Changing Paradigms

You may have seen this video before; it's been floating about various social networks for a while now. This infographic animate was created from a speech given by Sir Ken Robinson upon his acceptance of a Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Royal Society of Arts in London. It's a fantastic dissection of what's fundamentally not working in western education today.

As an educator, this gives me certain grounds for pause. I am very much imbricated in this industrialized, machine-like system based on a twisted, out-dated version of Enlightenment ideals. But not passively. This is what I do to change the educational paradigm, one class session at a time.

Pose Questions
As I've discussed earlier, posing questions to my students is a cornerstone of my teaching technique. Some find this off-putting and even hostile, at least a first, but I also make it clear that students can pose me questions. In fact, I encourage and sometimes even require it. Class sessions are regularly punctuated with "Avez-vous des questions ?" (Do you have any questions?) and I always do my best to respond meaningfully to those questions. Some times these are "teachable moments," either a particular problem that lets the class and instructor explore a concept together or a bridge to new information.

For instance, a recent session started with the question "Que feriez-vous avec mille dollars ?" (What would you do with a $1000?). The main objective was to allow students some personalized time to express their wishes and use the conditional mood. In response to this question, one student stated they would buy an iPad with a special case. But how do you say "case" in French? There are dozens of ways, and they're pretty context-dependent. But this was a perfectly teachable moment. I opened WordReference and with the class we started sorting through the possibilities. Way down the page, eureka!

case	n	(sheath)	étui nm
Put your glasses back in their case.
Remets tes lunettes dans leur étui.

I never flinch from admitting I don't know an answer; it's always a springboard to a "Let's find out!" moment.  (Or, at the very least from a "Why don't you look that up and share your findings with the class?" moment.)

More than that, one of my very first lessons with students of any level is how to pose questions in French. Class is often a chorus of Comment dit-on ...? (How do you say...?) and that's okay. I really love it when students begin asking Pourquoi? (Why?) and Mais comment...? (But how...?)

Have Fun (and Be Creative)
Critical (self-)reflection is an effective teaching tool, but all work and no play makes Noah a dull prof. Moreover, students are more than just cogitating machines; they have feelings, like anxiety and pride, and they enjoy being entertained. I work hard to have fun in class. Some times this is a simple as making an slightly off-color joke. ("Automobile traffic" in French is la circulation - like in your veins; but le trafic refers to drugs. In our lessons about cars, many student unwittingly complain about the local drug trafficking problem on campus.) Some times this is out-and-out games, like Simon Says, or Jeopardy! Mostly, I seek to create an atmosphere that encourages students to relax and therefore feel free to make mistakes.

You read that right, I want my students to screw up. Because mistakes are the beginning of learning. Every one messes up; the key is what you do next. In a positive, structured atmosphere like the one I try to create in my classrooms, mistakes are acknowledged but more so are corrections. I try to keep the former to a minimum, a cocked head (like a puppy), a half-breathed "Euh...?", a simple prompt to indicate "That's not quite right..." But corrections are praised, and loudly. I applaud; I laugh; I constantly give thumbs up.

Related to fun, creativity and personalization play an important role in my courses. The ability to express your own meaning, even simply, in a foreign language is quite an achievement. To accomplish this, I seek to find the right balance between structure (often, prompting questions) and open-ended tasks. My students interview each other a lot. (There's that posing questions thing again.) Last unit, one class wrote letters to the president of the university suggesting what kind of building we should construct next on campus; presently, I have another class writing reviews of a panoply of Francophone movies, many of which I've never seen before. Last summer, students created guided tours of Francophone destinations and crafted websites to promote them.

Which leads me to the last point:

Make Connections
For me, the pinnacle of education is the ability to make meaningful connections between people, cultures and various fields of inquiry. It's more than just getting your classmate's email address, or learning about why the French tend to have smaller cars than Americans. That's just information, trivia, just the beginning of wisdom. What I really want to see is a student create a third space that bridges the gap between two cultures. To explain to a French person why our American cars are so big and why we take them everywhere, to adapt a French poem for an American audience, to overcome misunderstanding with patience and a will towards compromise. To be more than aware, to be inquisitive, to be creative: to change the paradigm.

