Lighter learning for French kids

You can't say that President Sarkozy is not trying to get to grips with France's most intractable ills. While he has been presiding over a French green revolution this week, his government has decided to attack the eternal problem of school bags.

Loyal readers might remember my posting on the dreadful weight that French kids lug daily to and from school. Since then, nothing has changed. As people have noted, the photo on my last post illustrates the problem.

It's been 28 years since the government decreed that school bags should not weigh more than 10 percent of the child's weight. A couple of weeks ago, the main parents' association (FCPE) took weighing scales to schools and found that the average 13-year-old is packing eight kilogrammes (17.6 pounds) on his or her back. That is 23 percent of the weight of an average 35-kilo child.  In other words, it's equivalent to a 70-kilo (154 pound) adult having to haul around 16 kilos (34 pounds).

Xavier Darcos, Sarko's Education Minister, has announced a plan to "turn the burden school bag into the healthy school bag" (passer du cartable fardeau au cartable santé). It's a mixture of ideas, starting with the formidable challenge of getting French school teachers to change their ways.

Darcos wants them to stop ordering kids to equip themselves with heavy folders and exercise-books and to let them put more than one subject in a folder. Anyone who has lived in France knows how these fournitures scolaires -- which account for 28 percent of the contents of the average bag -- are the teacher's prerogative and not to be trifled with.

Publishers will be given incentives to lighten their text-books, splitting them into volumes if necessary. These account for 40 percent of the weight.

A prize is also to be offered to manufacturers of bags who can produce the best one-kilo cartable. These are 32 percent of the total weight.

In addition local authorities are going to be asked to install lockers in schools and high-tech solutions such as USB keys and electronic books are to be tried out.

There are of course snags to all of this. They arise mainly from the difficulty of getting the extremely conservative French education establishment to change its habits. And I don't see teenagers going for a standard official cartable. The right brand is vital to le look, as my 13-year-old daughter told me before heaving her military-style rucksack onto her shoulder and buckling under its weight.   

Comments

[Jonathan]

I am surprised no one is sticking up for these heavy bags - some might consider them a useful tool in the battle against child obesity.

[John Styx]

French parents are used to buy heaps of new notebooks each year. Every teacher has a different request: a 200-page notebook for the History teacher, 2 100-page notebooks for the Math teacher (one for the lessons, one for the exercises), a spiral-bound notebook with one page blank and the other squared for the Physics teacher, etc. Students have to carry all of this each day but usually use less than 10% of each notebook per year. Add the textbooks and your understand why the weight quickly piles up.

[azloon]

CB: this blog is a wonderful source of relatively arcane areas of french life. i prefer it this way. keep up your excellent work.

NOW, when i meet a french person, i will know that they had to carry half their body weight to school every day of their school life, and that their given names had to be approved by the mayor of their municipality.

i really don't know what else one needs to know in order to explain almost any peculiarity of the french people.

i have a new empathy for the french. it't not their fault. it started at birth, and never relented. it's hard to overcome such a non-propitious beginning in life.

[GAG]

My children began school in France fifteen years ago ( thank goodness they’re now all working in other countries) and I recall at the time the debate in the media about the weight of books children had to carry each day. Yet the problem still continues.

I think most people would like to believe that the present government can reform France. But I doubt it very much. Everyday life for most French people is just as complicated as it ever was. The administration in France is just as difficult to cope with and most businesses still have yet to understand client care. And as for common sense, it simply does not exist.

Administration, business, politicians have all yet to understand that they are there to serve the people and not the other way round.

I believe the rucksack issue is a perfect example of how change is impossible in France.
GAG

[Daniel Strohl]

John Styx,

"Add the textbooks and your understand why the weight quickly piles up."

... as does the cost.

[Daniel Strohl]

Azloon,

"it's hard to overcome such a non-propitious beginning in life."

As goes a quote attributed to the (French) maréchal Mac Mahon speaking of the typhoid fever that he had got himself : "On en meurt, où on en reste idiot!" - one dies because of it or one overcomes it as an idiot!".

