Emily in Paris: The French School System
Emily Hanna
When a teacher prefaced the entire education system as being ‘not student friendly,’ I didn’t know what to expect. After 8 weeks in this University, I vow to never take Queen’s for granted again.
The mode of teaching is not beneficial, at all. Teacher led, with no discussion elements, which I believe, for literature is crucial. Attendance is huge. Missing 3 classes for any reason; sickness, bereavement, a plane crash or house fire means that you are unable to sit your final exam in that class. No exceptions! So, I can’t skip these riveting classes, but I believe in spending my time wisely, so I use class time to update Pinterest boards and write articles. As I’m writing this, in the middle of a class, the student in front of me is knitting. Yesterday the boy beside me spent two hours playing Slither.io.
Some of our classes start at 8am. The 40-minute metro and the fact that I am not a morning person makes this rather grim so I hope you can fully feel my pain here. Our Wednesday timetable is just fab (note the sarcasm). The first class starts at 8:30am and our last class of the day ends at 7pm.
I do believe that every cloud has its silver lining. The huge cumulonimbus, slate-grey cloud of Nanterre University is surrounded by the beauty of the French strike. It’s no secret the French love their strikes, and every so often an email pops up announcing a strike that means classes are not mandatory and I can sleep in (past sunrise) and spend a day exploring Paris.
Another shock to the system in France is that it's normal to always write your name as ‘SURNAME, First Name.’ Not that strange, but ‘HANNA, Emily’ and ‘GILL, Blyth’ means that we are frequently referred to as Jill and Hannah.
The mode of marking is incredibly strange. Everything is marked out of 20, however you will not achieve higher than 16. I’ve been told by my teachers that this is because they do not believe anyone can achieve excellence. Encouraging. Another teacher explained that 16/20 is for students, 18/20 is for professors and 20/20 is for God- who to my knowledge is not enrolled in Nanterre.
Finally, let me enlighten you on my villain origin story.
Oral presentations are a rather popular mode of assessment in our beloved French University, which isn’t that unusual. For some of our classes we are required to deliver a solo presentation, and for others we are allowed to deliver in pairs. For this specific class, Blyth and I were working together on a presentation about Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. We divided the workload, researched and developed a pretty impressive presentation, in our humble opinion. D-Day rolls around, we enter the class.
Off to a rocky start as the teacher announces she actually wanted us to prepare a close reading to present, not an oral presentation on the novel. Now this could very easily be a simple miscommunication, but when we both asked in the two classes prior, we both felt that it could have been made clearer, nevertheless, she said we could still present- not without a few digs and snide remarks from her throughout the class!
Halfway through the class, we get up to present, I’m reading our introduction and the first section, Blyth the second section and conclusion. I start, she stops me. She tells me to stop looking at my notes and PULLS A FACE. I start again, she stops me. I’m talking too fast (full disclosure this is kind of a fair remark I believe.) Third time lucky, I start again- nervous and shaking. I finish and hand over to Blyth, who I notice is also rather shaky- very unlike her. Once I wasn’t reading, I took the opportunity to look over to our teacher, her page of notes was completely blank, and she was flipping through her folder with such intensity as if it were Vogue. She only looked up from what I can imagine must have been riveting lesson plans to peer at our classmates, very much as if looking for a reaction?
Finally, we finished. The class applauds! She announces that she will not be marking our work because she doesn’t think it's ours!
Excusez-moi, plagiarism?
A brief back and forth ensues, we assure her that our presentation is our own work, she says that we didn’t include enough quotes. We point out where we included quotes, she now says that it wasn’t in sections the way she would expect.
Pick a problem.
We sat down, frustrated, embarrassed, and fed up with this school. A fellow student goes against the tyrant and turns to tell us he enjoyed our presentation, that it was well done and doesn’t understand why she reacted that way. Another girl in the class circled her finger by her temple- ‘psycho.’ They were on our side.
I’ll speed this up, we spoke to her at the end of class to be met with the more incoherent and flimsy excuses, she settled on a methodology difference, understandable if she hadn’t jumped to plagiarism, quotations and mode of presentation first. (A quick side note to say this teacher has also not added us to ‘Coursenligne,’ which is where the online resources for the class get uploaded.) As soon as we exit, we email our coordinator to transfer classes. Dramatic? Slightly, yes. Now, I’m an incredibly non-confrontational person, verging on a doormat I’ll not lie. I don’t believe in causing a scene or making enemies, but nonetheless, Blyth and I attend these classes solely to get a grade, if a teacher is adamant she will not grade our work, and knowingly provides resources to other students but declines to let us access, there is clearly an issue.
A huge round of applause to our coordinator (who is one of the few people who has made this entire exchange easier) for her swift sorting out of the issue and to our lovely new teacher, who makes us clap before each other's presentation to help with the nerves.
À bientôt
Emily Hanna is a third year English Literature and both a Culture Deputy Editor and Health and Lifestyle Columnist at The Scoop