down considerably since the 1970’s

admin — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:25:44 +0000

France’s officials and many of its citizens often boast about the quality of their educational system. For one who’s a parents of primary level children here, in a priviledged area west of Paris and who was taught by this system about 30 years back, it’s quite distressing to see how low demands on children are on average today, in the 21th century.

Dozens of books have been published on this (links are below) , by concerned teachers, school principals, and researchers. Change is such a slow process here that despite the alarmingly low level of children coming out of the school system over the past tirty years, not much has been done to truly combat the bad habits a few doctrinaires enforced on the system in the 1970s.As was seen in the US at that time, they claimed that learning had to be fun, an activity of discovery. We have no problem with that, do we? However that does not mean that any sort of formal learning has to be eradicated from the teaching all together, does it? And that reading the classics also has to discarded as an activity from another era…

The consequences were that classes of 8 to 18 year olds starting studying what rappers lyrics were about or started choosing milk cartons as class reading material. Spelling has become a creative exercize in approximation for many youth who are taught to photograph words visually and learn them by heart rather than learn that ‘ b’ followed by ‘ a’ sounds like ‘ ba’. Teachers who refused to follow the Ministry’s official requests for this new approach to teaching were hindered in their carreers, even though their effects on children were clearly positive.
The most recent element on this topic is a study published by two university researchers, which indicates that Grade 7 students in France today have the same level of knowledge of spelling as Grade 5 students twenty years ago…

Links to elements – in French:

A teacher-to-be’s blog, about the absurdity of the curriculum she is following and of the French educational system:

Le Billet de profette

On Amazon.fr:

JM Le Bris’s Book titled: “Et Vos enfants ne sauront ni lire ni compter” (And your children will neither know how to read nor count)

Danièle Manesse et Danièle Cogis : ‘”Orthographe, a qui la faute” (Spelling, Who’s Fault is it?)
JP Brighelli : “La Fabrique à crétins” (The idiot factory: Failure of the School system)

Parents Have the Most Important Job. Oh yeah?

admin — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 10:47:42 +0000

Have you ever read or heard from others- usually working parents or mature adults- that, as a parent, and particularly a stay-at-home parent (and often a mom), you’re “doing the most important job“? Well, I know that deciding as a couple to raise happy, self-confident, open-minded, and healthy children, is one the most beautiful and challenging job two can take on, and friends and acquaintances seem to think that way too, but strangely, the world doesn’t seem to function as if that were the case? Or maybe, holding the most important job translates into: ” You’re on your own, baby “, or, to use VIP speak: ” It’s lonely at the top“…

The only Job with no Vacation, Pay or Training:

This “most important job” implies that you as a parent devote a significant amount of your time and energy to raising your children, between 20 hours a week to all your free time.
Often times professionals who become parents in the US have to make a choice between what they think is best for them personally and financially and participating actively in their children’s upbringing.
It’s not rare that remaining in the position they were in before having children means seeing their children little more than an hour or two a day, and some find that’s less than what they wish when their children are very young.

What it doesn’t entail, in my view is that you, as the parent who ends up not working or who works less than you’d like to personally, are going to be doing this parenting job around the clock, exclusively of anything else!
It seems like that’s what parents, often times unknowingly, sign up for when they have children in the US. Given the lack of affordable quality childcare and education, all except a priviledged minority are to stop most of the sort of intellectual and social activity they had prior to having children, and turn solely to playgroups, birthing and
parenting seminars and their kids’ activities to be able to have an adult conversation once again outside of their circle of friends and family.

Even though you may be holding “the most important job ” and you may have expected some recognition for this choice, just as a VIP is treated with some deference, you have in fact become the sole person responsible for your little ones, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week- so now, you’re on your own, baby (or should I say, you and your baby!)!;-)

Try doing something else…

Try being a volunteer on the board of a non profit for instance. You have some time on your hands- supposedly anyway- and you’d like to use it wisely by helping a local non profit of your choice as a volunteer board member. Well, if you were that prestigious, Wall Street broker who has to travel from New York to San Francisco to attend the board meetings, you might just get reimbursement for your trip because travel is a deductible expense. But say you’re just a local parent who knows the issues, and has a genuine interest in helping out, and.. you need to get child care for those few hours? You pick up the tab baby! You’re doing the most important job, ain’t ya?

