I interrogated hrrumph I mean had a chat with a GIRL who has also moved schools from R's old school to his new school to this year. GIRLS are in general quite a different species from boys and it's always interesting to get their perspective.
When I asked her how she was getting on, this girl said, from a position of high scorn, that her new school was very good, she loved her new school, She LOVED school, she wanted to go to another school where they did sport for half the curriculum and that anyway she didn't have to work hard to get an "avarage" of 18. (French children always talk about their avarage, for example, they will say to me (in French) 'oh, I like English I have an avarage of 18). She asked R what he got for dictation, and R said 0 and she said nothing. Good job R doesn't require sympathy. I was driving at the time and wisely kept quiet. We were on our way to theatre club and I could not work out if I was hearing a piece of theatre, wishful thinking or the truth.
Girls are very complicated, from two girls, depending on who they are talking to or about, you can get at least 15 versions of the truth some of which appear to be quite incompatible with each other.
I started to wonder if girls weren't involved in subversive behaviour at school so asked R what girls get up to and he said texting in the toilets. He really is the most wonderful grass.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
It's a Knockout Music Test Tomorrow...
To get you in the mood, listen to the theme tune from "I'ts a Knockout" whilst reading this blog (Herb Alpert Bean Bag) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH37n8u_VcM
Now this takes the biscuit. Actually so many things take the biscuit at R's school that I don't think there are any more biscuits left in the packet. You might be wondering how French music lessons can be transformed into a figure for the mark chart, well now I know...
Tomorrow R has a music test, I prefer to call it a trial but R assures me it is a test as it is marked. He has to stand up in front of the class with another boy and sing a song about Ulysses 4 verses and 5 refrains. They start off with 10 points. The teacher puts on a recording of the accompaniment, and as they both sing takes marks OFF for errors of rhythm, diction, melody and text....I'm sorry but this sounds like a round of "It's a Knock Out", I can almost hear Stuart Hall wheezing with laughter as he watches the competitors making desperate exhibitions of themselves.
Listen to the wheeze here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_eK0zegE4w
My dears, there is nothing more amusing than watching our European cousins dressed as penguins and falling arse over tip.
I've just discovered on Wikipedia that It's a Knockout was bought off the FRENCH, under a Jeux Sans Frontières franchise!
Well that explains it!
(don't worry pop pickers he got 9 out of 10 and that's what COUNTS)
Now this takes the biscuit. Actually so many things take the biscuit at R's school that I don't think there are any more biscuits left in the packet. You might be wondering how French music lessons can be transformed into a figure for the mark chart, well now I know...
Tomorrow R has a music test, I prefer to call it a trial but R assures me it is a test as it is marked. He has to stand up in front of the class with another boy and sing a song about Ulysses 4 verses and 5 refrains. They start off with 10 points. The teacher puts on a recording of the accompaniment, and as they both sing takes marks OFF for errors of rhythm, diction, melody and text....I'm sorry but this sounds like a round of "It's a Knock Out", I can almost hear Stuart Hall wheezing with laughter as he watches the competitors making desperate exhibitions of themselves.
Listen to the wheeze here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_eK0zegE4w
My dears, there is nothing more amusing than watching our European cousins dressed as penguins and falling arse over tip.
I've just discovered on Wikipedia that It's a Knockout was bought off the FRENCH, under a Jeux Sans Frontières franchise!
Well that explains it!
(don't worry pop pickers he got 9 out of 10 and that's what COUNTS)
Nil points! Could do better?
Now R is at the school around the corner he comes home for lunch. I really enjoy his company and he regales me with funny school tales.
Today (spag bol with beans and peas) R gave me his latest results. R did warn me after the last battery of tests that his dictation risked being a very low mark. His friend T, who lives next door and is a very conscientious obsessive conformist only got 6 out of 20, so what chance R, who isn't a perfect writing wizard?
