infotainment: melodrama drowns real news
I continue to be naïvely amazed by the journalistic mediocrity of the New York Times in the article
In France, Strike begins as Union ends on october 19th, where the priority of the article is dramatizing the personal melodrama of the Sarkozy divorce rather than analyzing the reform of the French retirement pension system. The divorce melodrama, easy to report and add emotional appeal, fortunately is of little interest to the French public. On the other hand, the reform of the retirement pension system concerns all the French, and indirectly Americans as well since aging of the population is destabilizing their pension system as well. Personified melodrama has replaced the news. Readers can only regret that the media all too often shirk their responsibility of providing quality independent investigative reporting that is a key for citizens to be informed and actively participate in democracy.
But this independence is at risk in an incestuous give-and-take relationship between the media and political leaders. Nicolas Sarkozy, after having carefully analyzed the Bush administration's manipulation of the news agenda, continuously creates newsfeed to satisfy the media's hunger for breaking news, thereby maintaining control over the news agenda. This manipulation has been brought to new heights with the timely leak of his own divorce as a smokescreen to distract the French public from the issue of French pension reform. At the same time, in Lisbon he played the "double jeu", playing both sides of the media fence, by commenting with distain "Le Monde's" questions about his divorce. Sarkozy benefits from the smokescreen provided by the leak of his divorce and by being able to protray himself as the victim of media harrassment about his personal life. The CBS news program "60 minutes" dwelled on personal questioning and commentary of the Sarkozy divorce - the result: Sarkozy walked out on the interviewer.
CBS 60 minutes reporting of SarkozyJournalists learn quickly to toe the line if they are to maintain access to the political newsfeed; being cut off is fatal to their career. The result, journalists learn to play it safe and write infotainment.
Labels: France, media, politics, Sarkozy
The role of Parents in Education
Parents have a much different role in public education in France than in the US. As a parent in France, it is clear that education is considered to be the "chase gardé", the exclusive competence of the French educational system. The parents' role is primarily to prepare their children for studious obediency in class. Parents are not welcome into the sphere of school pedagogy, except as a palliative measure for activities like maintaining the school library or the kermesse. For parents who want to implicate themselves more, they can offer to become "représentants de parents d'élèves" where they will expected to pa buffer between teachers and the other parents or to resolve peripheral problems such as the kermesse. In no case would they be invited to participate in fundamental pedagogical decisions such as the "projet d'école", the local school program. Should they be?
In the US, parents are a part of this process, some teachers may say, too much so. Not only do parents want to get "their money's worth" since local taxes paid by parents finance in part local schools, but they also feel that they should have a say in the content of the school programs. Parents can be influential in determining program content like whether "intelligent design" another version of creationism be included in biology classes with equal stature to evolution. But they can also be influential in changing the school system, for instance, in accommodating handicapped children in school. In this sense, the French Educational system is a mastodon.
Outsourcing Education
One of the few state monopolies remaining in France is education. In the US, education has been semi-privatized in the US, under the banner of "freedom of choice" as touted by the "No Child Left Behind" program. Should private "educational businesses" be allowed to compete with the Ministry of Education? If so, how should they be regulated? See the article on page 8 in the November 5th Education News about India becoming an online hub for tutoring.
What impact would much touted open market competition have on the quality of state-run education? The US Department of Education claims that charter schools provide a healthy, less-regulatory alternative to the public school system with "perfomance accountability" :
http://www.ed.gov/programs/charter/index.htmlThese schools may receive Federal grants and well as State financial assistance. Should education be subject to business-like efficiency? What are the problems with giving vouchers which parents can spend on any school they like: see the CNN video with comprehension questions:
http://literacynet.org/cnnsf/voucher/home.html
The French are not supposed to make mistakes
Where else but France would you find a billboard advertising for after school remedial teaching named "zerofaute.com"? Is education's finality that learners never make mistakes? I was struck that this would never be an selling point in the US, where children are supposed to be superlative, to strive to be their best.
Can one learn from one's mistakes, take risks, use trial and error methodology, if above all as a learner you mustn't make mistakes? Pushing the envelope of knowledge requires learning from one's mistakes. Otherwise learning is relegated to just replicating lessons? No wonder the French excel in Mathematics, where rigorous proofs can be made with no exceptions possible.
This paradigm puts the teacher in the impossible position of never being allowed to be wrong and of being the meter by which correctness is measured absolutely. How many of us have found somewhere along our learning career that we found the teacher was wrong and how disappointed we were.
This brings me to yet another point; the silence in a class, the absence of questions; successful students in France, those who have made it to the university, have learned that they best not ask questions. This absence of questions remains a frustrating mystery to me even today. I suppose that this may be part of the "no mistakes paradigm", where students fear they might be asking the wrong questions. I, on the other hand, as a teacher and learner feel that questions allow me to rectify my discourse and adapt myself better to what I understand to be the students' representations (or my own) of what I am explaining. This for me is a crucial part of teaching and learning; it is difficult for me to imagine learning without questioning.
Do the French view themselves as Europeans?
It's difficult for me to talk as a Frenchman, especially since I'm American, though I've been living here for more than ten years.
One of the major problems here in France is that French often don't know the rest of Europe, nor their fellow Europeans. They often haven't developed their own, personal European vision. As a result they have the impression, reinforced by the media, that the French benefit from an extensive social system which is non-existant or at least rather limited in the rest of Europe. This fear is reinforced by the idea that the social system for Europe will be reduced to the lowest common denominator, that of the country having the least social protection. This is an fear which found a resonator in the latest Bolkelstein directive in the EU, and in the current court case with RyanAir who is exporting workers from Ireland, having them work fulltime in Belgium, but refusing to acknowledge that RyanAir workers are covered by Belgian work laws.
In addition, many French believe that politicians are not to be trusted; Raffarin, the Prime Minister of France, and Jacques Chirac, President, promote a "yes" vote in the referendum for the European Constitution, but they don't have a popular mandate (most French in fact voted against Le Pen rather than for Chirac). Chirac's supporting the European Constitution on TV may actually do more harm than good. At least this debate does have the benefit of increasing French interest in the democratic process.
The French trust the European Commission even less. How can the European Commission be controlled, be responsive to EU citizens, without an adequate check and balance system? Do Europeans have as much access as lobbies to the European Commission, the only body of the EU that can create laws?
It may be that passing this treaty on the constitution may be lesser of two evils; a worse option would be to let "big business" continue on their merry way without any government regulation.
This is part of the current French quandry about the referendum. They have no idea how other Europeans feel about Europe.
Referendum for the European constitution
Voting in the referendum for or against the European constitution is not an easy exercise. Even many of those who consider themselves pro-European justify their positions as voting for or against the treaty for the European constitution as a means of saving their vision of Europe. If one votes against the treaty, then will there be another chance for an improved version? Who knows. I personally feel like the treaty doesn't fulfill the vision I have of Europe but, on the other hand, without a constitution the EU will continue to distance itself from the vision I had hoped for.
Looking forward to the debate in the IUP2 class on Monday May 2 in the CRL Sciences Physiques.