C’mon, I know being there for one’s children is important in this country, but is it important to be there 100% of the time? Couldn’t there be recognition that as parents, entrusted with our sacred task of producing the best citizens a country can have, we are allowed and hell, even encouraged to take a breather, either for ourselves or to be able to continue playing a role in our community outside of attending children’s ballet classes?

Say you wished to go one step further.. As a parent, you have a neat business idea that’d be compatible with your family life. You’d like to create an exercise studio cum coffee house where children can be cared for for a fee while parents enjoy flexing and stretching those sore back muscles for an hour or so…Don’t you have about a hundred people in mind already who’d kill for such a place? If you were that person starting a venture fund who needs to offer a good meal to a prospective client so as to help get those few millions you want to invest for her, you might well be able to write off that luncheon at Chez Panisse as a business expense.
But say you have to incurr child care expenses of $800 to $1,200 a month simply to research your market, make contacts with prospective clients and lenders and search for a location..? You pick up the tab, you most important job holder you! Yeah, it sure is lonely at the very top – especially among the few who do start a business under these circumstances!;-)

Now for the small (and lighter) stuff…

Mobility for VIPs and their trusted cargo:

Try taking a bus in the city by the bay…It saves on parking tickets and it’s less polluting, so given the option, why not? If you were so lucky as to be handicapped, obese or a senior, you’d get a royal treatment.. The bus would start making this beeping noise while the platform would descend to the street level while you royally mount the vehicule. But if you happen to be a ” most important job holder ” with one or more of your precious ones, well, you can : ” fold your stroller, carry ‘them kids up on the bus while holding the stroller with your third hand and those huge arm muscles you have as a VIP and hold on ’cause the bus is already moving and you haven’t paid and no one’s moving to give up their seat”.. ” Oh, and is Billy crying now ’cause you pulled on his arm? Please quiet him down”.

Next try going to Children’s Hospital in Oakland and parking where you can then roll your stroller out of the parking garage. Are you handicapped? Not officially. Are you a doctor here, a nurse? Nope, I’m holding the most important job, you see.. Well then you can’t park in those spaces that are on the street level, you have to go up and then find some way to get down those stairs (there’s no elevator you see) with a stroller and a three year old who doesn’t feel like walking…

It’s a tough job, the most important job they say, although if you were landing here from Mars, you may not know it..;-)

Written on Monday, July 14th, 00:15 AM. Happy Bastille Day – Free American families!

Parents Have the Most Important Job.What would life be like if that were true.

admin — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 09:41:03 +0000

What would life be like in a society where raising happy, well adjusted, open-minded children was really considered the most important job?

First of all nannies and parents accompanied by children would be welcomed with a cheerful “hello” by MUNI bus drivers while every adult with the capacity to move would volunteer to get up to give up their seat at the front of the bus to let the little ones sit down…The bus driver would help the caregiver(s) fold the stroller and the babycarrier so he/she could watch the children and the survival bag with the snacks, the bottles, the diapers, the blanket and the Tylenol… ( We have had our child bag taken from us in a bus while attending to our children….). If little Will is still munching on a banana, the driver would kindly ask the child to put it away for now rather than telling him to get off the bus or throw the offending fruit OUT! (Real story number two).

On a higher plane, newspapers and radios would include in their regular news, the way sports results are blasted out to our ears every fifteen minutes, information that’d be relevant to parents, such as school and day care rankings, missing children info, parents having found a great way to manage their work and family life, etc… I suggest The Chronicle call this daily or weekend section Family Matters (duh), where they would cover the challenges and the joys of raising children so as to inspire us all- and when I say all, I mean parents acting as such, as well as parents as business and political leaders. Parenting magazines can still get into the nitty gritty of potty-training but why are the issues around raising kids, which are so important to a society and are dealt with by what, 70% of the population, not central to the media? How does pro football impact me in my daily life, huh?

