French education
During the past two days, I've been getting a feel for what my classes are going to be like, working out logistics, and hoping that the transition to a European-style university will start getting a little smoother.
This is what I've gathered so far about the French educational system. Because nobody has actually told me this explicitly, and I'm still not perfect at understanding, there might be faults. In France, the high school equivalent, lycee, is already fairly specialized; starting in thier first year of lycee (secondaire), students have to choose one of three subject paths to study. While specializing in literature (humanities), science (math and science), or industrial science, they continue to take courses outside of their concentration, but those classes don't count for as much of their grade. During their second (primaire) and third (terminale) years of lycee, they take the Baccalaureat, or Bac, test, which covers pretty much every subject they've taken and acts as a qualifier for higher education. Results are published and everyone knows who got which score. It's possible to do very well if you do excellently on some portions of the Bac and not on others, because university, tech schools, self-directed education, trade schools, and the grandes ecoles are all very specialized and require good scores on the relevant subjects. The five options I've listed are all acceptable options: not everyone goes on to college as we think of it. If you want to be a doctor, for instance, you go to a special medical school right after lycee. The grandes ecoles are just as specialized, but extremely small, selective, and prestigious- their intention, and achieved goal, is to create an elite in their area. For example, the Ecole National d'Administration's graduates fill over half of high-ranking French government posts, and the top five ranked students from the graduating class get to pick their starting post. It's very rare to receive a liberal arts education in your late teens-early twenties here. The Sorbonne, or Paris IV, is a university made up of many different faculties, so people call it "le fac". You enroll yourself in one faculte or department and only take classes in that department. It's pretty difficult to switch subjects, and if you do, you have to start from the beginning again (with as many extra years of study as that requires.) From what I've heard, it's bigger, more independent, and more impersonal than American universities, and definitely a lot more so than American small liberal arts colleges. Also, people are older by the time they start le fac or whatever else they're doing. Most people graduate from lycee a year after American seniors, and then some people take a year off to continue their studies in order to qualify for their higher education. Basically, I think many of my first-year classmates may already be in their 20s. I'll see. Because le fac is so big and impersonal, many AYA people have complained of having difficulty meeting people in their classes. I'm going to try to talk to the professor and to the people in the classes; I hope it works out.
I'm going to take either two or three courses at the Sorbonne, in far-flung campuses across the city. One campus is literally on the northern outer city limits. (I say two or three because I'm going to go to all three and see whether it seems like too much work or too much time.) I missed the first meeting of one of the classes, because I just went in to see the directrice today and we figured out that the history class I had signed up for wouldn't work out in terms of the schedule, but the one I switched to met yesterday. Luckily, another AYA student (Deeona from Yale) is in the class so she's going to fill me in on what I missed. I'm taking a double-credit intro to French literature, a class on French society in the first half of the twentieth century, and an art history class that promises to teach me how to look at painting, sculpture and architecture. Besides these classes, I'm taking two courses offered jointly by AYA and the Tulane study abroad program with Sorbonne professors, in French of course. These are a class in the intersection of French literature and cinema (Jean-Marie was very excited about the selection of movies we're going to watch, and the professor is a director in his own right and is very likeable), and a class on museology, which involves going to museums, learning about how and why the museums and exhibits were put together, and writing essays analyzing works of art and how they can be displayed best to the public. I've gone to the first meetings of both of these, and they seem great. The films and the museums are two of my favorite things about being in Paris (they show classic movies at so many theaters for cheap prices all the time here), and I'll be able to appreciate them better if I know what they're trying to do.
