Know God by all means, but not in my classroom

I cut half of this post out because I didn't agree with it anymore, or find it necessary to make sense of the following anecdote. It's my blog, I can do that.

Meanwhile, in the real world, I observed a class of French 8 and 9-year-olds today while they were learning about the rise of Christianity in France. It was an amazing lesson; history, religious studies, economics, citizenship and maths all in one. I took some badly-written notes, which, translated and edited for clarity and length only, I'm going to post. I was so touched by their enthusiasm and their humanity and, I don't know, it seems relevant. Maybe if all those twittering god-no-godders today had been in this class when they were nine, they wouldn't be making such a big deal out of it now.

Teacher: Ok, look at the map of Europe and the timelines. Look at the numbers. Who can tell me something about the different numbers of Christians in France in 400AD and 500AD?

Kids: [after some amusing comments] There are more! Loads more!

T: Yes, well done! So why do we think this might be?

Kid: Miss, did they see it on TV? *laughing*

T: [laughs] No, they didn't have TV. First, think about how people used to move things around back when there were no TVs or cars or aeroplanes.

Kid: Did they use a postman?

T: No, they didn't have postmen either. But you're right, in a way. It was someone who travelled. Who would have moved around a lot, a long long time ago, before postmen?

Ks: Everybody! Nobles! Train drivers! Important people! [...they continue guessing.]

Ace Kid: Miss I heard that some people from France used to go all the way to China to fetch the rice. They would travel and travel and they would come back from China with rice all the way back to France, and they would carry things and bring messages and things.

T: Yes. Exactly right! Well done. So look on your map and see how people travelled all the way from the East, through the Middle East, and towards Europe. The caravans from Asia brought spices and all sorts of other things, and they helped to spread ideas about Christianity as on the way the travelling people preached. So this was the diffusion of Christianity, facilitated by commerce. Also at this time Rome was taken over by people who 'officialised' Christianity and made it the one proper religion of the Empire, so old Roman culture was outlawed and everybody was told to change, even in France.

Kids: Everyone?! Waoh etc. Why? Why did it take over?

T: There have always been people who believed - sorry, who believe - in things. People like to believe in things, children. Life is sometimes very hard and it's reassuring to believe in something. The people of the caravans were sometimes travelling for weeks and months at a time, it was very uncomfortable and dangerous back then. So you see why it was good to think somebody was looking after them. We are very lucky in France because we have the "liberté de culture," we have the freedom to make a religious choice (because it is a choice), and part of this liberté is that my religious freedom stops where another person's starts. [makes arm gestures] I can believe whatever I want, and so can they, but to each other we have to be - what do we have to be, children?

Kids: Respectful!

T: Yes, we have to respect other people's religious beliefs. Otherwise you get religious wars between two kinds of believers that can cause enormous deaths. What do you think? Would you kill the person sitting next to you because you were a different religion? Would it make you feel better to kill your neighbour?

Kids: [all look round, start laughing] Mais non! Because I like him.

Ace Kid: Good, because otherwise I wouldn't have any friends!

T: Yes, good. Shh. [waits for them to be quiet, then speaks slowly and clearly.] But the problem is that in some countries, though, things aren't like that. People who believe something often don't understand why others don't believe exactly like they do. C'est illogique mais ça existe. It's unbelievable to the people who are fighting these wars that they could be wrong. They're convinced it's right, but is it really?

Kids: Nooooooooon!

T: Non. Non. [She looks very serious.] Il faut lutter contre ça. [We must struggle against that.]


Now, without going into France's shady past in that area, or the race riots of the banlieux, or the fact that I'm in a great school in a chic suburb where the teacher has time and resources and energy to actually teach, unlike many – and above all, without getting onto the no-god-know-god seesaw – I think that's a pretty positive start to a nine-year-old's religious education.

Le Marketing

French marketing has always puzzled me.

When I was studying literature in Paris I quickly learned to deflect the question, 'and what are you doing here?' as it would invariably lead to raised eyebrows, smirks, and, 'but what do you want to do comme travail?' not completely unlike in England, I suppose, where I'm knee-deep in jokes about lazy art students going straight on the dole after graduating. But in France, unlike England, the assumption that you can't get a job with a literature degree is based on a system in which pupils have to specialise early, sticking to arts or sciences even if they're not sure which they like best, and where employers choose a candidate based on how closely their qualifications match up to the job requirements, regardless of their raw aptitude, on-the-job experience, or passion. So someone with an engineering degree can only be an engineer, and someone with a history or philosophy degree from a good university who wants to go into marketing had damn well better make sure they have a marketing qualification on top of that. (See 23 year old Jean Sarkozy's recent appointment as chairman of the body that runs la Défense, and how angry people are that he hasn't even got a fucking degree, for the importance of either relevant qualifications or a Presidential parent when it comes to finding a job.)

Most young French people I've met (admittedly, not a huge number) work in marketing. 'Le marketing' is massive. In England, if you're doing a degree course in marketing, in business and marketing, hospitality and marketing etc, it means you're probably at the University of Coventry, or Plymouth, or Middlesex, and you're heading for a job as the manager of a branch of Thomas Cook's. In France, you do your arts or humanities degree, free (virtually), straight out of school, you go on erasmus, you protest, you stand around looking mind-blowingly sexy and smoking, and then you knuckle down and get a real qualification so you can actually get a job. In marketing.

Why, then, if the cream of French youth is engaged in this industry, is it so, so bad? Take poster campaigns. I saw one on the metro the other day describing some kind of winter-time show, the main text of which read (in English): "Impossible To Describe It: Just Go!!!" Lazy. Just lazy. A clothes shop near rue Rambuteau calls itself 'Fashion,' explaining, if you hadn't grasped the significance of the word, 'make oneself more self-confident!' Those hideous Orangina animals: who on earth thought it was a good idea to put endangered safari wildlife in revealing swimsuits and slap them on the window of every Tabac in Paris? And why do adverts for literally everything else contain young children trying to look at each others' genitals?

Realistically, French promotional material can't be dreamt up by four guys called François-Xavier sharing a large bag of weed. It's got to be meticulously researched and targeted, presumably not at me. So what's difference between me and a French person which makes them respond positively to ad campaigns that leave me cold? My mission for this week is to find out...

In other news, Spotify just gave me this nugget of late-nineties joyful nostalgia.