Life In (and out) of Lycée

Dear Readers,

 

A couple of weeks ago, I got asked for help by another student living outside France. She wanted to know what it is like going to a French lycée. At first, I thought I had covered everything in the posts on the blog, but it turned out there were a few things that I couldn’t expand far enough to make a full article. Therefore, I decided to post all these small things together!

 

What do students dislike about Lycée?
Students are pretty much the same all over the world so obviously they don’t like homework, exams, tests and two hour classes. The thing that would define the French students from everyone else would be their mentality towards things, which the same as most French people is; “don’t do any more than you need to” and “never volunteer”!

• Teachers: They’re the same everywhere in the world right? But I personally think there’s more of a friendly relationship with your teacher in the UK than in France.
• Friends: They tend to speak their minds about what vocabulary their friends use. Apart from that I don’t think there’s anything they dislike.
• La Réforme du Lycée: See article posted on The Lycée Times 5th September http://thelyceetimes.blogspot.com/2010/09/la-reforme-du-lycee-problems-from.html.

What problems do the lycée students face?

In everyday society, outside of school hours, teenagers have it better than teenagers in the
UK. After going back home for the first time in a few years, I felt like a criminal on the loose which really annoyed me. For a start, I was getting nervous looks from people and my passport was checked 3 times in the airport at home (unlike everyone else who only got checked once) and only once (just like everyone else) in France. I presume this is mainly because there is a lot of knife crime etc in cities in the UK and there’s much less in France. In the UK, a stereotype has been set off the minority, by the media, which makes everyone think that teenagers all carry knives, do drugs and beat up old ladies on the way to the shops!

 

Homework:
Generally, students get lots of homework in 6ème. Then in 5ème there tends to be a little less. Less again in 4ème, then 3ème is about the same. Once you leave collège and move to lycée, I found I had less homework in 2nde and after that in 1ère and Terminale, they start to pile it on again. Putting students at odds with homework mountains! By the time you get to 1ère, the homework is as abundant as it was when you were in 6ème, which is odd seeing as you haven’t had so much in five years!

 

Article by The Editor