There's a lot of wisdom to be discovered in life. Like why it rains down and not up, how planes stay in the air, why people, including me, have an irrational fear of sharks and yet have no problem running in front of cars to get to the other side of the road slightly quicker when it's proven statistically that you're more than a thousand times more likely to be killed by a car than a shark. I'm even scared of sharks when I swim in lakes in which there is no chance there could be a shark, in fact I'm even scared of sharks in swimming pools... but that's because they always turn up where you least expect it, and if you believe 'Deep blue sea' they can hide under a metre of water in a flooded kitchen.
Anyway, the point is, there's a lot we could be learning, and yet we prefer to do other things, like get drunk. Why? Because learning means you have to open your brain up to new ideas, and then, once these new ideas are in there, we allow them to sink in, and from then on they colour, ever so slightly, the way we see the world. An example. I'm doing a Masters in Foreign Language Teaching in Strasbourg. I used to think I was an ok teacher. Then I started this Masters and I found out I knew nothing about the theories behind teaching, but because I got by fine just doing it off the cuff, I was never too worried about it. But now my teachers have filled my brain with these tiny hooks, strands of information designed I suppose to make us better teachers. For example, apparently language teaching should involve providing practical words and expressions for everyday situations, and should revolve around presentation, practice, production, and finally evaluation. This is fine, good, useful even, it's made me reflect more about what I do in the classroom and why.
So that's all fine and dandy, but what hapens when the teacher who is teaching you to be a 'better' teacher isn't a very good teacher him or herslef? Does that make you a worse teacher if you believe and do what they say? And as I said the things they tell you remain in your head, colouring everything whether you want it or not! For example, we have teachers from the department of the Science of education who can't teach. They mumble, or speak so fast you can't take notes, and mock the students when they give a wrong answer... all good and useful things- 50 years ago!- but now we live in a politically correct age where, thankd goodness, teachers are enouraged to help their students learn, not break their spirits. So why do so many teachers in France still do this? One, because once you're a teacher, you're in for life, and basically you can't teach an old dog new tricks. And two, because they enjoy it. It gives them a sense of power. The French can be a very serious people... thye can be fun too, but in general a serious attitude to life in encouraged, and this means youmust know your place in society and stick to it.
Another teacher teaches a course about preparing classes- basically he almost never talks about how to prepare classes but rather about how not to- because he hates everything about the French education system. So we all know what we shouldn't be doing, breaking the kids spirits etc, but we knew that anyway! But we don't have any real idea of what we should be doing! Well, not that we learned from that teacher anyway.
In short, French education is free, but it comes at a price in terms of quality. Why am I here? It's free and means I can stay longer in France. Voila.
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