How do you say "Miss the point" in French?

Pardonnez-moi un moment while I get my rant on.

In the October 6 Los Angeles Times, special correspondent Kim Willsher wrote an article with the title: "France bans ketchup in cafeterias." Note the slight disclaimer in the subtitle: "Well, it's allowed with one side dish (guess which one). But putting it on veal or boeuf bourguignon is now interdit at schools nationwide."

Hilarious: those funny frogs and their stuck-up culinary ways, trying to forcefully wrench the world's most beloved dipping sauce from their children.

I'll come back to the hurtful cultural stereotypes this article employs as its hook. Let's first discuss some plain bad journalism. The new policy was implemented on October 3, 2011 to improve the health of public school lunches after more than four years of expert nutrionist research. Here are the real highlights:

• A variety of 4-5 dishes must be served at both lunch and dinner
• At least one of theses dishes must be a vegetable-based side and one must include dairy products
• Fries (high in calories and sodium) can only be served once a week
• Water and bread must be freely available, but
• All sauces, including mayonnaise, vinaigrette and - yes - ketchup, are served in fixed portions directly on the student's plates and only when those sauces would be appropriate to the meal.

This policy will be enforced because schools have to document exactly what they are serving to students and report to the government. These records must be kept up to date for the previous three months.

This is a fantastic policy. France, who is simultaneously being a team-player in the European Union with this legislation, is doing hard scientific research and applying that data to better look after the health of its citizens. It's being responsible with both the content and enforcement of its legislation and shaping good eating habits in its youth. And yet, Kim Willsher decides to go with the "France Bans Ketchup!" angle?

A quick scan through Willsher's other articles for the LA Times demonstrates a competent journalist who specializes in news from Europe. The tone is even, the research is well-done and the writing is clear. So it's baffling to me how such a professional could succumb to such facile xenophobia. Let's put aside the poor translations of a few key words in the article. ("Canteen"? Really?) Maybe Willsher isn't a professional translator; but a the large proportion of articles about France, I will assume this person is at least competent in reading the language. Let's merely discuss the fact that it took me 10 minutes to Google the straight facts about this entire thing. To wit, after a digging through a "ketchup interdit" Google search, I found:

• "Moins de frites dans les cantines scolaires dès lundi" Decemeber 3, 2011. Nouvel Observateur's website.

And from that article, I made a simple search for "Journal officiel", then looked within that site for the October 2 publications. Egads, I had to cross-reference a pair of one-page publications to get the skinny on ketchup and its evil cohorts mayonnaise and vinaigrette. This kind of irresponsible journalism riles me to no end. It doesn't help, of course, they this article perpetuates anti-French stereotypes, but the fact is plain and simple KETCHUP IS NOT BANNED. Fact-check; sheesh.

However, what's more pernicious here is the xenophobia that allows such an article to be published. This isn't Willsher's fault alone. Maybe Willsher thought it would be a funny fluff-piece, maybe the editor did, too. But it sticks in my craw that this last line from the LA Times article is certainly meant to be a zinger: "Food is very important here," said Hazan of the parents federation, "and we can't have children eating any old thing."


That's not funny, that's a profound statement of cultural values. It's also plain common sense: we shouldn't have children eating "any old thing." We should look after their nutritional well-being. And in France, a country with a very rich culinary heritage, it's also a matter of national pride. But Willsher and the editor and probably several people who read the article all thought that it was hilarious. Because, you know, the French are narrow-minded and denigrate anything not in line with their simplistic world-view and maniacally seek to exclude foreign products and workers and tightly control their media and economy so that it wobbles on the brink of isolationism.


Oh wait...