Well, for grammar he got 4 out of 6 which is 13.3333 out of twenty; grammar is not R's strong point, Jolly Good. For dictation he got 0. He revised, he wrote in neat copperplate, and for his efforts he is rewarded with the big zero. This is because they take one point off for every error such as forgetting a comma or accent, and two points off for a spelling mistake. And no points on for anything. R tallied up and strangely he did have 0 exactly, unlike one boy in the class who would have got minus 12 but for some reason the teacher did not apply her method consistently and gave the boy zilch out of 20.
I would give the teacher 0 out of 20 because we couldn't even read her comment, but it started off by
"Be even more attentive; re-read...splodge toss (the handwriting is very small and rather anally retentive). Oh well, at least she didn't write "could do better" which would be not only a cliché but also a tautology in this situation.
We are trying to work out a strategy for dictation. It obviously isn't worth trying harder, because R is almost certain to make the number of mistakes required for a zero whatever he does, 1 or 2 at the most. And, he can make many many more errors for free and still only get 0 and not minus something. So it would seem sensible to forget the dictation and concentrate on areas where he is in with a chance of winning points on his school store fidelity card.
Unsurprisingly in the face of this insanity, pupils do all they can to cheat and survive. For example, R tells me, they write the answers on the back of the pritt stick label, and make as if to glue something during the test and peel back a corner to spy on the answers.
New school rule: all pritt sticks to have labels removed by order of Mrs Scruton the Headmistress.
I pointed out to R that they were likely to make more mistakes than ever as they tried to listen to the dictation and squint at their pritt sticks and keep up at the same time.
"There is no question of you cheating though" I said to R sternly.
"No, it doesn't help you" said R
"Yes it does, it helps you get points! But it's bad for your soul. It is better to get 0 than to cheat".
"Well" said R "at my last school they told me I wasn't concentrating even when I got good marks. Here if you get ok marks they say you are very good and concentrating even when you're not concentrating".
I'm not sure what to make of this...
Monday, October 1, 2012
Detention; got to dodge them all
I'm just back from England and reunited with R and we are having a little chat over lunch (lardons with pasta).
"Still no detention eh?" says R, smiling to himself.
"Amazing. You never know when one is going to strike, but so far you've dodged them all...let's try and hold out until half term at least"
"Not many people have got detention yet" says R
"Ooo, then you must be sure not to get one..."
"Only 10 people"
"TEN, out of a class of 25 in the first four weeks?"
R is laughing merrily.
"Are you in a class of renegades?"
"No, just normal"
"What did they get detention for?"
"Not doing homework, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and trying to escape from school without their ID "
"WHAT??? What do you mean they try to escape?"
"Well, they go up to the fence and pretend they are chatting with someone, and then when the person on the gate looks the other way they jump over the fence. That's why the teacher on the gate is always shouting KEEP AWAY FROM THE FENCE. And for homework mum, do you know what they do? When the teacher walks round the class to check the homework is done, if someone hasn't done it, they put someone else's homework in front of them, and then pass it back before the teacher gets to the next person. Sometimes the teacher notices, but they get away with it quite a lot".
For this to make sense you have to understand that French schoolwork is utterly devoid of originality, it involves following instructions and processes to a one-pointed answer that could have been generated by a robot and also they are all trained to have the same handwriting, and therefore it is quite easy to pass off your homework as someone else's.
"Do they often not do their homework then?" I ask.
R shakes his head despairingly, they often do not it seems. (I won't bore you with my ensuing lecture about his homework and the doing thereof).
"There isn't any chewing gum under the seats though" says R, and we agree this is a good thing. "But do you know what they do? The ceiling is made of polystyrene, and when a pen is empty, they get an elastic band and make a sort of catapult, and then the pen sticks in the ceiling..." R muses happily to himself, " By the end of the year the ceiling will be covered in pens..." "Oh yes" I say, "like a sort of hedghog."
No doubt next term there will be a new rule: automatic detention for anyone catapulting an empty pen and embedding it in the polystyrene ceiling. (What next I hear you ask).
