[lg policy] In Paris suburbs, a dreaded school tests becomes a tool of integration

[Harold Schiffman]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/world/europe/in-paris-suburbs-adopting-a-dreaded-school-test-as-a-tool-of-integration.html

By LILIA BLAISEMAY 11, 2016
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Photo
Children who participated in a dictation waited to get a free grammar and
vocabulary book in Nantes, France, in March. The collective dictations,
known as “La Dictée des Cités,” started three years ago. Credit Capucine
Granier-Deferre for The New York Times

FONTENAY-SOUS-BOIS, France — There may be no part of French schooling apt
to induce nausea and sweaty palms faster than the dreaded dictation. The
teacher reads a passage from a famous work of French literature, and the
student writes it down, verbatim. And is graded on every mistake.

For a language in which the written word often bears little resemblance to
the spoken one, the exercise has at once become the legendary bane of
generations of schoolchildren as well as a rite of passage, even
indoctrination, to actually being French.

So more than a few French would consider the idea of taking a nice Saturday
afternoon to do a dictation for fun nothing less than “fou” — or crazy.

But that is what 60 or so people from all ages and social backgrounds —
grandparents and children, wives and husbands, teenagers and immigrants —
did on a recent Saturday. And not just this once.

The collective dictations, known as “La Dictée des Cités,” started three
years ago. Today they travel from one heavily immigrant Paris suburb to
another every Saturday, taking all comers.

They are the inspiration of Abdellah Boudour, 30, a French-Algerian civil
servant from Argenteuil, a suburb of northwestern Paris, who came up with
the idea through his work fighting inequalities for young people at his
association, Force des Mixités.

When he met Rachid Santaki, 42, a writer of thrillers from the suburb of
Saint-Denis, they decided to turn the once-terrifying school exercise into
a playful competition for people in the neighborhood, offering a way for
all, including immigrants, to claim the French language as their own.
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“We started with 40 chairs on the cobblestones in my neighborhood, and we
ended up with a record-breaking — of more than a thousand people last year
in front of Saint-Denis Basilica,” Mr. Boudour said.
Photo
Volunteers corrected dictations in Nantes. The dictation is not so far from
the American concept of the spelling bee, but it is more deeply embedded in
the national identity. Credit Capucine Granier-Deferre for The New York
Times

The event usually gathers 60 to 200 people and also travels through several
cities in France
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/france/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>.
“No one expected it would work so well, but it was a way to gather people
around a common thing, the love for French language,” Mr. Boudour said.

Mr. Boudour and Mr. Santaki travel all over the outskirts of Paris, from
gymnasiums to school cafeterias, to hold dictations on passages from French
literature, choosing the texts according to the history of the neighborhood
or the names of the streets.

They often pick classics — extracts from the iconic works of Victor Hugo,
like “Les Misérables,” or from Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” or
“Sentimental Education.”

“Some come because of the nostalgia,” Mr. Santaki said. “Others want to
improve their French, and others are just attracted by the lure of the
profit, since we offer gifts for the winners.”

The French obsession with mastering every aspect of their language has an
almost chauvinistic quality — strangers, unprompted, will sometimes correct
a foreigner’s pronunciation or spell a word aloud for them.

The dictation is not so far from the American concept of the spelling bee,
but it is more deeply embedded in the national identity.

“It was also a way to select people,” said Daniel Luzzati, a linguist and
the author of a book on French spelling. At the beginning of the 19th
century, he said, “Napoleon Bonaparte made the dictation mandatory to hire
civil servants, for instance.”

“It was a way to show you belonged to the French nation,” he added.

Not least, the rigidity of the dictation has also been the subject of long
arguments over its heuristic value as a learning method.

“I remember it was the only school exercise where your grade could be under
zero,” said Yoni Diibril, 28, who attended one recent session. “It was the
worst, since every mistake on a word could cost you. The dictation must
have traumatized more than one kid.”
Photo
People from different walks of life took the dictation at a gymnasium in
Nantes. In teaching people “good French” the sessions are a first step
toward integration into French society. Credit Capucine Granier-Deferre for
The New York Times

Despite its stern reputation, dictation became a popular exercise in 1985
when the French cultural journalist Bernard Pivot started his own
television show in which he gave dictations.

“There were no more grades,” Mr. Pivot recalled in an interview. “It was
like a game, and you still got to test your grammar and all the
difficulties and traps of French language.”

When Mr. Boudour and Mr. Santaki, neither of whom has a high school
diploma, decided to take the exercise into the streets, they, too, thought
of it as a way to both democratize the French language and entertain people.

“In a way, we desacralized French literature by making it more accessible
to everyone,” Mr. Santaki said. “It is a game, but people are still writing
and getting interested by the text itself, and therefore practicing their
French.”

For others, there is still the social stigma of not speaking correct
French, and they hope this exercise will improve it.

“Speaking good French is so important when you do a job interview or even
for your daily life,” said Ismaël Medjahed, 20, a volunteer at the
sessions. “I remember I used to be ashamed of myself when I was looking for
a job because I was afraid of making mistakes in the spelling.”

Like a number of those attending the dictations, Mr. Medjahed is of French
and Algerian parentage and grew up speaking with an accent easily
recognizable as that of the children of immigrants and with a vocabulary
dappled with argot.

In teaching people “good French,” the dictation sessions are a first step
toward integration into French society.

On a recent day in Fontenay-sous-Bois, east of Paris, volunteers
distributed pens and paper, and Mr. Santaki dictated the rules before he
started to read.
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Some participants wrote the date and even the title “La Dictée des Cités”
on their page, while others underlined it — as they used to do in class.

“I feel the same stress as when I was passing my exams,” said Aurore
Tangre, 32, a nurse. “It is so silly, I chose to come today.”

Not far from her, Françoise Garcia, 74, a retired special education teacher
with a deep accent from the South of France, laughed nervously.

“I am from the old days and from a small village,” Ms. Garcia said. “It was
a time when we used to do a dictation every morning, and if you made too
many mistakes, you got a kick up the backside from the schoolteacher.”

As Mr. Santaki started to dictate a text from the novelist Hector Malot,
who lived and died in Fontenay-sous-Bois, he paced around the tables, as a
teacher would.

Every head was bent, hands carefully scribbling sentences, pausing to
listen carefully as he repeated the text. After half an hour, the copies
were collected and corrected.

Those with the fewest mistakes got a T-shirt or sneakers. Others got a
novel or a book on grammar. But for Mr. Santaki, the reward was the success
of the event.

“In a way, we took back the French Republic, which people felt had
abandoned them,” Mr. Santaki said.

“That is the force of French language, and that is a first step. I know the
dictation may look like a bubble from the outside, and that it will not
resolve every problem in the suburbs, but it is a start.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/world/europe/in-paris-suburbs-adopting-a-dreaded-school-test-as-a-tool-of-integration.html


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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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