Parents with a career prior to having children who decide to stay at home, not because they have too much cash lying around or are just plain old lazy, but because they think it’s best for their children for a while would get some sort of tax break, recognizing their contribution to society as ones whose children, on average, will have less agressive behaviour, less drugs and alcohol use, and, on a more positive note, will be more open-minded, generous and confident contributors to tomorrow’s economy and society.

Getting a few hours of child care would be recommended, if not mandatory, after expert studies (that Frenchparents co-founder Valerie and moi could perform for a fraction of the fee Dr. Steven Rosenbaum would charge by the way!) would have shown that an adult with a normal IQ cannot keep a sane and fresh mind if he or she spends eight hours a day attending to very young- or even older- children. Even teachers don’t spend that much time in their classrooms- and they have people who can talk- even talk back, I know- before them!

Participating in an activity, whether it be a part time job, a cause of some sort, or even a sports or arts activity, would then not be prohibitive financially for many, making society a place where parents would still be visible, active contributors rather than shadows behind their children with no public voice- not to mention pains in restaurants! And where more men would be tempted by the stay-at-home option? Now that’d signal a change…;-)

When they’d eventually decide to get back to work, these parents would be recognized not as drop outs or slackers but as those having taken time off to become more mature, accomplished individual with a richer approach to life – and a knack with handling bratty colleagues! In order to help measure their contributions and efforts, with no PowerPoint presentations to show, here are the data that could be used to assess the usefulness of their work:

Number of shouting matches a week between them and their kids would appear on their resume so as to be compared to the nationally broadcast working parent averages, as well as:

Index of resistance to food items ( especially anything naturally green or yellow)

(Related to the above) Number of sandwiches and pizzas vs hot meals eaten a week by child. ( Studies would have shown that intaking too much peperoni pizza as a child makes you more likely to vote for Arnold Schwartzenegger in gubernatorial elections).

Average time required to go to bed at night.

Number of bribes ( with an index going from popsicles up to high end dolls or trucks ) required to accomplish: a/ a family outing b/ a chore.

Number of fits a week in public places.and a few others to be determined would also be yardsticks to measure these individual’s accomplishments vs working parents’ averages.Then having the Most Important Job would finally deserve its name…

First years finally seen as crucial by governements – OECD

admin — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 12:27:27 +0000

The OECD is again coming out with useful research:

More OECD countries focusing on early childhood as key to education success

19/09/2006 - A new OECD report on early childhood policy, Starting Strong II shows that more countries are making early childhood education and care a priority, with greater attention paid to service quality. Increasingly, it shows, the early years are viewed as the first step in lifelong learning and a key to successful social, family and education policies.

Attitudes to education are deeply embedded in country contexts, values and beliefs, and the 20 countries reviewed – Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States – all have diverse strategies in this field. Their variations reflect differing attitudes and cultural and social beliefs about young children, the roles of families and government and the purposes of early childhood education and care.

Starting Strong II provides a comparative analysis of policy developments and issues, highlighting innovative approaches and proposing policy options that can be adapted to different national contexts. Among other things, it notes:

a growing consensus – based on research from a wide range of countries covering demographics, social change and cost-benefit analyses – that governments must invest in and regulate early childhood education and care;
a trend towards integrating early childhood policy and administration under one ministry, often education;
moves towards greater contact between early childhood centres and schools, and growing use of national curricular frameworks in the early childhood sector;
the provision of at least two years of kindergarten before children enter compulsory schooling;
growing, but still insufficient, government investment in services;
more participatory approaches to quality improvement, based on wide consultation of stakeholders and the engagement of professional staff in documentation and research;
clearer ideas at government level of the qualifications needed by staff to engage with rapidly changing social and family conditions;
an increase in university chairs in early childhood education and care policy;
and a recognition of the need for more country research and data collection in the field.