I really think R finds it much easier to have a mad, indifferent dictatorship of rules-for-the-breaking than he would be having an actual relationship with any of the staff, and worst of all, having to be nice. He is after all a socially unsophisticated 11 year old growing up in France.
Now we cannot talk about detention without talking about its opposite pole, marks. R tells me he got 18 out of 20 in English, that is, he got 9 out of 10 which is 18 out of 20. I do not understand the maths of educational evaluation in this school and 9 out of 10 sounds better than 18 out of 20 to me. But, either mark is surprising because normally a native English speaker will not get good marks, as being good at English is not the goal. However, R tells me the reason he did not get 7 out of 20 was because he never lets on that he is English and feigns a French accent when he speaks English. In this way, the trainee teacher will not feel threatened or undermined and strike out when an 'i' is not dotted or contest his original English, or use IQ type trickery to catch him out, but will think he is an avarage Frenchie trying really hard and reward him with Marks. Well, R, an interesting technique which has been successful so far, never a day goes by without some excitement. (Whatever next I hear you ask).
"Still no detention eh?" says R, smiling to himself.
"Amazing. You never know when one is going to strike, but so far you've dodged them all...let's try and hold out until half term at least"
"Not many people have got detention yet" says R
"Ooo, then you must be sure not to get one..."
"Only 10 people"
"TEN, out of a class of 25 in the first four weeks?"
R is laughing merrily.
"Are you in a class of renegades?"
"No, just normal"
"What did they get detention for?"
"Not doing homework, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and trying to escape from school without their ID "
"WHAT??? What do you mean they try to escape?"
"Well, they go up to the fence and pretend they are chatting with someone, and then when the person on the gate looks the other way they jump over the fence. That's why the teacher on the gate is always shouting KEEP AWAY FROM THE FENCE. And for homework mum, do you know what they do? When the teacher walks round the class to check the homework is done, if someone hasn't done it, they put someone else's homework in front of them, and then pass it back before the teacher gets to the next person. Sometimes the teacher notices, but they get away with it quite a lot".
For this to make sense you have to understand that French schoolwork is utterly devoid of originality, it involves following instructions and processes to a one-pointed answer that could have been generated by a robot and also they are all trained to have the same handwriting, and therefore it is quite easy to pass off your homework as someone else's.
"Do they often not do their homework then?" I ask.
R shakes his head despairingly, they often do not it seems. (I won't bore you with my ensuing lecture about his homework and the doing thereof).
"There isn't any chewing gum under the seats though" says R, and we agree this is a good thing. "But do you know what they do? The ceiling is made of polystyrene, and when a pen is empty, they get an elastic band and make a sort of catapult, and then the pen sticks in the ceiling..." R muses happily to himself, " By the end of the year the ceiling will be covered in pens..." "Oh yes" I say, "like a sort of hedghog."
No doubt next term there will be a new rule: automatic detention for anyone catapulting an empty pen and embedding it in the polystyrene ceiling. (What next I hear you ask).
I really think R finds it much easier to have a mad, indifferent dictatorship of rules-for-the-breaking than he would be having an actual relationship with any of the staff, and worst of all, having to be nice. He is after all a socially unsophisticated 11 year old growing up in France.
Now we cannot talk about detention without talking about its opposite pole, marks. R tells me he got 18 out of 20 in English, that is, he got 9 out of 10 which is 18 out of 20. I do not understand the maths of educational evaluation in this school and 9 out of 10 sounds better than 18 out of 20 to me. But, either mark is surprising because normally a native English speaker will not get good marks, as being good at English is not the goal. However, R tells me the reason he did not get 7 out of 20 was because he never lets on that he is English and feigns a French accent when he speaks English. In this way, the trainee teacher will not feel threatened or undermined and strike out when an 'i' is not dotted or contest his original English, or use IQ type trickery to catch him out, but will think he is an avarage Frenchie trying really hard and reward him with Marks. Well, R, an interesting technique which has been successful so far, never a day goes by without some excitement. (Whatever next I hear you ask).
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