Normandy vs WGHS

Approaching the end of my working and my stay in France, it has occurred to me that I have spent more than a couple of conversations with members of staff trying to explain why this school is so different from the school I went to.

Wolverhampton Girls’ High School has an atmosphere any Old Girl finds it difficult to express. Imagine the hardship endured when you have to discuss it in a foreign language.

So why is WGHS so different from Colleges Roncherolles and Jean Monnet here in Normandy?

The first thing I always find necessary to explain is that we were subject to an entrance exam to join the Girls’ High. None of us entrants knew where we were ranked once we were successful, so from then on it was a level playing field, but nonetheless, we had to be fairly academic to get in. And that is, without giving non-WGHS readers the wrong impression, the general mindset of the school. You work, generally speaking, towards good grades and a decent education. The vast, vast majority go to university afterwards.

French schools, as far as my experience goes, shy far away from any sort of categorising of students. It stems back to the Revolution and the abolition of a monarchy, and manifests itself now in a dislike of elitism. Personally I have found it hard – and no doubt proper, full-time teachers have it worse than I do – to push pupils with talent in certain subjects, for fear of losing others and having whole lessons disrupted as a result. This ends in being clever seeming less “cool” and everybody losing.

I firmly believe that there was a respect for teachers at the Girls’ High that is at least partially lacking here. As I began to consider this paragraph I stopped myself, wondering if perhaps this is more due to age, and perhaps in other British schools it is, but at WGHS I honestly believe that even when we wound up teachers, we were appreciative of their efforts. It is not always the opposite here, as I have had very happy and thankful children in my classes and seen them in others. Indeed all classes have at least some great pupils, and many of them greet their teachers with smiles in the corridor. But regularly I have left class feeling downtrodden, having sometimes walked three kilometres to school with my brick of a laptop to show the students videos, or having spent two hours the night before preparing a more fun task and having come in early to organise it, and have absolutely no effort in return. Instead I have had to get angry, shout and impose marks out of twenty to get them to even sit on their chair and make a poster. But they are children and they will hopefully learn.

What else I think differs is the fault of absolutely nobody and that is the kind of people that go to both schools. Take a breath and stay with me. For a start I had a single-sex secondary education. The difference really does speak for itself. These schools in France are very much in the middle of nowhere, and countryside kids are much different from town and city kids. They have had different upbringings; they have had different things (and different numbers of things) to do; they have different prospects for the future. Academic success is not key here for most children because they are not heading into that sort of lifestyle and so gaining the average mark is a mark of pride and not of failure. It saddens me that few of them aspire to an alternative lifestyle, but I am the product of another style of education that taught me to look for one.

Nothing is all bad. I remember proudly the day the oldest students that I teach worked with me on a recipe for pancakes. No points for guessing what day this was! They had to start by highlighting everything they knew and understood, and then we gradually developed the rest until, by the end of the lesson, I saw more than a couple fully-highlighted sheets.

All of the schools I have now experienced do have some kind of community spirit. It is only natural when you spend so long in one building with the same group of people: for Roncherolles it might be the cross country race which made it into the local paper, for Jean Monnet their annual Carneval, and for WGHS, House Arts, competing in dance, drama and music (apart from those other competitions to be found all year round).

I could go on, but this is merely some food for thought. There is always the possibility I just got old If there is anyone willing to share experiences with me – British, French, American, whatever, I would be interested to hear from you! Please feel free to use the comments box!