First launched in November 2008, BOOKS offers a selection of outstanding essays from around the world translated into French. Its ambition: to shed light on world events through the best articles about books. In their own words:
Notre ambition est d’éclairer l’actualité en exploitant les livres qui paraissent dans le monde entier. Nous sélectionnons les meilleurs articles parus à propos de ces livres dans la presse internationale. Par “meilleurs articles”, nous entendons des articles de haut niveau dans le fond et la forme, écrits par des spécialistes compétents. Par « actualité », nous entendons tous les sujets qui résonnent dans nos têtes, qu’il s’agisse de politique ou de littérature, d’économie, de sciences ou d’autres thématiques... Nous privilégions les points de vue novateurs et les analyses qui bousculent les convictions établies, à commencer par les nôtres.
I am therefore most honored that Books has included in its May edition an article about Sorbonne Confidential.
I would, however, like to clarify one point.
The line « Les Finlandais de 10 ans connaissent mieux l’anglais que les professeurs d’anglais en France », is taken NOT from Sorbonne Confidential but from a satirical article I wrote for HEC magazine entitled Let's Outsource English.
Inspired by Jonathan Swift's great A Modest Proposal (in which he proposes that Irish babies be EATEN in order to save them from starvation), Let's Outsource English suggests that hiring English-speaking Poles will prove less expensive and more successful than trying to teach French children English.)
In context it read :
Let's start with primary school. In France, the government decreed that CE2 learn English, then went home to watch Friends in VF. In the little countries (ok-Germany is technically bigger, but size is a state of mind), schools hired teachers who knew English and were trained to teach it! As a result, ten-year-old Finns speak better English than the people teaching it in France.
I was referring to the strange policy of requiring NO QUALIFICATION WHATSOEVER AS AN ENGLISH TEACHER to teach English in primary schools -- I was NOT referring to agrégés !!!
Here is the full article in Books:
PS: This issue of BOOKS, like the previous ones, contains many excellent articles (see the interview with Camille Limoges on university autonomy) which I highly recommend !!
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