What I Observed in Some Paris Lycées

Abstract

DURING my stay in France last October, I visited boys' lycees in Strasbourg, Nancy, Reims, epernay, Caen, Rouen, and Paris. The lyc-e is usually housed in a massive rectangular structure with a courtyard in the center. The rooms and corridors are high and wide, the buildings are equipped with central heating and electric light, and, where there are boarding pupils, modern kitchen and laundry equipment will be found. From five hundred to two thousand pupils are usually on register; the biggest lyc e in Paris has three thousand pupils. Boys and girls go to separate institutions. The head of the school is the proviseur, who is assisted by an administrative officer known as the censeur. Neither one of them teaches. Discipline is taken care of by the surveillant general, while each study hall is in charge of a repititeur. The dormitory (for the boarders) is supervised at night by a maitre d'internat, who sleeps amid his charges. A reasonable examination in French, history, and mathematics admits the pupil from the ecole primaire to the lycee. The first form, which the pupil enters at about the age of eleven, is known as the sixikme. Classes, averaging about twenty-two pupils, meet every day except Thursday and Sunday. Most of the larger towns have three or four lyc es; Paris has fifteen for boys alone. The teachers are cultured and scholarly gentlemen. Many of them are agrtgis, which means that they have passed the most difficult state examinations and have life tenure. Supervision in each subject is carried on by an inspecteur at Paris. The language division is interesting. Up to the quatrieme there are two groups: (A) Latin and a modern language; (B) no Latin and two modern languages. From the quatritme on, there are three groups: (A) Latin, Greek, and a modern language; (A-1) Latin and a modern language; and (B) two modern languages. The modern foreign languages generally taught are English and German. This means, then, that every pupil in the lycle takes at least two languages for six years. Below I describe briefly five foreign language lessons observed in as many different lycbes in Paris. 1. The professeur was a distinguished looking gentleman with a Van Dyke beard. He was an agrege, spoke a beautiful English, and was well acquainted with conditions in the United States, where he had taught ten years ago. On the front wall of the room was a blackboard about four yards in