Francofile

On Blogging and Learning

I came across a blog that talks about the uses of blogs as a learning tool.  (http://www.weblogg-ed.com/)  It has some interesting posts and resources.  Some of the info is practical, some philosophical.  One post gets right to the issue of epistemology and the extent to which educators are the gatekeepers of knowledge.  A summary of an interview with David Weinberger, excerpted below, was posted by Will R. on June 28.

"The idea, then, that the best curriculum is set by one person or entity is "hugely problematic." In fact, he said, knowledge has been a social experience forever, and to try to remove that aspect from it "drains the blood" from it. Humans can't get to perfection as the Web has made abundantly clear. So we have to stop trying to fit everyone into the same scope of knowledge. Making the change to a time when schools stop evaluating how individual students remember knowledge and instead evaluate how groups of students construct knowledge is going to take a generation, he said.

( . . . ) This is not easy stuff for educators in general, I think, the idea that we don't own the knowledge. It's what is making it so hard for many schools to adopt these tools in the first place."

Ouch!  Are we really such a bunch of control freaks?  This caught my attention because whereas I like for students to have a lot of responsibility for what and how they learn, I can't help but be thankful for having been "stuffed" with a certain amount of knowledge in school.  Would I have known to colloborate with students to "construct" valid knowledge during my long apprenticeship as a student? This is an oversimplification, of course, since people have different learning styles and motivations for learning.  But the internet has revolutionized the dissemination of knowledge like nothing since the printing press and we educators will be sorting out the implications for a long time to come.  I'll definitely be following this discussion, with an open mind and a dose of skepticism.  I'm planning to assign some weblog writing in a French composition class this fall.  Anybody have any advice?  I'll let y'all know how the experiment goes . . .

Au Revoir or Adieu?

I came across a beautiful post by Amerloque, a long-term American expatriate resident in France.  http://amerloqueparis.blogspot.com/ After talking about the notion of "tradition," Amerloque gives a brief and interesting history of the Samaritaine department store in Paris. I have a long history of shopping at Samaritaine and have always recommended to visitors to Paris that they ride the elevator to the top floor to enjoy one of the best views of the city. You are up high enough to see a lot, but not so high up that everything below looks minuscule. In any case, Samaritaine has been acquired by LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy), a conglomerate specializing in luxury goods. Amerloque describes the reaction in Paris to a recent announcement by LVMH that Sama will close (for work on the structure), perhaps temporarily. Some feel that the curtain has been drawn on Samaritaine forever and that real estate speculation is behind the closing.

LVMH may be more concerned about keeping its shareholders happy than about preserving a Parisian landmark and an important local employer, but beware. If pervasive corporate interests start running Paris, the City of Light may not continue to draw the visitors it currently attracts. Mitterand’s ‘grands travaux,’ a series of public building projects including among others the expansion of the Louvre, the Bastille Opera, and the Musee d’Orsay, revitalized Paris in the late 20^th century. Corporate interests are also capable of generating the capital to carry out major projects, but with the motivation of enriching shareholders and corporate officers, many of whom are foreign and have no stake in the future of the city. If corporations cash in on Paris, it will be for their gain and at the city’s expense in the long term.

Lazy and Rude (And I Don't Mean the Waiters)

A few days ago Reuters wire carried a story about three waiters fired from the New York restaurant "21." They filed a $5 million lawsuit claiming they were fired because they're French. Two claim they were falsely accused of drinking wine on the job. One was accused of making an obscene gesture at a chef. Television commentator Tucker Carlson used the story as a spring-board for a dialog. (A transcript of this segment of the program is available on the Miquelon.org web site.)

I don't know about the merits of the lawsuit, but Carlson had his brain set on auto pilot, stringing together cliché upon stereotype upon cliché. The dialog included such insightful statements as "it's the restaurant's fault. You hire French waiters—and you should—you know you're going to get people who drink on the job and who make obscene gestures habitually." And this gem of wisdom: "They should have known. The idea that you hire French waiters with the expectation that they will stay sober, be polite, and work hard is silly from the very beginning." He belabored the idea that the waiters had probably been pained by having to serve hamburgers (albeit $30 ones) to Americans.