May be I should add that Mac Mahon was of Irish descent ...

[Dot KING]

It isn't a question of carrying heavy backpacks being good for fighting obesity - it's a question of being VERY bad for their spines. One of my pupils has two rucksacks one of which she carries on her back, the other is slung around her neck to the front. The scholl's "organisation" is that the children dump their bags in a corner somewhere until they need them, but seeing them hefting their bag on to their back or over one shoulder brings home just how much stuff they carry around with them. It could be worse, as the text books which belong to the school are mostly not taken off the premises.
Last year, I had a dimiuitive English boy, who couldn't bear not to be prepared for anything and everything, so not only did he have his watch synchronised to the school bell so he could worry about having enough time to start, finish, change rooms, drop his pencil, whatever; he also carried ALL his stuff around with him every day. His bag weighed up to 15 kilos. No-one managed to persuade him that he didn't need everything with him all day every day.
Where I teach, there aren't any lockers, just untidy shelves in a corner of each classroom, and there is constant disruption as kids come and go for their bag, a book etc.
It also takes them ages to find what they need in their bottomless backpacks. I tend a little to the conspiracy theory that it wastes lots of lesson-time - try to change this and you'll have the kids on strike! :)
A lot of things need reorganising in French schools to make them easier to manage (at least,) but while the question of school bags may seem a light subject, it's also quite literally a weighty one. Children's well-being in school should be paramount IMo.

[azloon]

["On en meurt, où on en reste idiot!" - one dies because of it or one overcomes it as an idiot!"]

OMG, LOLOLOLOLOL -- best quote i've seen yet on the blog. where did you dig that one up?

that's it's an irishman who said it confirms my stereotype of my ancestors as having the most humorous sense of the absurd of any nationality.

no doubt nurtured and developed with the help of generous quantities of guinness.

:)

[rocket]

"It's been 28 years since the government decreed that school bags should not weigh more than 10 percent of the child's weight"

This is a perfect example of a country in denial BIGTIME! 28 years and they are not able to even get it together to reduce the weight of these schoolbags. How modern can a country get. I hope the Minister's words don't set off a strike somewhere and shut down the country.

[rocket]

Azloon

"i really don't know what else one needs to know in order to explain almost any peculiarity of the french people.

i have a new empathy for the french. it't not their fault. it started at birth, and never relented. it's hard to overcome such a non-propitious beginning in life."

That's why it is best to stay outside the envelop if possible!

[rocket]

GAG

"I think most people would like to believe that the present government can reform France. But I doubt it very much. Everyday life for most French people is just as complicated as it ever was. The administration in France is just as difficult to cope with and most businesses still have yet to understand client care. And as for common sense, it simply does not exist.

Administration, business, politicians have all yet to understand that they are there to serve the people and not the other way round.

I believe the rucksack issue is a perfect example of how change is impossible in France."

AMEN!

[Juliette]

My schools all had lockers, but for some unconcievable reason, we couldn't use them - or rather, we could use them during the day, but we had to clear them out completely every evening - hence ruining the entire pruporse of a locker.
Some teachers allowed students to share books, hence reducing the weight, but most absolutely refused that, saying that we then would start talking over the book (like we needed a book to whisper in the back of the classroom), and even took points off when we forgot them...
Needless to say, now that I'm in university, free of taking what I want, I only take small copy books, and almost never carry around much weigh anymore.

What really bothers me though, is teachers that keep insisting that you buy 200 pages copy books, when we always end up with half the book unused by the end of the year.
Go figure.

[Matt]

Despite the everyday training, we couldn't manage to build a rugby team strong enough to beat the rosbifs on semi-final. A shame.

[Dominique]

The weight of children's backpack is a real issue.

The editors are doing with teachers the same things pharmaceutic labs are doing with doctors and hospitals : they just do everything to sell more and more books and any kind of printed paper! Every pedagogic issue has a answer : it is usually a nice colorfull heavy book ! foolish!

