Children from all over the world in France!
France brought many workers into the country from abroad in the period after the Second World War. Many also came from the former French colonies that became independent. So many immigrants came from the Mahgreb and the North African states. A great many immigrants came from Algeria.
A large proportion of these immigrants and their children are still disadvantaged to this day, although a great many of them were born in France and are therefore French. Sometimes they have a different religion, for example they are Muslims, often they just live in families who are simply not doing so well financially.
They drop out of school more often and find work less often. Also make migrant children less frequently than children from high school originally French families.
Children in France
Do French kids like to eat vegetables?
You have to ask the children yourself if they really like to eat the vegetables. However, one of the French educational methods is to serve children with vegetables as the first course at school lunches. And if you are hungry, you may also eat vegetables, whether you like it or not, but it is important that the children have eaten the healthy vegetables.
Children allowed to hit?!
In France, beating children is not (yet) a criminal offense. While many European countries such as Germany have outlawed the beating of children, French parents do not have to expect any consequences if they give their child a slap on the face or a pat on the buttocks.
Respect is particularly important to the French when raising children. Children have to follow and if not they have to feel the consequences. Of course, that doesn’t mean that all French parents beat their children. But children in France are often brought up more strictly than German children.
Of course, respect is always important, no matter where you live. All people need rules. But punches are definitely not the way to go. But there are now adults in France, especially educators and psychologists, who want to take action against the fessée, the famous slap on the bottom, and want to protect the rights of children. Maybe a slap doesn’t hurt that much, but it always hurts.
School
From the “École maternelle” to the “École primaire”
In France, children between the ages of three and five go to a kind of pre-school: the École maternelle. It’s something like our kindergarten. There is no compulsion to attend preschool, but most children go there.
Children start school in France at the age of five and attend primary school until the age of eleven, which in France is called École primaire. While there are still elementary schools in rural areas, children from the age of eleven often have to travel to the city for secondary school and take further trips. Check microedu to see schooling information in other European countries.
Collège and Lycée
After primary school, the children switch to the college and finish it at around 16 years of age.
If you want to do your Abitur, you visit the Lycée afterwards, which is our grammar school. Here the children finish school with the Baccalaureate, which is usually abbreviated to Bac and corresponds to our Abitur. Incidentally, this Abitur is the same for all French children, unlike ours. In Germany, children in Bavaria take a different Abitur exam than children in Berlin, for example.
School uniforms are not compulsory in public schools. In private schools, however, black trousers or skirts and a white shirt are worn. Each student also has a sweater with the school coat of arms on it.
Everyday school life in France
In France, children are taught all day because there are only all-day schools. Classes start at 8 or 8:30 a.m. This is followed by four hours of lessons until midi, i.e. until twelve o’clock, then they eat at school. The parents pay the school lunch.
The après-midi hours begin after lunch. These are the hours “after noon”. For a long time it went on until 5 p.m. and then there was homework. The Lycée, the grammar school, even ended at 6 p.m. However, the length of the lesson has now been limited to 3:30 p.m. so that the French children have more free time.
Good education or what?
Schooling in France is good. Almost 70 percent of children do their Abitur. That is a lot more than in Germany. Then they go to university, many of them staying with their parents. It’s very different from ours, where many young people move into their own apartment at the age of 18 and simply want to live independently. In France, too, how successful a child will be in life often depends on which family it is born into. There are a million poor children and young people in rich France. Most of them come from families in which the mothers raise the children alone, or they belong to families who immigrated to France.
