Foreign Perspectives

Of course, there are books similar to that in the UK which depict a typical first day in nursery school. The difference is that in France, the drawings in the book look almost identical to the school that James goes to. Not because the drawings are of his school but rather that the schools are very standardised in France. Not so long ago for instance, if it was October 5th and you were in the fifth year then you were on page 5 of the maths book, regardless of where you were in France.

So there’s a very similar little cloakroom in other schools and zero privacy for the kids going to the toilet. Actually, I suspect that the drawing of children going to the toilet would be contrary to one or two laws in the UK.

Anyway, we’ve read the book to James in English. That’s probably not quite what the school intended us to do but to get him fully bilingual we need to balance his French and English; the simplest way to do that at the moment seems to be to use English all the time when he’s at home and keep the French to school time.

Want a laugh? Wendy’s going to propose us as parent representatives for the school board.

No more FP’s for a week as I’m off to Belfast tomorrow and won’t have any computer power ’til Saturday week.