If only the central administration was doing it's job and printing some basics so the teachers could rely on and build upon if they wanted...But that would be a direct attack toward industrial lobbies that are, as always, much too powerfull. So, the average teacher issue is : should i use books from editors or should i reinvent everything on my own? The answer is often a mixture of both.

Do you know the unbelievably foolish idea from the editors in order to fight the issue? They said : "let them by everything twice! one for the home, one for the school so they wont have to carry it!" The poor minister X.Darcos is trying to fight those lobbies, but that's pot de terre contre le pot de fer.

The editors answer to any problem will always be the same : buy more books!

[Helen]

Surely investing in lockers, and allowing students to store what books they do not need in the evening overnight, would go some way towards resolving the problem?

"Publishers will be given incentives to lighten their text-books, splitting them into volumes if necessary." Won't this lead to more books, and thus more expense? Not something parents will be too keen on...

[GAG]

Thanks ROCKET,

Unfortunately, you know as well as I do that all French bloggers will ignore my comments.

What's more, I know for sure, that French journalists from leading radio stations read this blog early every motning, but there'll be no comment from them.

So as usual, its heads back in the sand and let's pretend there's no world outside of France !
GAG

[Hadleigh Roberts]

This is indeed quite a health issue. I still remember that in year 7 and 8 of school I was part of an IT experiment where we had laptops to carry from lesson to lesson. I have just started university this year, so you can imagine the difficulty I had as a small child of 13 having to carry around technology as it was 7 years ago! My bag may well have weighed 40% of my own weight.

[Daniel Strohl]

Azloon,

"On en meurt, où on en reste idiot!"

I am happy that you were pleased with your ancestors' humour. Me too !

This quote is well known or at least it was so several decades ago. You may find it with a few others from Mac Mahon of the same kind in the French Wikipédia.

Another famous quote which comes me to mind, from Voltaire, who wrote about one of his foes :
L'autre jour au fond d'un vallon,
the other day in a small valley

Un serpent piqua Jean Fréron. *
A snake stung Jean Fréron
Que pensez-vous qu'il arriva ?
What do you think happened afterwards ?
Ce fut le serpent qui creva.
It was the snake which passed away

PS : I have made a spelling error in my quote of Mac Mahon : "ou" ("or" in English) should have been written without "accent grave", but "où" means "where" - I don't want to get in trouble with Dominique !

[Dot KING]

Is it not common practice then, that textbooks belong to the school and are taken home only once, to be covered, and the rest of the time remain in the classroom?
Where I work, at least the children don't have to carry the textbooks around with them, only the consumables. If they have all the requirements in consumables, what with copies simples et copies doubles et cahiers de brouillon, plus a bulging trousse, it's still way too much.
Incidentally, the textbooks, while weighing a good deal, can be light on information. Recently I read a book with 5èmes "L'enfant multiple" by Andrée Chédid; as the book is set in Paris, the Lebanon and Egypt, I got out a géo textbook to show the countries on the map in relation to the story and each other, and was surprised to see that in a 2007 edition textbook, the map of the world doesn't feature either Israël or Palestine.
Excellent book, BTW.

[azloon]

Daniel --

re 'On en meurt, où on en reste idiot!'

perhaps a couple of english variations of this twisting of conventional optimism;

the light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming train

and

it's always darkest just before it becomes completely black

dark, very dark :)

[christopher muir]

Just where do computers enter into this debate? Surely online operations and word-processing should reduce the amount of paper carried by students. It's nice to know that bound books are still respected, but whether the heavy weight carried by French students reflects a sensible use of 21st century learning tools appears to be in doubt.

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

Here is the chance -- before France, like England, becomes a Nanny State -- for a French company to design a suitable back-pack for schoolchildren. The ones in the picture are all wrong: what is needed is a Bergen rucksack type of bag which distributes the weight and is on a strong metal frame. That is the reason the British Special Air Service men have Bergens. In Aden, infantrymen had to find an SAS man on a mountain where he had hidden in a hole in the ground for four days. When they gave up, he came out. It took three riflemen to carry his backpack! Q.E.D.

