Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

I read an article in the Conexion today about integrating yourself into French society and one piece of advice was to speak French to the kids and ban English TV which set me thinking.

The family giving that advice was effectively robbing their kids of any chance of being bilingual which is a major advantage that you can give your children by living here. Moreover, isn’t that trying to be “more French than the French”? After all, a growing number of the French are finding that speaking English is an advantage in todays world. OK, France as a country may not like that situation, but that’s the reality.

Friends of ours are finding that by only having French TV and having their children going to French school that it is already becoming harder for them to communicate with their 10 year old (they’ve been here about 5 years). She’s not as fluent in English as she is in French and that situation can only get worse (or do you think “better”?) as she gets older. I’m sure that it’s not only her English language that she’s losing but her British culture too.

What about her parents? They only watch French TV so are gradually becoming more detached from the reality of life in the UK. Is that a good thing? I’m sure that they’ll not lose their ability to speak English fluently but if they stay here another 20 years, I suspect that going back to the UK would be like moving to a foreign country. Just look back to 1986 to see what I mean. How much has the UK changed since Thatcher? You don’t fully understand French taxation now I’m sure, but with a 20 year gap, would you understand UK taxation? I think not. Scotland didn’t have it’s own government then but it could even be a separate country in 20 years time: how much would that change UK culture? Even if you’d left as little as ten years ago, chances are you’d not know the English terms for e-mail and the like and be quoting your Minitel address to people. But you get the idea – the longer that they are out of touch with UK life, the more it will seem like a foreign country.

As for your kids: remember that they’ll have spent a much larger proportion of their lives “abroad”, so will they still consider the UK as “home”? What will you do if/when you decide to move back to the UK and they don’t want to move to a “foreign country”? Because, if you’re talking 10 or more years, it would be a foreign country to them.

So how French do you want to be? How French do you want your children to be? How French do you want your grandchildren to be?

They’re not easy questions to answer, but you should think about them.

Arnold

Whilst most countries in the world tend to move forward in terms of the use and usability of technology, it’s often the case in France that it’s one step forward, two backward.

Case in point: just a few weeks ago we noticed that Carrefour had, at last, started to accept foreign cards in their petrol stations and we thought that this was the first sign of the “promised land” of being able to use foreign cards in all petrol stations. Sadly, no. A matter of days later, the only petrol station that we know of within about 100 miles of us that did accept foreign cards on Sunday installed brand new petrol pumps and no longer accepts foreign cards!

This seems particularly short-sighted in light of the experience of the petrol station closest to the airport. Last year, it was “upgraded” from a manned station to being fully automated. Previous to that, there were always queues of cars getting petrol. Now, there are never any queues because the bulk of their potential customers can’t use the pumps anymore. Funnily enough, the pumps offer the choice of four languages but just don’t accept any foreign cards.

Why is that though? After all, even in France the old style cards will be phased out by the end of this year and just about all the other countries in Europe seem to be issuing new chip & PIN cards.

Petrol stations aren’t the only example of this craziness. The ultimate expression of that is the village of Tautavel which lives on tourism. Last year, due to the complications that the combined introduction of foreign chip & PIN cards plus the various banks upgrading their machines to accept them, all the tourist shops decided to stop accepting cards altogether. So, what happens now if you arrive at the till will EUR 100 or so of souvenir pots etc. is that they’ll point you towards the cash machine across the road. Now, for French people, that’s fine as they have debit cards and therefore don’t pay any more to withdraw cash from the ATM than they would to use their card in the shop BUT almost all foreigners use credit cards and therefore would have to pay cash advance fees plus interest.

Overall effect? Well, it’s fine for the French or for those who are buying small quantities of souvenirs but the customers wanting to make larger purchases just walk away. The shops can’t understand why: after all, in their eyes, there’s no difference in cost for the customer as they’re pretty much entirely unaware of the extra costs they’re asking their customers to pay.

The other consequence is that several of the shops are looking rather shaky and seem sure to close. I suspect that the same could easily happen to the airport petrol station too.

Arnold

If you’ve been watching the “moving to France” TV series that seem to be on almost non-stop these days, you’d think that there would be no problem in getting kids into school here. After all, the kids just seem to go to the local school and if they don’t speak French, it doesn’t seem to be a problem. Perhaps you’re thinking that the presence of a TV crew eases the process considerably and I’ve no doubt that it does. However, we’ve friends and aquaintances in other regions of France and they’ve never had a problem in getting their children enrolled in school regardless of age or ability in French.

Things are different in the Pyrenees Orientale though.

If your child isn’t a fluent French speaker by the time they hit 16, then they will not be educated by any school in the state education system within the Pyrenees Orientale. What happens at that age is that you are passed onto Inspection Academic who in turn pass you on to the College Albert Camus and specifically the CIPPA class so that you can learn French and thereby get into an appropriate lycee (for age 17-18). There is only one problem with that scenario: Madame Benzine runs CIPPA as a remedial class for children from French speaking countries and just treats any non-French speakers as an inconvenience to be gotten rid of as soon as possible. The net effect of that is that if your child has no other option than CIPPA (and they won’t be given any other option if they reach 16 and don’t speak French fluently here), then that’s the end of their education.