The exchange with his guest was a best unoriginal. Worse, it sounded insincere. Intuition tells me Carlson really knows better, but that he continues to cash in on this sophomoric vein of humor, based on dismissing other cultures due to their "otherness." I would not be at all surprised if Carlson enjoyed a meal at a French dining establishment on a regular basis, or if he vacationed in France. Carlson’s lines give off a whiff of pandering. Maybe it takes a lot of pandering to be able to afford that fine French dining, eh, Tucker? Saving up for a country hideaway in the Lubéron?

Nah!--Tucker's not THAT cool.

What's in a Smile?

I have been asked dozens of times why the French are rude and why they are haughty.  Since I don't see either of these generalizations as being true, my answer often includes a comparison of smiling habits in US and French culture.  When one smiles and how one reacts to a smile are largely unconscious, so it's not something we tend to be aware of, even though we are emotionally affected by it.

Polly Platt wrote on the French reluctance to smile in her book "French or Foe" a few years back.  French people were shown a picture of former President Mitterand.  Although he had been president for 14 years, they could not identify the man in the photo.  The reason? He was smiling, and they had seen his smile so rarely during his long presidency that he was unrecognizable with a grin on his face. 

If you smile, and it's not for a specific reason, you don't look serious.  In France, even if you are not the president, it is important to appear serious.  Some instances in which one can smile without appearing to be an idiot are: responding to a joke or humorous situation; responding to a joyous event, i.e. France winning the World Cup; and flirting.   

A French person will not smile at you unless they find you humorous or are flirting with you.  Similarly, if you smile for no apparent reason, you may be perceived as insincere, naive, patronizing, or foolish.  Getting over the expectation of receiving a smile is not so hard.  But deprogramming your own smile reflex may take some effort.

In US culture the absence of a smile can feel like an affront.  Chiho, a Japanese student who traveled to France last summer, felt rebuffed when French people did not respond to her when she smiled at them.  Then she realized that this should be normal to her, since she had grown up Japan, where one ignores passers-by in the street.  After three years in small-town USA, she had become conditioned to smile and to expect reciprocation.

Along with franglais and fast food, the unmotivated smile may be making inroads into French habits.  French students I meet tend to fall into one of two categories: "Francais pur et dur" or "global citizen."  Franck is somewhat reserved and smiles only "for cause."  He embraces travel abroad, but gravitates to elements of French culture, such as French films and the classic French chanson, when given a choice.  Fabrice is extroverted and smiles spontaneously.  He becomes immersed in the host culture wherever he travels.  My observation is that with the globalization of culture, there are fewer and fewer Francks and more and more Fabrices.  Maybe the Franco-American smile differential will diminish with increasing globalization.

France and the Dreaded Fonctionnaire

I was reading a post today by Flare called "Had a run-in with a fonctionnaire today . . .and I lost." Flare is an American working in Paris, by all appearances making a good-faith effort to abide by the rules. (See her blog http://putyourflareon.blogs.com/putyourflareon/) Her tale brought back a torrent of memories. Now that my gallophilic credentials are well established, I can permit myself to vent about an old bete noire . . .

When I first experienced the passive-aggressive behavior of French bureaucrats, I was convinced that I just needed to learn how to get on their good side. Decades later, I now understand that there is no formula for success. There are no tricks I can teach my students to help them avoid the teeth-gnashing, gut-roiling frustration of being stonewalled by people who refuse to do the job for which they are paid. All the worst aspects of French culture seem to be toxically concentrated and eternally encrusted in this effete sector. I have considered appealing to President Chirac himself, in hopes that he could target this entrenched problem for reform. In anger, I have occasionally sworn that henceforth I would travel only to Quebec–never again to France. Coming from a starry-eyed francophile like myself, that is harsh. Way harsh. But I meant it.