[John Gregory Flinn]

Ref JULIETTE's post, my son's (5eme) experience is similar. There are lockers but their use is not at all optimised.
I went to check this out and found that the lockers are outside the classroom building and only accessible at lunch-time and the end of the school day.
They should be inside the building and readily accessible, but such a simple solution seems to elude the authorities.

I suppose construction problems, width of corridors and emergency exit regulations etc., have limited the scope for change, especially in older school buildings.

Day-to-day administration and teaching are separated in the French education system, but here there seems a need for the one to coordinate with the other more effectively because "the teacher's prerogatives" have such a negative impact on the weight of school bags.

[John Styx]

Daniel, IRC parents don't buy textbooks in secondary schools. The school buys them and they're supposed to last until the cover drops and the binding starts to unravel. That's why my first German lesson ran "Wo ist meine Pfeife?" ("Where's my pipe?") in the early 1990s, a time at which even France worried about the dangers of smoking.

Anyway, a lot of French children now use school bags with little wheels, some kind of trolleys actually, so they drag the bag instead of carrying it on their shoulders. But those bags aren't cool enough for grown-up kids. It's much more fashionable to wear a backpack or any other bag that plays hell with your spine. When I was a kid, the fad was to wear the "cartable" with only one shoulderstrap on. At the end of the day, your shoulder hurt like crazy but hey, better sore than unpopular.

[azloon]

[a lot of French children now use school bags with little wheels, some kind of trolleys actually, so they drag the bag instead of carrying it on their shoulders]

perhaps as the books become heavier and more numerous, a loading dock could be constructed in front of each school so that students could unload the contents of a small cart or wagon, motorized or hand-pulled, that would transport from home to school.

members of the transit workers union could then staff the loading dock helping students get materials from the dock to their lockers, perhaps on small, two-wheeler trollies. the workers, of course, would stay on the job all day but work only the approximate one hour of actual work, and be paid for a full days work.

remember, you heard it here first.

[Dot KING]

Azloon, great idea, would it come under the much-vaunted "services à la personne"?

[Daniel Strohl]

Dot King,

"Incidentally, the textbooks, while weighing a good deal, can be light on information"

Two days ago, "le présentateur de TF1, Jean-Pierre Pernaud" made also a subject on the "cartable". The last but funny sentence was : "ils sont lourds aussi du savoir", or something similar (they are heavy also with the knowledge ... hm).

BTW, I like Pernaud, since he emphasizes more local life "à la campagne" rather than the brain masturbations of our Parisians. He shows regions, villages, ancient usages and customs, still surviving ancient crafts ...

John Styx,

"Daniel, IRC parents don't buy textbooks in secondary schools"

I wasn't fully aware of that. If the parents do not pay, but the state (i.e les contribuables), than I am rather pessimistic about the life expectancy of the books ... As far as I remember (but I may be wrong), when I was at school, one had to buy the books and it was common practice to sell or buy them second or third hand. They probably lasted much longer at that time. Too many things "free of charge" are no good for the budget AND for the minds (of parents and children alike...).

Azloon,

"and be paid for a full days work".

Really brilliant idea, Azloon. I will pass it at once to "les camarades de la CGT" who will no doubt include it immediately in their "cahier de revendications" to be negociated with the government. The minister in charge, Mr.Bertrand, will be utterly pleased to have a new and original discussion matter coming straight away from the USA, and more precisely from Arizona.

Of course, I will take great care to insure that your intellectual property rights will be strictly preserved.

