Open Admissions

One of the many things I love about France is the educational system. Reading about the college admissions scandal in the U.S. makes my blood boil, and I am all the more grateful to be in a completely different university universe. A sane one.

The university journey begins in high school, or lycée. France has just enacted an educational reform, changing the requirements for those who will graduate in 2021. But basically there are two streams: for those who plan to go to university and those who don’t. 

Those who don’t want to go to university (and I keep using the word university because collège in French is middle school, for 6th to 9th grades) have to take some basic classes for a good educational foundation—history, French, philosophy (ahem), physical education, math, civics and two—yes, TWO—foreign languages (the double foreign language requirement starts in 6th grade).Then they can take specialized classes to learn a trade, such as farming, many aspects of food service, transportation, sales, environmental work, etc. The students spend part of their days actually working as apprentices (a word that comes from apprendre—to learn) and are well-qualified when they graduate. This is considered a great outcome because such careers, even being a waiter, are honest and necessary work that earn a living wage. There is no shame in not going to university. These kids have several options, all of them with acronyms like STMG, ST2S, STHR, STI2D, STD2A, etc. One must be fluent in acronym when in France.

Those who want to go to university are split further into two streams: liberal arts and science types. The idea, again, is to prepare the students for the next step. Those who want to become engineers would have a strong foundation in sciences, for example. 

At the end of high school, the students must pass the baccalauréat, a gigantic written and oral test. You can finish high school and flunk the bac, but the bac is seen as a seal of approval, and students may take it again in an effort to pass. The bac is necessary for getting into university.There are three kind of higher education: universitiés, Grandes écoles, and specialized schools. Degrees are called licence (for a bachelor’s), master and doctorat. The Grandes écoles are considered the cream of the crop, very hard to get into, but in the sense of requiring great scores, and usually two years of rigorous preparatory courses. Universities, like France’s hospitals, are rather bare-bones compared to the U.S., lacking amenities like fancy gyms with climbing walls, water parks!!!!, movie theaters, etc. Just plain classrooms, with lots of students. The specialized schools are for things like commerce or management, such as the famous INSEAD. The universities tend not to rank very high globally because of faculty research citations, which punish papers that aren’t in English, and because of high student/faculty ratios.

Every French student who passed the bac gets into university. The test is given at the same time across the entire country, no private testing centers allowed. To get into scientific fields, you have to have passed the science bac, but otherwise it’s pretty open.Here’s how much it costs per year for French/EU students (international students are a different story):

For licence (bachelor’s) studies: €170, but poor families can get a reduction to €113.

Master: €243, reduced to €159.

Doctorat: €380, reduced to €253.

Ingénieur (engineer): €601

They also have to pay a student social security contribution of €90, which is waived for poor students. This is getting a new name but the amount stays the same.

Meal tickets are €3.25 a meal.Dorms are where French families face the big expense. There aren’t nearly enough dorm rooms, so students must find private lodging, something that has gotten squeezed by AirBnB, which offers landlords so much more money than students paying €400 a month for a one-bedroom apartment that’s empty during the summer.

Official dorm rooms range from 96 square feet with just a sink—bathrooms and kitchens are in common areas—to 150 square feet with a private shower, sink, fridge and microwave but shared toilets and kitchen; to studios up to 215 square feet with shower, toilet, sink, small kitchen and fridge. All furnished. They cost €200 to €500 a month.

So a year of university costs around €4,000 for room, €2,000 for board and a couple hundred for actual school fees.

The private schools, such as business schools, have low student/teacher ratios and cost much more. Tuition at the very respected HEC business school in Paris costs €15,100 a year for an MBA.Before you think that it’s a cakewalk to get a degree in France, students have to pass a gantlet of tests in order to continue. There is no way to finish if you skip class and just party. In fact, part of the reform of the bac stems from the fact that only 61% of students finish their degrees. Students aiming to become doctors may be filtered out in tests and have to choose a different career, perhaps still in medicine. Because it’s so rigorous, companies search for people who have gone to university for a year or two, even if they didn’t finish. You can see employment ads for BAC + 2, which means a bac plus two years of further education.

You can’t change your major between vastly different domains—something that’s possible in the U.S. 

