Gregg West is an American history and geography teacher at Cité Scolaire Internationale. He also handles the school pantomime, organic gardening club, interpersonal communication classes and music club.  In this explosive article for Grenoble Life, he describes his career-long efforts to change the education system in France.

It would be preposterous to assume that any education system in the world does its job correctly, when one observes the amount of poverty, crime, violence, drug addiction, alienation, loneliness, pollution, general unhappiness, and other symptoms of human foolishness, frailty, or limitations.  But one could just say, “Oh well, people do their best and one can’t ask more of them than that.” Nevertheless, when one is a teacher and has to face an educational system day in and day out with its many constraints, it can be very trying, for even if he or she sees many kids succeed and go on to brilliant careers and happy, if not totally unperturbed, lives, there are a lot of others who will live troubled existences.

Over the last 37 years, I have tried to learn to teach and have perpetrated my teaching upon unsuspecting people, both children and adults, in North America, Scotland and France, but I have also had these teaching systems (pardon my syntax) perpetrated upon me. The following observations about the French system are not at all intended to exonerate other systems from similar criticism.

More is better

Since settling permanently in France in 1983 I have witnessed a system which believes that more is better despite the famous saying of Montaigne (loosely translated) that a “well-made head is better than a full head.” Indeed, in the Connexion of February 2010, the minister of Higher Education, Ms. Valerie Pécresse went so far as to say to a journalist “you seem to be contradicting yourself when you cast doubt on the level of lycée students passing the Bac but then suggest reducing the number of hours.”  Really, Ms. Pécresse, this is a national disease, thinking that more is always better. So why not give children 16-hour school days? Children need time for other things than school work to become thinking, feeling, well-balanced individuals. I thought everyone knew that … hmmm.

A second aspect of the French system that is curious for those of us from English-speaking cultures is the belief held by many that school is only for instruction of specific subject matters, does not require a global education of children in terms of understanding their social and psychological context, learning to motivate them, inciting them to improving their citizenship, social relations, and so forth and that, therefore, teachers do not need to learn anything but their own subject matter at university. No interpersonal communication, no group dynamics, no pedagogical methods, no interdisciplinary knowledge to coordinate interdisciplinary projects … It apparently threatens many whose work status and contract only commits them to knowing their subject … even if inspectors put pressure on them to teach better … and the French government has just decided to shut down IUFM (teacher training institutes), something highly consistent with this view.

In this extremely cerebral environment, a third characteristic of the French system, at least insofar as it concerns university-bound students, is that they needn’t develop artistic, manual or day-to-day skills like typing, driving a car, first aid, or cooking at school. (Well, they DO learn road security, but only the theory … ) In short, learning does NOT involve doing things, except writing essays, carrying out a few carefully limited classroom experiments, doing research and other relatively abstract tasks. So these other skills surprisingly only get developed among a minority of people who have the money to do them outside of school or have families patient and qualified enough to help them learn these things. When I see high school kids pecking away with their fingers on a keyboard, when I have to fork out over 1000€ for driving classes, or when I see the beginnings of obesity among French young people like in my native America, I do wonder about these priorities.

Lip service

Finally, as with many other school systems, the French speak of democracy, but practice dictatorship, pay lip service to cooperation and solidarity but practice competition, praise acceptance of differences, but punish those who do not “fit in” with ridicule, humiliating grades, and other forms of social exclusion, lecture people about human rights while submitting high school students to 50 hour weeks (35 hours of class plus 15 hours of homework a week), claim to be ecological while using throw-away pens, producing millions of tons of new, bleached, non-recycled fibre paper waste that are not even recycled, and brag about their great cuisine while abandoning their children to canteens that serve poor quality, poorly balanced meals that contain pesticides, instead of making quality and organic food priorities.  What is the saying, “Do as I say, not as I do?” Problem is, it doesn’t work that way and, as Leonard Cohen said, “Everybody knows…” Kids’ strongest learning experiences stem from doing and from example.

In such an unnatural neurotic environment, is it any wonder then that many French kids suffer from depression, insomnia, smoke a lot of cigarettes, become fashion victims or anorexics, drop out due to a lack of motivation (around 10%), or decide not to care about politics or association activity, plunging into a life of semi-blind consumption as adults, with no personal artistic side that they can cultivate to express themselves healthily? Is it any wonder that they become recalcitrant at suggestions that they drive less (so little physical exercise during their childhood), watch less TV (when did they learn how to entertain themselves?), vote more (when did anyone ask their opinion anyway?), or think about important issues (weren’t they only supposed to give teachers the answers required?), or question notions the media and political elite expound as evident (nuclear energy and genetically modified organisms aren’t dangerous, are they, or THEY would tell us … like our teachers … wouldn’t they?) Once you’ve got people conditioned, it is very hard to change them. Some would even suggest that this conditioning has been done CONSCIOUSLY to preserve the privileges of elite, but I’m not much of a conspiracy theory advocate, so I’ll leave this idea aside. I think it’s just force of habit and past conditioning … an unwillingness to question what came before.

Unfamiliar future

At any rate, all that I have described is what one would call a SCHEMATIC, OVERDRAWN picture of the French Educational system. Of course, there are positive sides, but you all know those; France is one of the world’s leading countries in social programs, economic productivity, democratic freedoms, and so forth … well, for the moment at least … But is this preparing us for an oil-poor, resource-poor future in a world where company relocation to Newly Industrialized Countries may force us to reorganize a great deal of our economy and learn to share, be happy with less, and use our imagination to find new, workable ways of life?

But of course changing things is never easy. People are afraid of unfamiliar ways, they think that what they know is the only way, there are vested interests, it involves calling habits and training into question, it doesn’t suffice to throw money at problems, and even good ideas, if poorly or insufficiently applied will lead to failure. In short, it isn’t a technical impossibility, but it remains a political improbability.

