Well. This is awkward. When I said I would write that second blog post about my high school (Lycée Félix Esclangon), I honestly did intend to write it soon after, maybe two, three days. So here I am, with my tail between my legs, saying I goofed (again) on the whole being-a-responsible-blogger-and-updating thing. Fortunately, new resolutions are easy to make, and this post marks the beginning of a new era of being-a-responsible-blogger-and-updating.
Now, back to the good stuff! The Rotary Youth Exchange Program places all students in a high school, so that (most of the time) they are surrounded by other students, supervised, and making progress in learning their new language. In addition, for those students who are willing to put in the work, it can mean being able to transfer credits and not have to graduate a year late. And, of course, if for whatever reason you need to graduate a year late (i.e. your American school refuses to accept the credits, or you just don't want to stress over homework), you do what you can, and profit from your year in other ways. Because, needless to say, school these days is way more than just academic learning: Apart from the weekend, you spend the majority of your days au lycée, and accordingly a huge chunk of your cultural learning takes place there.
What better way to give a quick glimpse of life at Esclangon than with a Pros and Cons list!
Pros:
1) Classes: This is probably the best place to start, because it deals with the structure of the school itself. In French high schools "classe" does not refer to a course, as it can in English. For example, in the sentence, "My Music class has no structure; my teacher just plays it by ear (he he, get it?). Instead, "classe" refers to the same group of students that you go to your core courses. So, whereas in the States you might be with a completely different group of people depending on the period, in France you can stick with your friends all day long. While this could be seen as a Con (maybe you don't get to see friends who are in other classes), it really helps exchange students: Once the ice is broken and you've made a couple of friends in your class, you can rest assured that you'll have some support throughout the day, and throughout the week.
2) Food: After five years of not having a cafeteria, it was definitely a change to start buying lunch at school again. But what a worthwhile change it was. Again, I don't have an American high school experience to compare it to, but I can say that the meals served in the cantine are filling, well-balanced, and so, so tasty. After a long wait in the lunch-line, anticipation runs high when you cover your tray with entrées like cucumber salad and tabbouleh, cheese, deserts, plats like ratatouille with rabbit and couscous, and of course all-you-can-eat slices of baguette. And, if you decide not to eat at school one day, you can head out into Manosque (the centre-ville is two minutes away from school) and buy a sandwich, pizza, or kebab at one of the many stands throughout town.
3) Schedules: In the States, my schedule was more or less the same everyday: a course was assigned a period, and it would meet every day at the same time. In France schedules are closer to college schedules, where each day is broken up into periods, but classes don't meet each day, and rarely meet at the same time on different days. This helps break up the monotony of a school week. You wind up looking forward to certain days more than others, rather than ruing a specific class every day of the week. In addition, schedules in France get two big thumbs up for incorporating récréations, 15 minute breaks at 10 and 4. While a huge number of students and teachers rush outside to smoke, others, like me, just relax, maybe buy a soda, and hang out with friends. Lastly, I can't forget to mention the hour for lunch. That's pretty nice, too.
Cons:
1) Le Bac: Here it comes, the big, the bad, le Baccalauréat. For students in France, "passing" high school does not mean accumulating enough credits by passing individual classes. Instead, in the second semester of their final year, they take exams in each individual subject that include material from the last two or three years (except the occasional subject, like French Litterature, which they take at the end of their Premier (Junior year)). Each student piles all the information they learn into insanely organized notes, and (supposedly) reviews old information at the same time as the course progresses. For two or three years. I can definitely see the pedagogical upside of being forced to not forget what you learn in class, but, frankly, I think they work really, really, hard here.
2) Strictness: I won't pretend to be in the strictest situation as an exchange student (I have a friend in Marseille who's Biology teacher kicks students out for not saying "Bonjour" as they walk in...), but I've definitely noticed the heightened level of formality at Esclangon. First and foremost, French has a formal equivalent of you, the vous form (kind of like a "you sir" or "you ma'am" instead of a simple "you"). I'm still struggling to adjust to refering to my friends as tu in class, and then asking a question using vous to show respect to the teacher. On a lighter but still bothersome note, I wrote what I thought was a really super introduction to a presentation, in which I described our group's project as trop cool (very cool). To my dismay, I was told that it was too familiar, and was forced to remove it. Sigh...
So there you have it! With the amount of time teenagers spend in school (Tuesdays I arrive at 8 and leave at 6...), it's essential that we enjoy the school we're in. Lucky for me I have Esclangon!
À la prochaine!
Chris