Another difference with the U.S. is the sports aspect. As in, it doesn’t exist. No school teams, not in high school, not in university. It’s a place for studying. If you want to play sports, you join a club, which would be made up of kids from many different schools, and you would play against other clubs. No school spirit day. No crosstown rivalries. No Final Four (what sport is that anyway? Don’t tell me because I don’t care; I know of its existence only because I just saw a headline about it in the New York Times). No jocks, no cheerleaders. Also almost no fraternities or sororities. No corporate donors. Just taxes put to work.

You would think that in the U.S., with tuition such an incredible burden, kids would study their butts off. Certainly many do, but U.S. universities seem to be above all vast party machines. In France, the financial pressure is off and the kids are often living independently for the first time, so like young people everywhere they test their wings a bit; the bars around campuses are famously lively. But the constant testing is such that it’s up or out, and so French students pretty much keep their noses to the grindstone.

Feel free to talk smack below about the college admission scammers. As someone who got a perfect ACT in math and was in the top 1% nationally overall, I am disgusted by this group and hope the kids get kicked out and replaced with worthy students and the parents sent to prison. My own high school counselor pushed me to become a secretary, because with my good grades I would be hired immediately. She told me that I should forget about going to university on the East Coast, which was my dream, because my family couldn’t afford the plane fare, which was true. I informed her that I would become a boss, not a secretary, and indeed I did—and I had a secretary, who was a man. So much for Miss Norton’s stereotypes. I worked full-time in college (and finished in three years) because even though I had a full scholarship to a local state school, the fees and books still cost more than my parents could afford. I had zero fun, but I got a degree debt-free. I don’t think it would be possible to pull off today.I don’t know about you but I would rather drive over bridges designed by people who became engineers because they were smart and passionate about engineering, and be tended by doctors who are smart and passionate about caring for people, and so on, rather than by less-qualified, less-interested people who got into college because of legacy admissions or because their parents paid off the schools, in legal (well, legal is yet to be determined) or illegal ways. Remember the invasion of Grenada, to save the med students who were studying there because they weren’t able to get into med schools in the U.S.? When I was in the U.S. and saw on the list of in-network doctors some who had degrees from Grenada, I was horrified. Luckily, now I live in a place where all the doctors are in the network and I can pick whomever I want, assured that they are the crème de la crème. And my smart, ambitious kid will be able to continue studies without drowning in debt.

OK, have at it! I love your comments. Readers from other countries, tell us how your system works.

Piñata Cake

There are different ways to impress guests. You can serve the most refined and perfectly prepared dishes. Or, if you’re entertaining 8-year-olds, you can make a piñata cake. Cake AND candy! Two great tastes that taste great together. A guaranteed hit that will first make jaws drop and then mouths open.

I established a reputation in my little village here in the deepest, most lost depths of France profonde as somebody who made very strange gâteaux, but they were mostly good.

There was the carrot cake, at one of our earliest gatherings. A July 4 cookout, and we invited everybody we knew at the time. I had made a bunch of desserts, including a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, sheet-cake format, decorated with strawberries and blueberries to make an American flag.

I was about to cut it, but a friend said, “Oh, wait, I have to show everybody first!” As she carried it around, she called out to me, “What kind of cake is it?” When I said carrot, she just about dropped the thing. Her face was the picture of shock. And horror. But, being incredibly gracious, she recovered, and turned the conversation to the frosting. Answering that it was made with cheese didn’t help the situation.

The other desserts got eaten in short order, but the carrot cake sat untouched until finally one guest, who hadn’t paid attention to this exchange, took a piece. The others watched warily, and when his face lit up with pleasure, they all had to try this strange carrot cake with cheese on top. It disappeared in minutes.

Just FYI, these days a very branché (literally “plugged in”–hip) café in Carcassonne serves not only carrot cake but also cheesecake and many kinds of cupcakes. And is always crowded.

However, to my knowledge, at least in these parts, to get hold of a piñata cake, you have to DIY or see me. And I am about to spill my secrets.Now, a piñata made of papier mâche (pronounced pap-ee-ay mash, not paper mashay) is extremely uncommon around here. There is no going to Wal-Mart or Target, where you can get a wide selection of Mexican piñatas made in China. In fact, in deepest France, piñatas were quite unknown, even though Dora l’Exploratrice was a hit in a certain demographic on TV.

