I just got back from tutoring a kid who's in prepa HEC, or a freshman in college in pre-business (if that actually existed in English).
Since the company I'm employed through charges the families based on the kids age, the older they are, the more expensive. When a family pays 30€, I'm paid about 13€ (the rest going to administrative fees and social charges). You can imagine how much the family pays per hour if I'm getting 23€.
The particular family I saw tonight is rather well to do as they can afford two hour English sessions, plus a math tutor, and most of the families I see are fairly similar. They don't all have mansions or anything, but many have swimming pools and when I ask the kids to talk about a vacation (to use the past tense) or a place they've visited that they really liked, the answers are more often Spain, Rome, Germany, and Canada than Paris, Perpignan, or La Baule.
I practically always work with the kids in their rooms. We bring in a second chair and work at their desk. Most of the time we close the door to have peace and quiet and so the kid can concentrate on English. With a few families I have worked with the kids at the dining room table, but it's unusual. So far I've worked with a total of 10 families (and 14 kids).
All that said, I have never seen a computer in a kid's room. No desk top computers, no lap tops, and I can't remember ever seeing a tv either.
The tv I can understand because French houses don't have antenae outlets all over the place like American houses. But never ever a computer. I don't think the kids even had video game consoles in their rooms.
Coming from a California school district that required all students to type their essays from 6th grade on (in the name of preparing students for college), it seems so weird to me that their "work" space doesn't have a computer. How can you do your homework without a computer?
It's clearly not a question of budget, but instead a question of methodology, school requirements, and culture. B tried to persuade me that if you're not lazy you can write something well by hand (but I was unpersuaded; take advantage of the technology that exists!). From what I understand of his descriptions of the sorts of papers he had to write in high school though, they weren't as long as what I had to write. My students rarely have more than a long paragraph to write as homework if the assignment is something other than grammar exercises.
A couple questions come out of this: where have you noticed computers in French houses you've visited? Have you seen computers in kid's rooms? Or in the living room like Toulouse families? How did you use (or not use) computers to do your homework as a kid/teenager? What do you know of the French school experience and homework requirements? What's your take on the computers/technology helps vs is a crutch/distraction debate?
I prognosticate this as a reoccuring debate between B and me since my experiences as an English Assistant and now tutoring kids who have terrible teachers has given me a rather negative opinion of French public schools. One of my friends researched French nurserys when we were students in Montpellier, and she came to the conclusion that early childhood care in France is awesome, and it's all down hill from there. Must be because they don't have the kids using technology!
3 comments:
Ben is in the process of writing his 200 page masters thesis. By hand. Then he will type it later. I don't think I've done a written first draft since . . . I can't even remember. Lots of my students complain when I give them websites to look up that they don't have easy access to a computer at home, and there's a huge number of people using the labs at school.
Did you teach elementary school kids? Mine were so so careful with their handwriting, so though kids are less computer savvy, their level of penmanship makes up for this perhaps? I kind of like it, the art of handwriting isn't lost.
I don't think children not having computers in their rooms is a bad thing at all. It removes the temptation to procrastinate all day (alone) playing video games and surfing the net.
Sure technology makes things like schoolwork easier. But the art of handwriting is being lost and I think it's kind of a shame and I think it is making people more lazy. People's spelling is a lot worse these days because we're so used to Word correcting our spelling as we go.
Well, we do live in a society where "hunt & peck" is still considered the preferred method of typing...
Where I lived in Bretagne, most people in the countryside did not have a computer or Internet at home, which really surprised me. And I was even more surprised that many had a minitel & still USED it!
IMO, the French are 20yrs behind when it comes to technology - their egos are still bruised that the Minitel didn't take off, and it's made them slow to adopt the internet & "real" computers.
That said, I've been in a couple kids' rooms here in Paris and they had computers in them - they were young kids too, like 8 & 10yrs old. Maybe Paris is more advanced than the rest of the country though...
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