Political debate

I decided in 1987 to try to do something about all this. I spent five years in a minor political party which seemed highly motivated to lead change in society as the chairman of their education commission, consulting hundreds of students, parents, teachers, and others involved in education, as well as union representatives and school directors. We worked out propositions to change school radically (more on what these were later) … something in line with the party’s desire to “create a cultural majority for change.”

I sent the propositions to the hundred or so representatives of various regions in the party’s governing committee a few months before it was scheduled for debate on the agenda. But the day of the debate, there were “more urgent matters” so debate was pushed back till the very end of a Sunday afternoon when one third had already left to take their trains, leaving only 10 minutes to debate a topic that concerns every single citizen of a democratic country. Of those remaining, fully half were teachers … and a plurality of these opposed all the measures which might require them to retrain to handle new functions. So without any guidelines on HOW to change our propositions, we were sent back to the commission to “work on the propositions some more…” Thoroughly disgusted, I resigned as commission chairman.

An alternative school

In the U.S., as a young teacher, I had already experienced the difficulties of even modifying one local system of education, so I reasoned that if what I considered the most progressive political party in France and its host of teachers were unable to be open towards real change, then there was little hope of changing such a huge system from within. I worked for the next seven years on the idea of creating an alternative school, parallel to the system, in hopes that an example outside the system might show people what is possible. But here too I was to be foiled. Among the enthusiastic parents supporting this idea, most were penniless; among the enthusiastic teachers supporting this idea, most, not surprisingly, wanted to be paid! Real estate was too expensive to rent in large towns, and small towns placed obstacles in our path, fearing we might lower already precarious enrolment figures, provoking the closing of their public schools. There were also dreamers who talked about “borrowing seven million francs” from a bank as if any bank would ever entertain such an idea. A subscription among political activists raised some 135,000 francs, but we were never able to establish a three year budget that promised any hope of surviving, even on minimum incomes, so we were obliged to abandon the plan and send people’s money back.

At this point I decided to give up. I had a good job in a public school and began trying to develop extracurricular activities to compensate for the unidimensional aspects of school. I created a music club and later a theater program where kids could learn self-management, cooperation, create, express themselves, develop their confidence, teamwork and self-esteem, associate with older students and adults as role models instead of submitting to age segregation, and receive recognition without grades from those around them.  I found no need to involve parents for the music club, but broke an additional taboo when I got parents involved heavily in the theater program … something few French school teachers like to see … parents in the school working with kids … perhaps because it threatens their own prerogatives to teach as they see fit … but this was only outside of class …

In my own classes, I developed a method of teaching involving considerable debate and discussion, with occasional projects and games, but the program was often so immense that time was always pressing us to return to a teacher-centered curriculum.

Moving the mammoth

I suppose this is why when I was approached by a sympathetic political activist, I accepted getting involved in an association whose goal, like mine, was to move the mammoth (change the educational system) even though I remained very sceptical about the possible success of such an effort.

Over a period of about three years, we developed a support group of some 300 people, including thirty to forty teachers and three school headmasters, and we elaborated propositions very similar to those the education commission I’d managed had put forth only to be rejected. We outlined a plan for creating special schools, particularly in the junior high years (collège), and hopefully one or two in each department, which would function differently and thus serve as an illustration of alternative approaches to education. The basic ideas behind these schools included:

• Only four hours of academic solids per day, so less Math, less French, less language, less science, less history and geography (oh dear!!!). Interdisciplinary projects as a way of exploring basic subjects.
• Groups for enrichment, remedial work and orientation for one hour a day.
• Workshops to learn practical subjects, develop artistic abilities, and physical education 1 hour a day.
• Collective expression and action a few hours a week to put democracy into practice.
• A severe limit on homework and no grading, but still evaluating and testing.

One can like or dislike these propositions, but the fact remains that they allow schools to handle a number of the objections mentioned above and the existence of a certain number of schools of this type in the Northern part of Europe tends to confirm that they can be a positive experience, developing well-rounded, independent, thinking students … if properly applied.

We sent a 10-page summary and a longer 40-page detailed version of the project to various people in positions to make decisions. We met with those in charge of education at City Hall and the Conseil Général, as well as the man in charge of innovation at the Rectorate and the Academic Inspector of Isère. All reacted favorably, saying the idea looked great. When we said we also had a list of teachers and an administrator to run the school though, the Rectorate and Academic Inspection suddenly began hemming and hawing about the fact that they would need to talk to unions about it, that they couldn’t name people on the basis of aptitude or motivation, but only on the basis of seniority points (meaning the death of the project) and that they would have to check with their hierarchy on whether this was all possible (i.e., if it wasn’t pursued, it wouldn’t be THEIR fault …) Despite attempts to get them to put this on paper, they refused and they began doing what bureaucrats do when they don’t want something to happen. They sat on it, refusing further meetings, correspondence or any other indication of their position, killing the project.

Things I can do

So, at age 57, tired of spending so much energy for nothing, I chose to devote myself instead to things I CAN do without political games and support from people higher up. I continued with my teaching job, interpersonal communication classes, the music club with its concerts and CDs, the theater program with up to five shows and 750 spectators per year (our headmaster even had a stage built for us … and other groups in the school to use.) And I created an organic gardening club in our school.

None of this however will make the changes I believe that France (and other countries) desperately need in their education systems if they want to create a vast majority of real human beings capable of adult behaviour, wisdom, commitment, values, and coherent behaviour emancipated from the manipulative, narrow channels that current systems carve for them.

Related Posts:

• One Monday at Montessori International (part II)
• Cité Scolaire Internationale’s Music Club
• One Monday at Montessori International (part III)
• One Monday at Montessori International
• French education: more IS better … for a while