I made a piñata for the class, and was very proud of myself. It was the image of a popular cartoon character. I was completely unprepared for the reaction: horror. I had brought a tee-ball bat that a dear American uncle had given my kid, wanting my child to have all the benefits of American heritage, even while living in France. However, this uncle was quite aware that my husband is gifted at hitting balls with his feet or his head but not with his hands and that I am a complete and utter ZERO when it comes to anything round. Just forget it. I can’t throw and I can’t catch. (I can’t run or swim or …. well, you get the picture. Not coach material.)

So the piñata full candy and crayons and erasers (hey, not TOO much sugar!) was suspended from a stately plane tree in the school courtyard, but the kids were utterly horrified at the idea of beating a beloved visage into oblivion.

I should have known better. A few years earlier, I had done a Winnie the Pooh theme for a birthday cake and was very proud of my artistry…until it came time to cut the cake, and the children bawled like mad because I had desecrated Winnie. No, dear reader, if you have to cut it, make it something banal.

Of course, and I really should have seen this coming, with the piñata, it was Lord of the Flies. As soon as one child slugged it, then the others tasted blood and were all in.

Things went somewhat better with the cake. However, I warn you that while the first slice or two is utterly impressive, after that the architecture of the thing falls apart and you have a cake/frosting/candy mess. But by then the little devils are so hyped up they don’t even notice.

Piñata Cake

OK so here we can get into the whole French-vs.-U.S. (or wherever) supermarket supplies. You cannot find confetti cake mix in France. Forget it. In fact, they don’t sell cake mix at all. You can find a mix for flan, for macarons, for fondant (or moelleux–NOT THE SAME) au chocolat, but not for cake/gâteau. That’s because cake mix is a huge rip-off, and the French, being skin-flints in the most admirable way, refuse to buy it. Flour, sugar, leavening, salt…for crying out loud! Plus they have to add a bunch of chemical preservatives (OK, if you’re prudish avert your eyes, because “preservatives” in French means condoms (like for birth control, not like the French town) and the stuff that adds shelf life is called “conservateurs.”) It takes all of one minute to actually measure the dry ingredients, and even with a mix you have to add all the liquid ones.

So back to the recipe. You make a yellow (or white) cake. Chocolate would hide the confetti aspect.

2.5 cups white flour

2 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

1 cup butter

2 cups granulated sugar

4-5 eggs, separated (4 if big; 5 if not)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup milk

1 cup sprinkles (or more!)

Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit (180 C).

Sift the dry ingredients.

Beat the butter until it gets white and fluffy. Add the sugar, then the egg yolks and vanilla.

Beat the whites until they’re stiff.

Mix the butter into the dry ingredients. Stir in about a third of the milk, then another third, and another.

When the batter is well-mixed, carefully integrate the egg whites, stirring in ONE DIRECTION. This is the same advice as for Mousse au Chocolat and Baba au Rhum. Consistency. At the last minute, add the all-important sprinkles.

You need two identical Pyrex bowls, about 6.5 inches (17 cms) in diameter. Butter them and pour in the batter. Bake for about 20 minutes (but check after 15!).

Let it cool. Before you turn out the two halves, scoop out the insides of the cakes. Make sure you have at least 2 inches (5 cms) of cake all the way around, or else it will collapse.

Make the frosting. I just did classic buttercream–equal parts butter and powdered sugar, with a dash of vanilla. Later, I added food coloring.

I used something like M&Ms, which at that time you couldn’t find in France but now they’re everywhere. Nothing too soft or sugary or else it will dissolve with the humidity of the cake. In fact, let the cake get completely cool before assembling. Don’t make more than a day in advance.Put the bottom half of the piñata cake on the serving dish. Then pour the candy into the hollowed-out hole in the bottom half of the cake, carefully creating a talus hill above. Without disturbing the candy, apply some frosting around the flat lip of the bottom half of the cake. Delicately set the top half of the cake on it.

Frost the whole thing. As you can see, I’ve done this more than once. The smooth frosting was much easier than the little stars.

The last bit of advice: Don’t stress about it. Years later, my kid remembers only that I made birthday cakes from scratch (spatula licking was involved), vs. other kids whose parents picked up something random at the supermarket. It really is the thought that counts.

 

Bella Ciao

As I write this, a Euro-electro cover of the Italian folk song “Bella Ciao” is blasting into my window from a boisterous gathering. Sound travels easily in the countryside.