Surely, not? Don’t children have some right to education up to 18? I thought so, but apparently the French locally read the fact that schooling is optional after age 16 as meaning that they don’t need to provide it and in particular don’t need to provide any means to teach you French after age 16. Having said that, everyone in the administrative side of education seems to think that CIPPA does actually teach French (and perhaps it is supposed to) but Madame Benzine chooses to ignore that and seems to go out of her way to encourage non-French speakers to leave the class as soon as possible. “You missed a class because your car was being repaired and the bus drivers were on strike? You should have walked in”. “How? It’s over 30km: it would have taken five or six hours”. “I gave him a question sheet every morning and he didn’t answer any of the questions on it. He has no motivation.” Emmm, he can’t read French and couldn’t understand the questions. “It’s mathematics: of course he could understand it:. He’s just lazy. ” Actually, no, because the questions are entirely in French. That’s the kind of person running CIPPA in Perpignan.

It’s not much easier from age 11 to 16 either, as all colleges that don’t have to take your child, quite simply won’t take them if they don’t speak fluent French (and I do stress “fluent”: they won’t accept anything less). Instead, they will direct you toward the Inspection Academic in Perpignan who in turn will pass directly to the CIPPA class. If your child is in that age range, you can get them accepted into the college designated for your commune but even then it’s not always easy but never accept the CIPPA option if your child is in that age range.

What about primary school then? That’s a little easier than the college as they are attached to the various mairies therefore the one associated with your commune will have to take your children from age 6 to 11. However, those not attached to your commune will usually refuse to accept your child unless they happen to be fluent French speakers. Would you be happy with your 11 year old having to get up around 6am to catch the first bus into town, then changing buses in the centre of town to get to a remedial class in a country where they don’t speak the language? That’s the option you’ll be given if you don’t push the matter with your own mairie.

We have, surprisingly, managed nursery school with, so far, no problems. However, we fully expect that James will encounter problems getting into primary school in this area. Even now, the local doctor couldn’t understand why he couldn’t speak French. Why would he? If we spoke French to him he’d just end up with a dreadful French accent not to mention bad grammar and vocabulary. Oh, and he’d not learn to speak English.

The strange thing is that the French always talk about integrating immigrants into French society. I don’t know about elsewhere, but in the Pyrenees Orientale, it’s definitely all talk because there’s certainly no support given to you if your children don’t speak fluent French.

The other strange thing is that the teachers (except Madame Benzine) all seem to be quite supportive of the kids and fully expect that children of all ages will pick up the language fairly quickly. The problem seems to be that the administrators simply won’t let them try and without the approval of an administrator you just can’t get into a school.

Arnold

A week ago we thought that the coming week would be relatively quiet as the bookings were quite patchy but we received quite a flood of bookings during the week and are just about completely full now. We had three new bookings this morning before the breakfasts were over!

That seems to be typical over most of France at the moment going by the enquiries flowing through Chambre d’Hote and Our Gites in recent weeks, some of which have the whiff of panic about them. However, there are some regions with accommodation availability at the moment if you look outside the normal places around France. They aren’t dumps either – friends of ours still have availability in their absolutely beautiful chambre d’hote in Burgundy.

As usual, next week will probably be quite different as the French will be finishing off their holidays next Saturday night leaving French accommodation available for everyone else for the first time since around mid-July. Thus, chaos can be expected on the roads up to the end of next weekend. That’s worrying me a bit as I have to catch a plane to Santiago from Barcelona next Friday.

Must head on – yet another night of mainly overnighters has left us with five rooms to makeup for this evening. Thankfully most of the bookings for the coming week are for several days.

Arnold

The August 15th holiday in France produces one of the highest levels of traffic in the country, topped only by the first weekend in August. All across the country today (the closest weekend to the 15th) tempers are getting frayed and cars getting shunted with the time taken to travel from A to B increased massively regardless of whether A or B are 15 kilometres or 1500 kilometres apart. Even turning into our driveway can often take 5 minutes!

To give you an idea of how much traffic this represents, they have a little sign going onto the motorway at Perpignan which lists the traffic conditions under four headings. The top two options are the only ones used on this particular weekend: the photo is what they consider to be “difficult” conditions (ie the traffic is still moving most of the time, but at something like 20km/h) with the next one up being “blocked”.

It’s not just the traffic of course but all the trappings of tourism that experience “difficult” conditions today. Naturally, everyone knows that it will be a nightmare to travel this weekend so they try to get going on the Friday or even the Thursday thus spreading the chaos over an even longer period. As the 15th falls on a Tuesday this year, there’s a fair to middling chance that next weekend will be just as bad. Just this morning the new owner of the hotel in the next village came round to ask if he could borrow some sheets as he’d completely ran out due to the very high number of overnighters that this spreading creates and we’re round to the laundry several times a week now with very full loads of sheets & towels.