Last month the Haut Conseil de l’Education published a damning report on the level of reading and writing, principally in French schools but by extension in universities too, but since then the Report seems to have died the death. Since the presidential election, a huge effort is being made to bolster optimism and positive thinking, thus anything resembling the old déclinologie, so popular over the past couple of years, is avoided. The English, on the other hand, seem to love decrying their own high level of illiteracy.

The Report says that 40% of eleven year olds are in different degrees illettré. That seems to me a massive over-simplification, lumping together those who cannot read or write at all (15%) with those who have problems with the perversities of French spelling. I was amazed that at 10 my son routinely used to confuse donner, donné and donnait when doing dictation, but was assured that c’est normale: at that age how could he understand the difference? But it had never occurred to me they could be considered the same – even as a child learning French as a second language. Apparently this confusion of similar-sounding words can last a lifetime: a study of 2nd year university students reading Modern Letters routinely found mistakes such as “il a juger”, la, l’a and là are interchangeable, as is et and est. Even the best ten year old in the class I teach quite happily writes “the cat and black and white”, but I’m sure by the time she gets to university she’ll see the difference. Indeed I’ve found that the kids I teach are far better at spelling (very simple) English than French: in tests I turn a blind eye on their English-into-French translations, otherwise they’d all get zero. Phonetically I can see whether they have understood the English or not and I don’t consider it’s my place to do the French teacher’s job.

Commentators on this depressing Report mitigate the poor showing by saying that French is one of the world’s most difficult languages. Experts tell you with great certainty that “it takes 10 years immersion to master it”. That’s the problem: if you say it’s difficult, the kids will find it difficult. Certainly some words that sound identical can be written many ways (saint, sain, sein, ceint), but surely context tells you instinctively which one to use: “the task was daunting: minus his nose by the end of the day he had done it all” clearly doesn’t make sense, so why write “La tâche était difficile: nez en moins à la fin de la journée….” ?

Some people say the rise of bad grammar and spelling is because the number of hours ten year olds are taught French has declined radically: in 1969 they had 15 hours a week, now it is closer to 9 ½. That’s to make way for English and éducation civique, so this illettrisme can be blamed indirectly on the global spread of English and the decline of parental guidance. I would have thought it might be better to ask whether the children could not spend a little more time at school. At present, with 16 weeks holiday, primary school children go to school for 36 weeks a year. But often for only 4 days a week. Thus 144 days at school out of 365, 6 hours a day. That might exhaust a 6 year-old, but surely at 9 or 10 a child can cope with just a little more? Indeed should cope with more, given the enormous change between primary school and secondary school routines . But many seem to have a fixation their little treasure can’t possibly do more than two days’ together at school.

Another reason is that the solutions (so far) to this kind of shaming report have always been provided by the Ministry of Education, in other words by graduates of grandes écoles - the French problem-solving system typified: hit it with an enarque. The grass-roots may be cursorily consulted but the elite generally pooh-pooh their ideas as bucolic fantasy. Again, having their language set, in every sense of that word, by an all-powerful and strangely respected Academy only aggravates the problem for many. To succeed in exams you need to write what has been called “literary French”: fewer and fewer families speak that kind of French at home. If your parents have always called a car a bagnole, why would you call it a voiture when you write your essay?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 9:24 am and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.