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

In England a 16 year old Polish boy, son of two doctors, is returning to Lodz "to get a proper education" as he claims he was learning nothing at his school in NE England. In his 2 years in England he says his classmates talked only of partying and shopping. They did not know where Kenya or Poland were. One blogger said his grand-daughter carried her books in her handbag, along with her make-up, to her Comprehensive school, and another wheeled her books in a trolley to her Grammar school.
So what's a little temporary backache? At least they will be literate when they leave school.
P.S. The Bergan rucksack (see my blog above) has a waist belt and a triangular frame which nestles into the human back. Norwegian mountaineers know what balance is.

[Pierre]

Glad Azloon's started to pick up on how modern France is. Even our chickens are mechanical. Which means that they never get wet.

[Dot KING]

Some Greek friends of mine moved back to Greece because they didn't consider their children were getting an education in France - it was their 9-year-old daughter who turned me on to Harry Potter - she'd read the first four in three different languages - English, French, Greek.

[azloon]

[Even our chickens are mechanical]

but very hard to chew, and over-priced at $75usd. according to Terry.

[azloon]

'I have made a spelling error in my quote of Mac Mahon : "ou" ("or" in English) should have been written without "accent grave"

daniel, you need an english language keyboard (no accent marks) and let the reader imagine the accents (as in 'eventually' where the reader puts the word in context to determine the meaning)

[Dot KING]

No Azloon, Daniel does not need an English keyboard - you can type English quite easily on a French keyboard, but not the other way around. Of course if you happen to be a touch-typist, this can be tricky.
For a while I worked on an AZERTY keyboard in the office and had a QWERTY one at home, which meant I had to do mental acrobatics each time I switched one or other on.
Fortunately no-one ever taught me anything as useful as touch-typing and once I'd changed to a French keyboard, computer communication became much easier.
You can do accents on a QWERTY keyboard and I'm sure you know how to - fancy asking a Frenchman to do without his accents! Quel culot!

[eygh]

My daughter is in 6ème. She is a tanagra like little girl weighting 25 Kg. Her school bag's weights on the "heaviest day" about 10Kg.

There are no lockers in her "collège" but each class has its own room and the tables have "cases" to put books in.

The problem is that actually she can't let anything at school since she needs everything almost to work at home. There is a lot of homework to do and little time at school to get ahead with it.

The school loans the books and there is a contract between school and student about the state of the book when the student loans it and the state in which the student returns the book. If there is too much degradation then the student has to pay.

In my daughter's case the principal teacher has organised for her to have a second set of books, one for school and one which remains at home.

Now we will have to reduce the weight of the "classeurs". She has notebooks + classeurs in almost every "matière". That's heavy.

But she refuses my proposition to let the big "classeur" at home and transport around a lighter one with only what she needs for the day's classes.

She is afraid to need some of her notes if she doesn't bring everything with her.

As far as my daughter is concerned there is definitely a lot of content in her numerous books and notes. I know because I'm the one helping with the important homework every day.

My son is in 5eme and carries an 8kg bag (on the heaviest day) on his back which is 22% of his weight (37kg). I have had him to the doctors with an inflamed shoulder because of it. It is definitely bad for his back. Like other children he carries everything he might possibly need in fear of forgetting something. He carts textbooks back and forth as well as all the workbooks and notebooks. He cycles to school - one day he will topple off!
Something must be done.....
Let's hope the FCPE take this forward.

[rocket]

EYGH

"She is afraid to need some of her notes if she doesn't bring everything with her."

Sounds like a visit to the French administration. Bring everything in triplicate and what we don't ask you for beforehand we will ask you for when we see you in person. So just come with a file of your entire life and we'll pick through what we deem necessary.

As Dominique would say. Pheww! Phish!

Could there be a master plan in French thinking?

[azloon]

I must say, after reading all these truly amazing posts about transporting books and school materials, that french school children are obviously receiving a much more rigorous education than their american peers, not to mention the strength and conditioning involved. i hope such rigor serves these students well in the global village.

perhaps children who can prove they carried more than a certain amount of weight in their packs should receive credit for military service.