One of many incidents involved my breaking into tears (a rare occurrence for moi) on the third préfecture visit in as many days. I had become the projectile in a game of ping-pong between the préfecture of the 14^th arrondissement and the préfecture on the Ile de la Cité. Each insisted that the other was responsible for amending a carte de séjour (long-stay visa) that (mistakenly) didn’t allow any foreign travel. This was a legitimate request from a person who provided all the needed documentation, spoke fluent French, and behaved as an assertive but courteous professional. "Ma pauvre dame, vous ne comprenez pas que je ne peux pas vous aider. Il n’y a que la-bas qu’ils puissent résoudre votre probleme." After being told this, I decided I was outclassed, and that I needed the advice of a lawyer just to accomplish this routine administrative task. After a brief consultation, I learned which police station was responsible for processing my request. (It was Ile de la Cité.) Armed with that information, I told the perfidious fonctionnaire, who assumed I was but another bleating lamb at her mercy, that it was an incontrovertible fact that they were responsible for my case–I had consulted a lawyer. This time, instead of shuttling me off to the 14^th arrondissement, they unapologetically conceded and spent the five minutes necessary to process my request.

When I convince my students or alums to study or work in France, that it will immeasurably enrich their lives, and that any sacrifice is worth making to have the experience, I know that while this is true, I may also be subjecting them to this agonizing right of passage. As I think of constructive suggestions to include in my letter to the Président de la République decrying this state of affairs, I try to pinpoint the exact cause of the deplorable mentality that afflicts so many public servants in France. I think I understand it now.

Way back when, my chain-smoking French roommate Guillemette had a chain-smoking mother who had just been promoted to the rank of "fonctionnaire integre." This meant that she could not be removed from her post, NO MATTER WHAT. This went beyond the protection of tenured professors in the US, who can be removed under certain circumstances. Guillemette’s mother seemed like a genuinely nice person, but I had to wonder if she was overtaken by a steely, vicious psychological sadism when seated behind a desk. Perhaps it is this concentration of uncontestable power, along with the knowledge that handguns are not easily accessible in France, that created this particular brand of human evil.

Seriously, in a void of any checks and balances, power tends to create its own reality. (Just look at what the unchecked power of the Bush administration has wrought.) I realize that it is not the mission of developed countries to offer easy access to anyone who might want to get a foothold there. Homo homini lupus, c’est la vie, and all that. But this attitude is a holdover from some bygone colonial era and it is ripe for reform. Monsieur le Président, mon pote, I'm over here in "l'Amérique profonde" trying to incubate future generations of francophiles.  Can you help me out on this?  I would really appreciate it! Merci d'avance.

Excursions in the Universe of Language

Linguistics experts will tell you that any idea can be expressed in any language and that no language has a monopoly on a certain concept that is uniquely untranslatable. At some crude level this is true. But my experience has taught me to believe that each language, in its nuances, constitutes its own unique universe of consciousness. I began to sense this in the ninth grade in Madame Vatter’s French class. As I began to learn French, I understood that I was not only learning to use new words, but I was using words as vehicles to express new thoughts that were impossible for me to formulate before.

Despite being bilingual and having a great love for spoken and written language, I would be a rotten translator. I often object to the translations seen in movie subtitles, but admit that I would be hard pressed to do a better job myself. I cannot bring myself to teach French poetry in translation. Even if it’s true that anything that can be said in any language can be translated to any other language, at least for utilitarian purposes, I maintain an almost mystical belief in the unique essence of certain words and phrases.

Flaubert, the groundbreaking 19^th century Realist novelist, was obsessed with finding "le mot juste" for every description, every utterance, every narrative passage. But I refer to something different--a cult of words for their own sake and apart form any context. Like many people, I can love a word purely for its sonorities, for its connotations, for the history it reveals, for its economy of means, the image it conjures, for the fact that it unveils a new concept. Words themselves can teach and delight us if we pay close attention.

I like the French word "invraisemblable" ("lacking the appearance of truth or authenticity") because it is fun to say, concise, and useful. The sound of the word "bouillabaisse" evokes something much more appetizing than the English translation: "fish soup." In French, peas are fancifully called "petits pois" or "little dots." Toes can be called "doigts de pied" or "fingers of the feet." An undertaker is a "croque-mort," or "biter of the dead" recalling the days when cadavers were bitten to make sure that they really were deceased.

