L'école (2)

Back in January I wrote about how simple the transition to French school had been.  After four full weeks of school (not including two weeks of school holidays) everything is still going great.

The teaching style here is very different from Canada - much more focussed on rote-learning and memorisation.  Luckily, both our boys are pretty good at memorisation, so they're doing well.  Joe, for example, has twice got an A+ in French because he correctly recited poems they'd been told to memorise for homework.  And yesterday he got 20 out of 20 in his French history test for knowing the dates of all the battles in La Guerre des Cent Ans (Hundred Years War) (the battle of Agincourt is relegated to a footnote!).

Joe was bullied a bit for the first few weeks of school, with older boys coming up to him and shouting all the English swearwords they know in his face, but he says that's stopped now.  Andy didn't seem to experience any bullying at all.  They haven't really made any friends yet, but seem to have people to play with at recess time (I think it is a bit easier for boys, they just join in the football game, or whatever).  They are in different parts of the school, so don't see each other at recess which probably makes things a bit easier for both of them because there is no competition between them.  Neither of them want to stay at school over lunch break though, so every day they have a big break from school from 12-2, which is extremely civilised!!!