Yesterday, I went to the Musee Maillol, where there was an exhibit of Marilyn Monroe photographs taken shortly before her death by Bert Stern. There was a special guided tour as part of the "7 jours du septieme" (arrondissement) festival. She is definitely beautiful, and I could see a more human side to her in many of the close-ups. But the photos were mostly nude, and tread the line between art and porn, especially because she was trying to look sexy. There were a few parents with kids in the exhibit- I guess the French really do have different standards of what they think is appropriate for kids. I also went back to the Grande Galerie de l'Evolution, which was truly impressive. They use an enormous collection of taxidermied animals to great effect in displays about real scientific concepts like defining a species, recombination, environmental effects on populations, and so on, not to mention the parade of rhinoceri, giraffes, yaks, and elephants that hits your eyes (to use the French expression) as soon as you walk in. There's even a galerie des especes eteints, a moving room with darkened lights that displays endangered and extinct taxidermied animals and plants. There aren't any surviving taxidermied dodos, but there is an old model of one from the late 1700s. Mixed in with the evolution of existing living things is a temporary exhibit on dragons. One boy was understandably confused, and kept asking his mother, "But dragons exist, don't they?" It talked about reasons for why dragons exist in mythologies around the world, common attributes, and purposes and characterisations. It included many dragon tales, old "dragon skeletons" and "dragon eggs" and "dragon teeth" (with identifications as mismatched skeletons and the like), and interactive movies and stations that were meant for kids but were just as fun for an 18-year-old. Both the biology and the fantasy references made me happy.
Among other things, I applied for a carte de sejour today and worked out many logistics. I also met Winston, who used to go to Roxbury Latin (Winsor's brother school), for lunch; he's doing a program at the Institut Catholique, which, in addition to theology classes on all world religions, teaches political science, film criticism, art history, and the like. His host family is on welfare, so he has to go get government handout meals which are bad quality, so he has to spend his own money for food. It's a rough situation, especially since he's paying for it from sales of his own artwork at home. He's sleeping in a closet, and once he is whisked off to Beauxbatons will be the next Harry Potter. It was nice to get to see him, and to know that there's someone else with a very similar background here. I also wandered around the Marais and the Place des Vosges and did some window shopping with Yasmine, and spoke with her mostly in French. We saw people selling lulavs and etrogs on the street for Sukkot, and saw a photographer taking pre-wedding pictures of a lovely Jewish couple in the park. I'm having a great time with her.
I've got to start looking at some scholarships for next year, and of course go to sleep. One last thing- I met Sofia Coppola yesterday morning. I was walking down the stairwell (on purpose, to be honest) when she came out of the third floor apartment. I said, "Hi, I live on the fifth floor." She said something like, "Oh. Have a good day." I wasn't sure it was her, but then I google imaged her and confirmed it.
Bonne nuit!
This is what I've gathered so far about the French educational system. Because nobody has actually told me this explicitly, and I'm still not perfect at understanding, there might be faults. In France, the high school equivalent, lycee, is already fairly specialized; starting in thier first year of lycee (secondaire), students have to choose one of three subject paths to study. While specializing in literature (humanities), science (math and science), or industrial science, they continue to take courses outside of their concentration, but those classes don't count for as much of their grade. During their second (primaire) and third (terminale) years of lycee, they take the Baccalaureat, or Bac, test, which covers pretty much every subject they've taken and acts as a qualifier for higher education. Results are published and everyone knows who got which score. It's possible to do very well if you do excellently on some portions of the Bac and not on others, because university, tech schools, self-directed education, trade schools, and the grandes ecoles are all very specialized and require good scores on the relevant subjects. The five options I've listed are all acceptable options: not everyone goes on to college as we think of it. If you want to be a doctor, for instance, you go to a special medical school right after lycee. The grandes ecoles are just as specialized, but extremely small, selective, and prestigious- their intention, and achieved goal, is to create an elite in their area. For example, the Ecole National d'Administration's graduates fill over half of high-ranking French government posts, and the top five ranked students from the graduating class get to pick their starting post. It's very rare to receive a liberal arts education in your late teens-early twenties here. The Sorbonne, or Paris IV, is a university made up of many different faculties, so people call it "le fac". You enroll yourself in one faculte or department and only take classes in that department. It's pretty difficult to switch subjects, and if you do, you have to start from the beginning again (with as many extra years of study as that requires.) From what I've heard, it's bigger, more independent, and more impersonal than American universities, and definitely a lot more so than American small liberal arts colleges. Also, people are older by the time they start le fac or whatever else they're doing. Most people graduate from lycee a year after American seniors, and then some people take a year off to continue their studies in order to qualify for their higher education. Basically, I think many of my first-year classmates may already be in their 20s. I'll see. Because le fac is so big and impersonal, many AYA people have complained of having difficulty meeting people in their classes. I'm going to try to talk to the professor and to the people in the classes; I hope it works out.
