HOW CAN AN AMERICAN STUDENT BEST PROFIT BY A YEAR IN FRANCE?

Abstract

THE advantages of studying the French language and literature in France are legion and the numerous disadvantages of not doing it are often made painfully obvious by the shortcomings of French teachers who have studied only in American universities. Unfortunately, it does not go without saying at all that everybody who goes to Paris to study receives the benefits which he should receive from a prolonged stay. There are many impediments in his way such as the differences between the French and American educational systems, the differences in living conditions, the incorrect ideas which the French and the Americans have in regard to each other, human egotism (!), narrowmindedness, lack of plan on the part of the sudent, his immatureness, and so forth. The French are not good at propaganda and have not seen fit to change their old universities to suit the foreigners who flock there; the foreigner has to accommodate himself to it just as he has to get along without some of the modern conveniences which, in our rich country, are taken for granted. But foreigners have been welcomed in Paris ever since the days when Dante went there. And an open-minded American should profit enormously by a year or two of study and travel in France if he knows what he wants to get and if he is prepared to do the work. It is not strange that Americans living, traveling, or studying in France, should be generally looked upon by the French of the middle classes as very well-to-do people with a perfectly Gargantuan capacity for doing things the ordinary person of the petite bourgeoisie, for both social and economic reasons, does not do. For years, numbers of Americans have neglected nothing to establish this reputation and now that they know what is expected of them, thanks to the French theatre, the French novel and the press, they seem to be doing everything in their power to maintain the character they have prepared for themselves. Americans, like the English-and humans in general for that matter-are generally inclined to do what they think is expected of them. Even though the very great majority of Americans living abroad 401