[Angus McPierre]

When I went to school in Scotland I used to carry great big 20-pound rocks in my bag. The teacher would make us lift them over our heads in the classroom. One even had us come in with a wee caber tucked in next to our general theory of relavitity. I'd had a good bowl of porridge that morning! Never did me any harm.

[Dot KING]

EYGH: the school I work in has started a "loan & fine" (amende) system for textbooks as well. These are in such high demand that I have had to fight to be able to have copies for myself (I teach French to English pupils and support them in every matière, so I need a textbook in each subject - they barely fit into my staffroom pigeon-hole).
If the child is conscientious then the bag is heavy. If the child is small and conscientious then the bag is a burden. If the child is handicapped, small and conscienstious then it's the two together plus a real health hazard. Last year I had a girl with spinabifida who was therefore handicapped, small and sérieuse. Mostly a friend carried her bag for her (adding to the weight of her own), or I did if they were with me. As children spend a large amount of time in school, they should have a locker, somewhere that is their private space. C'est la moindre des choses.

[Dot KING]

I thank the kind person who unties the sleeves of rocket's straitjacket each day. He is one mad person.

[Daniel Strohl]

Angus,

"a good bowl of porridge that morning! "

Anybody able to swallow and digest a good bowl of porridge is necessarily healthy (LOL)!

If I am not a porridge fan, however I know for sure that there are other excellent and worldwide exported products in your country ...

Dot King,

"Quel culot!"

Azloon est vraiment insupportable !

Azloon,

"should receive credit for military service"

Mandatory military service has been abolished by Chirac may be 10 years ago. This is good for the budget, but not good for some lazy and arrogant youngsters ...

[eygh]

Dot King,

I agree of course about the locker and shortage of money to buy books.

But in my daughter's collège they have the equivalent since they have their own table with a big "casier" underneath to leave stuff in it.

Plus, inside my daughter's class kids are organised in "binôme" depending on where they live (close by to each other). So if one of the pupil forgets something for homework he/she can call on his/her partner. They are also paired to work together on different subjects.

The problem needs to be solved locally (each school in its specificiy) to the best interest of the children without diminishing the content/quality of what they learn.

We hear too many parents complaining about what the kids are learning ie : not as much and as well as before and at the same time critisize their kid's homework which is the reason why pupils go around with such heavy bags.

[azloon]

Dor --

i agree that required military service is a good idea. i served in the navy when there was a 'draft' in the u.s. it's good for 18-22 year olds to have this maturing experience, on their own, away from family. you grow up quite fast if you haven't already.

i am not in favor of military service for 5-year-olds. :)

[John Styx]

Daniel, technically speaking, French mandatory military service is not abolished, but suspended sine die.

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

Re: Angus and his good bowl of porridge. A Scotsman in Ibiza, in the Hippy days invited a Finn to share a bowl chez lui. The Jock poured some methylated spirit into his "squat bog", placed a grill over the hole with the pan of porridge on it. "Servants' day off, Ilka", he quipped,looking around at the dump he lived in. "But is the porridge OK?"
"The porridge is OK, Jock, but you have the worst kitchen I have ever seen in my life."

[David]

My children complain all the time about their bags, I really do not undestand why there are no lockers at school.

One reason is the homework, my 13 year old daughter has a lot of homework and often it is doing exercises that have not been explained to her.

And for people saying that the education system in France is superior, understand this, I kep my O-Level maths book from the 70's, I have only now had to start helping my daughter with her maths and found I was explaining something that I learnt as an 11 year old to a 13 year old. Though I would expect in the UK that 15 year olds will be doing it now...

My French wife has looked at my daughters books in amazement, she was one of those 19-20 out of 20 people and said that the schooling had been really dummed down...

[rocket]

Hi Dot

"I thank the kind person who unties the sleeves of rocket's straitjacket each day. He is one mad person."

Shouldn't it be "I thank the person who TIES Rocket's sleeves" If you untie the sleeves that means that that my hands are free and my big mouth as equally free.

Best regards