Finally, if the legislators can direct their glance not only towards higher education but towards those not-so-glamourous early years of education, that would be a great help to us parents who believe early experiences are the crucial stepping stones on which a child will build and develop – and who appreciate every help they can get to provide the best experience for their kids. And that state investment in those years is among the best investment they can make for the country.
Thanks to the OECD for pushing this thought too!

Raising children with "discipline ": a bad word?

admin — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 20:22:14 +0000

As a person inpired by both the North American and the French culture, I am struck by the somewhat negative connotation “Discipline” has in English- even more so in “Californian”, the particularly ” PC” English spoken on the West Coast.
In the French culture, it is not so negatively tainted, although this is changing. France is now seeing the results of the “No to Discipline, Yes to the Child”approach to education which is highly prevalent in California. Three-year olds are beating up on their parents over there too.. and on their babysitters, their “friends”, their teachers…
Wow! Can “No discipline” be so great when this is the outcome?

The issue in my view is defining what one means by discipline and if discipline is used in a loving context or not. My very personal acception has nothing to do with using sticks, slaps, or any other physical means of punishment. My definition does incorporate the notion of punishment and of parental responsability. Enforcing some sort of dicipline, however, is only part of raising a happy child. Discipline is easily accepted and even welcomed
when the child feels attention, love and respect from her parents, because she feels secure in this environment.

Enforcing discipline, sorry to those who won’t like it, is, for me, part of raising a child.

Discipline without love and no discipline ( not sure if there’s actually love in this latter case) are both recipes for unhappy, unstable kids- and families.

What I regret in attitudes I’ve witnessed in California and elsewhere is the opposition placed between discipline and love and attention. As if love entailed loosening off on the dicipline, and discipline meant being heartless.. No so!

Demonstrating love does not equate to giving gifts, treats, or “being easy” on this or that..

Love is not so easy to show. It means positive actions and not so positive actions for you, the responsible one.
It’s hard, it takes effort and courage. And it’s what makes you the parent, and a much more complete person because of that too. You learn so much about yourself and the world around you as you try to educate your children in a responsible, disciplined and loving way.

Positive ways of showing love: Just say Yes .. to time together, not toys

Love is there when a parent reads to her daughter, when he plays a game of dominoes with her, when he helps her ride her bicycle, when he listens to her recount of the day and expresses interest in her doodling. It doesnπt need to be many hours every day, what counts is the quality of the time together and the attention the child gets. Another highly qualified and motivated person than the parent could very well provide this sort of love as well. However, keeping time for kids during holidays is important. If kids feel they’re being dropped off here and there by already busy parents, they’ll start resisting, if they haven’t already…Then trying to impose some discipline becomes a nightmare; The tug-of-war is on.

Games, toys, and other material gratifications are nice but are not the most important proofs of love and attention for a child if they cannot share them with those they are closest to. At age 3, what do you think he’ll like better:
For you to make a paper airplane and show him how to throw it or to get a shiny new plastic or wooden one
to play with alone?

Negative ways of showing love: Just say No… to a fuss and to bad actions

Love is also there when a parent insists that his daughter attend her ballet class even though she doesn’t feel like it that day and the parent would rather not have a fight over it..
This is showing interest in her activities, it is not bullying the child. It also shows her the importance of consistency and of perseverance. . The child is reassured by the stability the parent conveys. She doesn’t need to wonder, the next time, if she should decide to attend or not, or what she should ask to do instead, or what other activity she’d now rather do..
“You chose ballet because you said you wanted to do this, now stick to it”, is the simple, clear message. ( Of course if she truly doesn’t fit in the class, or the teacher is terribly poor, a change is in order).
The clearer the message, for a young mind, the better (as well as for any mind!)

Demonstrating love means showing a child what she can, and cannot do!

No matter how smart our children are, a childπs brain does not
have the required maturity to determine right from wrong, good from bad. It is like playdough that is waited to be molded.
When a child grabs another child by the hair at the playground, the responsible action to take
with a two-year-old, for me, is not to negociate at length, it is to say: This is wrong, stop!

Oh, and I’m not just saying this. Neither am I a psychologist, I’m just a parent, applying some principles inspired from Europe and North America. And living in harmony with my family!