I'm going to take either two or three courses at the Sorbonne, in far-flung campuses across the city. One campus is literally on the northern outer city limits. (I say two or three because I'm going to go to all three and see whether it seems like too much work or too much time.) I missed the first meeting of one of the classes, because I just went in to see the directrice today and we figured out that the history class I had signed up for wouldn't work out in terms of the schedule, but the one I switched to met yesterday. Luckily, another AYA student (Deeona from Yale) is in the class so she's going to fill me in on what I missed. I'm taking a double-credit intro to French literature, a class on French society in the first half of the twentieth century, and an art history class that promises to teach me how to look at painting, sculpture and architecture. Besides these classes, I'm taking two courses offered jointly by AYA and the Tulane study abroad program with Sorbonne professors, in French of course. These are a class in the intersection of French literature and cinema (Jean-Marie was very excited about the selection of movies we're going to watch, and the professor is a director in his own right and is very likeable), and a class on museology, which involves going to museums, learning about how and why the museums and exhibits were put together, and writing essays analyzing works of art and how they can be displayed best to the public. I've gone to the first meetings of both of these, and they seem great. The films and the museums are two of my favorite things about being in Paris (they show classic movies at so many theaters for cheap prices all the time here), and I'll be able to appreciate them better if I know what they're trying to do.
Yesterday, I went to the Musee Maillol, where there was an exhibit of Marilyn Monroe photographs taken shortly before her death by Bert Stern. There was a special guided tour as part of the "7 jours du septieme" (arrondissement) festival. She is definitely beautiful, and I could see a more human side to her in many of the close-ups. But the photos were mostly nude, and tread the line between art and porn, especially because she was trying to look sexy. There were a few parents with kids in the exhibit- I guess the French really do have different standards of what they think is appropriate for kids. I also went back to the Grande Galerie de l'Evolution, which was truly impressive. They use an enormous collection of taxidermied animals to great effect in displays about real scientific concepts like defining a species, recombination, environmental effects on populations, and so on, not to mention the parade of rhinoceri, giraffes, yaks, and elephants that hits your eyes (to use the French expression) as soon as you walk in. There's even a galerie des especes eteints, a moving room with darkened lights that displays endangered and extinct taxidermied animals and plants. There aren't any surviving taxidermied dodos, but there is an old model of one from the late 1700s. Mixed in with the evolution of existing living things is a temporary exhibit on dragons. One boy was understandably confused, and kept asking his mother, "But dragons exist, don't they?" It talked about reasons for why dragons exist in mythologies around the world, common attributes, and purposes and characterisations. It included many dragon tales, old "dragon skeletons" and "dragon eggs" and "dragon teeth" (with identifications as mismatched skeletons and the like), and interactive movies and stations that were meant for kids but were just as fun for an 18-year-old. Both the biology and the fantasy references made me happy.
Among other things, I applied for a carte de sejour today and worked out many logistics. I also met Winston, who used to go to Roxbury Latin (Winsor's brother school), for lunch; he's doing a program at the Institut Catholique, which, in addition to theology classes on all world religions, teaches political science, film criticism, art history, and the like. His host family is on welfare, so he has to go get government handout meals which are bad quality, so he has to spend his own money for food. It's a rough situation, especially since he's paying for it from sales of his own artwork at home. He's sleeping in a closet, and once he is whisked off to Beauxbatons will be the next Harry Potter. It was nice to get to see him, and to know that there's someone else with a very similar background here. I also wandered around the Marais and the Place des Vosges and did some window shopping with Yasmine, and spoke with her mostly in French. We saw people selling lulavs and etrogs on the street for Sukkot, and saw a photographer taking pre-wedding pictures of a lovely Jewish couple in the park. I'm having a great time with her.
I've got to start looking at some scholarships for next year, and of course go to sleep. One last thing- I met Sofia Coppola yesterday morning. I was walking down the stairwell (on purpose, to be honest) when she came out of the third floor apartment. I said, "Hi, I live on the fifth floor." She said something like, "Oh. Have a good day." I wasn't sure it was her, but then I google imaged her and confirmed it.
Bonne nuit!
posted by Abby | 11:57 AM
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