Sometimes a cognate or easily recognizable word has a meaning different than expected. This may cause humor at times, or it may simply show that a word from a common root evolved differently in different languages. A man’s suit is called a "costume." My husband was delighted to learn this French word, as he must wear a suit and tie to work and a business suit had always seemed to him like a costume (in the anglophone sense of "clown suit" or "Halloween costume"). In French one asks a stranger "Excusez-moi de vous déranger," before asking for directions. "Deranged," from the same root, means to be completely unhinged in English, and we can see that the French version is much milder, meaning simply "to bother." And any language instructor would be happy to regale you with a litany of false cognate stories that range from the absurd to the (unintentionally) obscene.

Many French expressions, while translatable, are so awkward or complicated in translation that we simply borrow the French word. "Savoir vivre," which means something like "knowing how to live well" is a such an expression. (A French person might say that the reason we have no word for this in English is that anglophone cultures do not possess the notion of "living well" in the French sense, but that’s another post.) The French sometimes excuse a difficult person by saying "Il est mal dans sa peau," roughly: "He is not at ease in his skin." It captures more that my inadequate literal translation, and includes the notion that "You should not take his behavior personally, because he is an unhappy person, perhaps even suffering from a personality disorder, and who takes his misery out on everyone, and is therefore to be pitied." Conversely, one can be "bien dans sa peau," or "at ease in one’s skin", which is equally unwieldy to render in English in a few words.

In German, "Durchfall" (diarrhea) means literally "fall through." How is that for a concrete image?  There are German words whose syllables pile up cacophonously like a chain-reaction collision on a highway.   They can fascinate me or make me laugh out loud.  There are Spanish words like "alcachofa" (artichoke), and "calcetines" (socks) and Italian words like "per piacere" (please) I am fond of for no reason other than their music, rhythm, and sounds.  Each language, while possessing universal elements, reflects its own unique charms and a singular consciousness of reality. Wouldn’t we be better off if our society encouraged everyone to experience the richness of more than one language?

Smoker-Friendly France

In my college days at a state university in the Midwest, few among my cohort group smoked cigarettes. Not that we didn’t put our health at risk in a multitude of ways, but we had gotten the message about the health risks of smoking and did not want to blacken our pink lungs and shorten our life expectancies for the sake of tobacco.

When I began to frequent France as a young adult in the 70's, it seemed that almost everyone smoked Marlboros or Camels. The French had not gotten the message–or decided to ignore it. They were still caught up in the romance of smoking that seduced 1940's movie viewers. It was associated with personal flair, panache, élan, allure, "cool," or whatever you prefer to call it. French celebrities like Serge Gainsbourg kept the romance with smoke alive. When you smoked, you were thumbing your nose at your mortality and showing that you "got" the irony of life. A cigarette was a desired accessory, like a stylish watch. The gestures associated with smoking became comforting rituals. Smoke itself allowed for creativity, as you could use it to form patterns in the air. Smoking filled the pauses between courses in a leisurely French meal. It was also the welcomed occasion for breaks from work or classes. 

As an English teaching assistant in a French lycée, I shared an apartment with Guillemette, a law student who would place an ashtray on the edge of the tub and chain-smoke while taking a bath. She explained in her raspy voice that she profoundly enjoyed this small pleasure. Although I knew better, I took up smoking during this period, figuring I was immersed in second-hand smoke all day anyway, so why not? I would quit when I moved back to the US. The nicotine seemed to help with alertness and focus during long spells of reading and writing. After returning to the US, I persisted in smoking. By then, smokers were beginning to be segregated, but I continued to spend time with French friends who smoked. Losing this habit was not going to be easy.

Fortunately, I was helped in my quest to quit smoking when I met my then-future husband. He said he would never want to be involved romantically with a smoker. I hid the nasty habit at first, but soon knew that I would have to make a choice. I started smoking in order to conform, and quit smoking for love.

