School - Part II

DAY 2
I left off my last school post at the end of the first day. I don't plan on writing about every day but I do find day 2 significant because it had a certain ridiculous quality that I thought was telling.

To get the full effect, you must know one thing. In French, the word cochon = pig. French teachers also use it to mean "messy."

After the first, rather challenging day at school, I was eager to hear news about day 2 so when Anna got home, I was all ears. She started by saying, "Mom, my teacher told me my handwriting was cochon." It turns out that Anna's homeroom teacher is also her science teacher. On day 2, she had science with him. He asked the students to open their notebooks and write SVT on the front page. This stands for "Science, Vie et la Terre." Anna wrote it in big letters (one inch high or so) because she thought the letters on the cover page should stand out. Her teacher saw her letters and held up her book so the other kids could see and said something like "Don't do it like Anna. This is cochon. I want your letters smaller." By smaller he meant around a centimeter.

So, after having a new foreign student in his class for a total of two hours one morning, a student who was obviously very overwhelmed, during which she cried almost the entire time, he thought he would make her feel nice and cozy and welcome by telling her she was "cochon" in front of all her classmates. Wasn't that sweet? Anna said she wanted to cry but she held it together. However, when Anna came home and told me this story, I didn't want to cry, I wanted to laugh. I did laugh! I laughed so hard my side hurt. It was the only possible response. Every time I retold the story I had fresh laughing tears streaming down my cheeks. Actually, I'm laughing right now just thinking about it. I could not imagine taking a sweet kid who was obviously completely off balance and trying doing her best, and singling her out on the second day of school for, what I must admit seems to me, a very minor error. Letters 2 centimeters too large? Please!

As I have watched the weeks unfold, I have decided that some of the professors in this school have decided that each new year, they must go through a strange sort of dominance ritual in which they use whatever means necessary to display their power and authority over their students.

Perhaps it takes too much energy to inspire kids to work hard and be excited about their subjects through other means. Fear is a powerful motivator, is it not?