British lecturer Peter Gumbel believes that the French education system damages children’s self-confidence. Telegraph Expat finds out why his new book is causing such a fuss.
Gumbel’s argument draws on reports of several international organizations comparing the performance of school children in different countries as well as on studies of children's health and wellbeing. All seem to point to French school children being particularly prone to low self-confidence and anxiety. In one report, for example, a sample of school-children in France revealed that four in 10 pupils have trouble sleeping, while more than two in 10 have a stomach-ache or headache at least once a week. His “favourite” piece of evidence is a study, carried out in 2006, which tested ten-year-olds from 45 different countries.
“The study was in two parts - first children were tested on their reading ability, and then they had to rate their ability. At the tender age of ten, French children, whose skills put them pretty high up in the survey, ranked themselves as the 42nd worse readers of 45 countries,” says Gumbel. “They ranked themselves just above South Africa and Indonesia, and below places like Morocco and Iran - places where lots of children are illiterate.”
Some of the heaviest criticism in Gumbel’s book is reserved for the classes préparatoires or “cram schools”, which train top students before they apply to France's elite universities. “They really have it beaten out of them there. Here you have the best and smartest kids of their age group, and they are systematically humiliated and put down in the name of ‘preparation’.
“In the book, I compare those schools to the training you see the marine corps put through in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. The comparison has caused quite a stir, but I think it’s valid. In both cases, you have young people being drilled to feel they’re worthless.”
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