Aero: Hannah Miller – France 2018 – Life at School

Posted by LEAF Architect on Tuesday, September 11, 2018 · Leave a Comment

Aero: Hannah Miller – France 2018 – Life at School

…

Hannah Miller

School in France is very different to the school we know in America. When I went to shadow my host student I was surprised by all of the freedom that she was given and by some of the subjects that she was learning about. The high school I attended is very big so going to the school in France everything was so much smaller, from the class sizes to the cafeteria.

One of the main differences that I found fascinating was the amount of freedom that is given to the students. Unlike America school does not go from 8:00 in the morning until 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon with back to back classes. Depending on the classes that you are taking a student may only be in school for two, maybe three hours a day and sometimes the day does not start until 12:00 in the afternoon. School does go a lot later in France than in America. My host student was not done with some of her classes until 6:00 at night some days. When students do not have class they are trusted to leave campus and come back when they have a class. In America or at least at my school that I attended there was no trust between the faculty and the students. I was only able to leave for lunch when I was a senior in high school. Even to get out the door I had to show the faculty my special pass and if I did not have it or had lost it there was no chance I was going anywhere for lunch but back to the cafeteria. When comparing the school environment in France to the one in America, school is more like prison in America than anything else.

In France students have to choose their career path much earlier in life than students do in America. When the students in France move on from their equivalent to our middle school they have to decide what track they want to continue their career in. If the student decided that they no longer wanted to be in the track that they had chosen, then they would have to start at the beginning of the new track. In France their high school equivalent is called lycée and during their years at lycée they are taking classes specific to their chosen track. At the end of lycée there is a big test that they have to take and pass to move on to the university. My host student’s cousin had just taken it when I met her and she was talking about how nervous she was about passing it. What I gathered from her trying to explain in to me was that this test basically decides your future and if you do not do well on it then you may not be able to go into the career path that you would like to.

Another big difference between the school environment in France and in America is the respect that the teachers and the students have for each other. In France there was a room dedicated just to students that teachers were not allowed to go into which I thought was and would have been so nice to have in high school. In America the teachers have the teacher lounge that students are not allowed into but there is no space for a student to go that the teachers do not have access to. Some of my fellow classmates that went on the trip with me said that during class the students would be climbing on the desks and not listening to the teacher and were just being very disrespectful, but all of the classrooms that I went into and was a part of there was none of that. All of the students would listen to the teacher and do the task that was given to them for the most part.

A small difference that I noticed was the lack of decorations in the halls in the school. There were no posters, signs, nothing on the walls in the halls of the school. Everything was very plain including the walls in the classrooms. When you go into a classroom or walk down the hall of an American high school there are posters and signs and sometimes lights all on the walls. Most classrooms in France also had a projector and white board in their classrooms, there were no Smartboards. Even in the computer rooms for computer classes there were almost never enough computers for each student in the class to have one.

While in France I also had the opportunity to sit on almost like a panel in one of the classes I was a part of and I was asked a bunch of questions about America. I was asked questions about a whole bunch of different things from what my thoughts were on president Trump, if I am scared to go to school with the gun laws being what they are, to what my French stereotypes were as an American. This was probably the favorite class that I was able to sit in on and observe. I really enjoyed being able to talk about my political views and not be worried about offending someone, for the most part. I was also very surprised by how much the students in France knew about American politics when I know nothing about French politics. I asked one of the professors about why that was and she sad that because America is a superpower and one of the leading countries in the world they make it a priority to keep up with what is going on here. It is very important to them to know what is going on in the world and I wish it was as important in our education system.

I really enjoyed being able to see what school is like in another country. There were some differences that I liked and there were some that I did not, but for the most part school life in France is so much better than in America (In my opinion). When looking at just the environments of the two schools you can really show someone a good example of why some of the problems that we are having in America in schools is not a problem in other countries.

Hannah Miller
Study Abroad – France 2018 @ FLCC

…