After quitting, most people revile smoking and I was no exception. I had crawled out of ashtray culture, so why couldn’t everybody else? I sympathized with those who had a long-standing addiction to tobacco, but had no patience for young people who picked up the habit knowing its dangers for the same stupid reason I had–to conform to the behavior of their more "adult" friends.

Today few of my French friends smoke, but I have dared to go against the grain of French society by asking strangers to observe no-smoking areas in restaurants and public places in France. As David Applefield puts it, "visibly bothered non-smokers are perceived as downright wrong, and your Anglo-Saxon attempts to protect yourselves from passive exposure to proven carcinogens is seen as typical of a hypocritical America that drops carpet bombs with ease and approves the execution of prisoners by lethal injection, but gets hysterical if some guy lights up a Lucky Strike in a public place" (http://www.paris-anglo.com).  One is still at a disadvantage in France if avoiding smoke is a high priority.

But the message is beginning to penetrate and smoking is starting to appear déclassé . There are now no-smoking restaurants in France. Smoking has finally come to be seen as a vice by a people that is pretty self-disciplined when it comes to other common vices, such as over-indulgence in food and alcohol. If France ceases to be a smoker-friendly culture, one can only wonder which vice might come along to fill the void.

A Passion for Cheese

There are a few substances I am irrationally enamored of. Tea is one of them. Cheese is another. My history with cheese obsession began in France and has endured for over two decades. When I first went to France I had already learned to appreciate cheese as the comforting white stuff that covers your pizza. What American pizza restaurants lack in crust-making acumen, they compensate for in copious toppings.

My cheese horizons were expanded while living for a summer with a family in Normandy, the home of Camembert. I learned to love wedges of this small, round wheel, covered in a velvety white rind. This was the default cheese for this family, as it was the region’s most popular cheese. Madame Mallet, mother to three biological children and a succession of foreign students like myself, taught me to choose a ripe one by removing the wooden lid and pressing on the middle to see if it yielded to the touch. If not, it was not mature enough and needed more time to ripen. The ripe ones had a smaller firm core and a larger ripened portion that became runny at room temperature. I learned that it was OK to trim the crust or not. Sometimes I ate it, but knowing that it consisted of mold made me inclined to trim it most of the time. Most men seemed to prefer eating the rind, perhaps because trimming was too fussy and girlish.

On occasion, Madame would serve a goat cheese, usually a chevre frais that had high moisture content and a light zing rather than the earthier wank of aged goat cheeses I later came to know. We also sampled an occasional buche de chevre, in the form of a log, which ripened like a Camembert–a firm core surrounded by a ring of creamier, more flavorful cheese that begins to liquify at room temperature.

Sometimes for Sunday dinner Madame would serve a special cheese, also from Normandy, that was more of an acquired taste. Pont L’Eveque was a small square that came in a wooden box. Its rind is orange, I was told because it was brushed with beer as it aged. It was much stronger than the Camembert, and a bit disconcerting at first. Since I was raised on the typical processed cheeses one found in the US in the 60's and 70's, this was very strong stuff indeed. I learned that once you get past the smell, the flavor was quite agreeable.

On a later stay in France, my husband and I lived around the corner from the Quatrehomme Fromagerie in the 7^th arrondissement of Paris. This was a cheese shop that exuded the smells of ripened cheeses even when it was closed up tightly after business hours. They sold artisanal raw-milk cheeses from all over France. Our budget did not permit many splurges here, but when it did, it was well worth it.

An American friend, Keith, told us that he had tried a lot of French cheeses and there was only one that he could not suffer. It was called "Epoisses" and he described it as as pieces of rind simply floating in the liquified insides, which could not be contained by it. Its smell was strong enough to deter him from approaching.

