Classroom Etiquette

“les cours:” classes
“être en retard:” to be late
“les étudiants:” students

Over the course of the last 4 months I have been attending classes at the French school, ESC-Clermont, I have become aware of the differences in class etiquette between France and the States. As I have been attending school in the States for about 18 years, the way we act at school is what I am used to, and therefore seems the “right way,” although this would contribute to the egotistical perception of Americans. There are always positives and negatives to every way of doing things, but I believe I am a bit biased on this subject.

Punctuality: In the States, you have your occasional stragglers strolling into class a few minutes late, but for the most part everyone arrives on time, or, god forbid, even a bit early to get settled. In France, punctuality does not exist. Every morning our classes start at 8:30am. I arrive at around 8:20am to find a good seat, check my email, get a coffee, etc. The classroom is pretty much empty for those 10 minutes. At 8:30am, the teacher will arrive, but of course they have to get settled, so even if all the students were there, the class would not start at 8:30. A few minutes after 8:30, my peers begin arriving, and there is a flow of the rest from 8:30-8:50. At about that time, the teacher will shut the door and if someone arrives late, they knock and walk it, and perhaps mumble a “pardon,” but more often not, they just come in a have a seat. Why can’t they arrive on time? I don’t know. If they are late everyday, why do they not just wake up 10 minutes earlier. I don’t get it. The same scenario happens after our break (see next section) at 10:30, after lunch at 1:30, and after our second break in the afternoon at 3:15. Late every time.

Pause: Le pause, or “break” time is a precious time for the French. We have class from 8:30-noon in the mornings, with a 30 minute break from 10-10:30am. 9:59am rolls around and everyone starts preparing to make a mad dash out of the room. And the time has come, everyone already with coats on, rushes out of the room. I typically venture outside of the classroom to grab a coffee real quick from the machine and then come back in to read over some notes or mess around the computer. (I don’t have internet at home so this is precious time for me as well). Looking out the window to the front of the school, it seems as if there is an event outside with a dress code of dark colors and a couple of smoke machines you find at concerts. Oh no, that is just the huge majority of students smoking, dressed in their normal dark uniform. Thankfully, smoking indoors was banned in France in 2007.

As you can probably guess from above, my peers do not arrive back in the classroom at 10:30. There is usually a 5 to 10 minute lag before classes start again. If it were up to me, honestly I would sleep 30 minutes longer to make up for the lost time realized with tardiness, but hey, that’s just my American efficiency talking! Ha. For the pause in the afternoon, we find the same habits, even though it is only 15 minutes long. At KU, we would have a class for 4 hours with only one “pause” for about 10 minutes. Some might say that we do not appreciate our relaxing time enough in the states, but on the other side, I’d rather get the work done and go home earlier!

Talking during class: This is probably the aspect of French classrooms that irritates me the most. Okay, I can understand adolescent highschoolers whispering to each other while the teacher or a peer is talking, but graduate students? No I cannot tolerate this. I came to learn in the first few class periods at ESC that it is normal for students to talk during class. Most of the time, not even at a whisper. I have only had one teacher scold the students; otherwise, they are mostly just ignored. Not only is this exceptionally rude to me, but it is quite disrupting, especially in the classes taught in French! One, I can barely understand the language as it is, so if there are people talking behind me, I am a goner. Two, as part of their culture, French people do not tend to speak as loudly as we jolly Americans, so I usually have to strain anyway to catch the whispers of the professor or peer asking a question. Shhhh!!

Asking questions: Here’s an aspect I find interesting, and it has to do with the French language. I have been taught that most of the French grammatical rules & exceptions are in place to make the language sound as beautiful as possible. Yes, the language is lovely sounding, but when you have to learn a million exceptions to the grammatical rules as a foreigner, it gets a bit annoying. Anyway, so as part of the beauty of the language, French people tend to use a lot of words without actually saying anything. Lots of transition words and ways of saying things in a zig-zag way so that they are actually repeating themselves multiple times in one line of thought. This can be observed when the French students, and teachers for that matter, ask questions. As Americans, we like to get to the point and move on. Here, however, as Kate so appropriately put it today, it’s like they have to start with a thesis to their question, describe what they’re going to ask, and then ask it. In my experience a question is typically ONE phrase. I find myself often thinking, “just get on it with it, already!”

It’s a learning experience, isn’t it? Not only is part of my graduate studies to learn about how to conduct business, but also I am gaining other experiences of operating with people of a different culture. In doing so, I have to get used to the way things are here, and therefore I am learning how to adapt to differences. Growing up and then continuing to go to college in Kansas, I have not really reached out to many experiences so different, so it’s good I’m here!