Re: American Jingoism

En réponse à nicole perrin <nicole_eap@...>:

>
> I'll delurk for this one a bit.  I don't know that 1,750
> would be considered a small high school in the US, my own
> high school (one of three in the city) consisted of four
> grades (9-12) and had about 1,200 students, and was
> definitely considered average.  In less densely populated
> areas schools can be quite small and are also often
> regional to make up a more reasonable number of students.
>
When I think that my 900-students high school was considered over-crowded... :))

As for language studies, in France we have always one mandatory language (taken
from the first year of junior high school), and one optional language (begun
two years after) taken only in non-technical studies. In my Junior High, for
first language we had the choice between English and German. And for the second
language, students of German first language were obliged to take English as
second language, while students of English first language had the choice
between German and Spanish (I had English as first language and Spanish as
second). My Junior High also offered a course in Latin, but that was not
considered a language class, and it was a mandatory course, as much as maths or
history (and it began in the second year of Junior High). In High School
though, it was only an option, part of a set of options among which you were
obliged to choose one.

Of course, offered courses depend on the school teachers available. My Junior
High was small, and thus offered only a limited amount of languages and the
only classical language available was Latin. But depending on the school, you
could have also Italian and/or Portuguese (other languages are normally not
available in Junior High. Modern Greek is exceedingly rare, you won't find
Japanese at all, and regional languages are still frowned upon. Our previous
minister of Education even said: "I prefer making informaticians mastering
French and English than sheperds speaking Corsican and Occitan", showing the
prejudice regional languages suffer in France... :(( ), and as classical
language you can also have Ancient Greek (or have the choice between Latin and
Ancient Greek. In Junior High, you can have only one classical language. In
literary studies in High School, you can have both).

At least one language is always required to graduate from High School, and in
non-technical studies the optional second language is mandatory (yeah, I know
that a mandatory option sounds strange, but it's actually the term used by the
educational system :)) ). In some literary courses, you even have three living
languages mandatory, as well as Latin and Ancient Greek. Among all those
languages, one at least has to be English (but it needn't be the first one you
take. Some schools offer German or Spanish as first language). After High
School though, language courses often disappear, except in Grandes Ecoles, like
the one I attended (where you had mandatory courses of English, and could also
have optional courses of Spanish or German, as well as an introduction to
Japanese. But those courses nearly had to be organised by the student s who
wanted to participate it. We had to organise the schedule ourselves to get a
room to study with the teacher for Japanese for instance).

And despite all the attention I gave to language courses in France, I must
emphasize the fact that those courses are considered by most teachers and
students like a loss of time and energy. Even English courses are considered
futile and useless. As I said in another post, a French person is not supposed
to speak any other language. A French person is not supposed to leave France
anyway, and if the person does, it will be in one-week holidays where the
person will take for granted that wherever s/he goes, they will make the effort
to talk to him/her in French.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.