On a trip from Paris to Burgundy with my husband’s sister Jane and her husband Renn, we happened to drive through the town of Epoisses in our rental car. We normally tried the local specialties while traveling through the countryside, so we purchased a decomposed cake of Epoisses cheese, floating in a container as Keith had described. John and Renn were ready to take on the manly challenge of succeeding where Keith had failed. Managing to ingest this would be a triumph of the will. When we arrived at our rental cottage, we put the cheese in the refrigerator. Jane called out from an upstairs bedroom that she could smell the Epoisses from the bedroom and that it was making her ill. Later, at the picnic table outside it was time for the cheese course. The smell was, admittedly, reminiscent of a rotting carcass. Three of us popped the reeking goo in our mouths along with a bit of baguette. Amazingly, the taste was sweet and fruity. Jane cowered queasily in the distance. We had to tie the trash bag to a tree well away from the cottage because the remnants of the Epoisses were banished from the cottage. We had risen to the challenge–if this was the stinkiest of French cheeses, it was probably the stinkiest cheese in the world.

I fervently hope that the bureaucrats in Brussels understand that enforcing a requirement that all cheese be made from pasteurized milk would be a travesty. The individuality of French regions and of France as a country is tied to the dizzying variety of cheeses it produces. Cheese is the poetry of the French "terroir".

France's Own Path

An internet post from "American Daily News and Commentary" states: "Admit it. The average American would just like to smack Chirac every time his face is shown on the television screen. Chirac and the French use the U.N. to hang on to what little power France has left, and the fact the United States can survive quite nicely without any help from France just drives the French crazy. How dare the United States be so darn successful!"

Of course the US can survive without France’s help or advice. As the world’s only superpower for the time being, the US can survive without help from any other country. But the author shouldn’t be so convinced that France is jealous of the success of the US. Many in France measure success in terms very different from the way it tends to be measured in the USA. Rather than sitting around consumed with envy of the US, France is thoughtfully carving out its own path, one that we may one day want to consider if Americans finally become fed up with the excesses of the work-obsessed, hyper-materialistic and increasingly uncivil lifestyle we have created for ourselves.

The rejection of the EU constitution is neither a repudiation of globalization nor of Europe. What was rejected was a flawed document that was unassimilable to the citizenry and lacked the structure of a framework of guiding principles that a constitution must have to work. The leaders need to listen to the people and make another attempt at crafting a European constitution.

Globalization is a reality embraced by the elites but also largely accepted by the masses in France. A country the size of France cannot afford to be isolationist. Even José Bové, the famed agricultural activist, is not against globalization. He a self-proclaimed "paysan du monde" ("global peasant"). One can be against a certain manifestation of corporate rule without accountability (call it McDonaldization or whatever you will) but still be a globalist. The French are not anti-global despite the May 29 referendum’s result.

The French do not measure wealth in the same way that Americans often do, i.e. in sales figures of durable goods like new cars, refrigerators, and television sets. The idea of well-being and quality of life is based on factors that go beyond consumption. The idea that France is a country on the dole, where citizens depend on the State to satisfy their every need is simply not true. Ronald Reagan constructed the straw woman of the Cadillac-driving "welfare queen" in the 1980's and in the US successfully discredited the idea of a social safety net benefitting anyone but society’s worst parasites. The French have never bought into the idea that because a system of social assistance can be abused, those with a legitimate need should be deprived of it. A well-managed social safety net benefits even those who do not use it. For example, we pay for the lack of a social safety net in higher healthcare costs as hospitals must pass on to patients with the ability to pay their losses incurred while treating the indigent. We live with higher rates of violent crime since the social fabric becomes frayed in a money-driven culture. Whether you prefer to quote the Bible, the Torah, the Qu’ran, or the Enlightenment philosophers, a lot has been written that backs up the French way of thinking when it comes to social welfare.

As the French seek an alternative path to the unfettered free market and corporate forces that are driving much of today’s globalization, they have better things to do than to be tormented with jealousy of the US. If indeed they were jealous of the success of our money-driven society, they would systematically attempt to emulate it. Why should it bother anyone in the US if they don’t?

A France-Bashing Watchdog Site

Just discovered this interesting site that monitors images of France in the media and entertainment world.  It contains information not only about who is doing mindless France-bashing, but about who has repented of it.  For example, the North Carolina congressman who came up with the idea of calling French fries "freedom fries" regrets that his joke was taken seriously and has since denounced the war in Iraq.

http://www.miquelon.org/