If you don’t know this song, listen here (not the techno version).Years and years ago, an eternity really, when my kid was a little round sausage of yumminess and naïvété, the (first grade?) class learned the song “Bella Ciao” for the year-end show. They always learned something that would bring great applause from all the grandparents in the audience, and there was something adorable about these little tykes belting out hits from half a century earlier.

Once again, random photos. This time from a search for a brocante where the Carnivore and I got lost in the countryside.

Thus I’ve known Bella Ciao for a while. Obviously it was an Italian song, so I didn’t understand the lyrics (unlike another song my kid learned in school even earlier: “Si Tu Vas à Rio”–“If you go to Rio….don’t forget to go up yonder, to a little village, hidden under wild flowers, on the side of a hill….” a song about reminiscences and good old times, which is kind of hilarious coming out of the mouths of four-year-olds).Several years later, my kid was studying World War II, and “Bella Ciao” came up again in the context of families deciding whether to weather the terrible fascist political climate or to flee, to become refugees. The song’s origins were the women of the Po river valley who weeded the rice paddies and who suffered terribly. (How did a song about suffering women manage to be sung by so many men?) (Italian and English lyrics here)Later (although one article said the partisans came first, in 1919, and the rice weeders came after World War II), it was adopted as an anti-fascist anthem, and then as a pro-communist song. These kinds of liaisons are difficult, because you can be very anti-fascist and also downright cold to communism–the original idea might have been nice but in reality communism was a huge con job and an economic and social failure. Yet, in binary, black-and-white situations, you don’t get to be anti-communist AND anti-fascist, because those get lumped as one and the same. So either you have to choose to be anti-fascist and just ignore the communist part or you shrug and walk away from everything altogether. In some parts of southern France, communists haven’t gotten the memo about its demise. There also are plenty of refugees or descendants thereof from Franco’s Spain, so there’s a strong anti-fascist streak as well (a Spanish cover of the song was censored in Spain in 1969…Franco died in 1975, for those of you who don’t remember Chevy Chase on SNL’s Weekend Update). “Bella Ciao” became the hymn of labor strikes in the 1960s and then crossed the Atlantic in service of the government of Salvador Allende in Chile, which, you might recall, ended badly, thanks to the CIA.

“Bella Ciao” has been in my head lately because it was a theme of the hugely popular Spanish series (picked up on Netflix) “La Casa del Papel”–“Money Heist” in English. What an interesting series! I didn’t see all of it, but it was fascinating, with the corrupt victims, the good-hearted villains, the messed-up police….nothing rote, everything complicated. AlloCiné compared it to “Ocean’s Eleven,” but it was free of smugness and made you question everything. Maybe it was an intellectual “Ocean’s Eleven.” It also was devoid of fashion, yet had such indelible looks. The red jumpsuits! The Salvador Dali masks!In looking around for who in the world did the electro version I was hearing, I discovered that “Bella Ciao” is in a renaissance as it were, thanks to “La Casa del Papel,” which made it hip again.  French-Congolese rapper Maître Gims did a version with lots of la, la, la (which translates as la, la, la, whether Italian to French or French to English). French DJ Jean Roch (I do NOT approve of that silky green jacket. Nor of the backup dancers) and American electro house musician Steve Aoki also did it. And French-Spanish singer Manu Chao, though he was before the current craze. In fact, his family fled Franco’s Spain, which is how he was born in France.Have you heard Bella Ciao before?

 

French Home Lessons

First lesson: “At school one learns lots of good and useful things: one learns to correctly speak and write one’s mother tongue; one learns the history and geography of one’s country; one learns above all to know and love chores of all sorts that morality commands us.”So begins a 1919 French home economics book aimed at middle school girls. It was among the trove of treasures we found in various cupboards, cellars and attics of the apartments we renovated. It instructs in detail, well, everything. For example, how to set a table: “First, place a cotton cover on the table, over which you lay the tablecloth. This cover absorbs the noise caused by contact with utensils, and prevents glasses from breaking.”

“Then, you place the plates, leaving an interval of at least 60 centimeters between them. The guests shouldn’t bump elbows or feel restricted in their movements.”

I guess today we have the Internet for these kinds of details, though what’s out there is mostly about selling something.The treasure trove also contained portfolios done by the previous owner herself, on sewing, cutting (separate from sewing!) and layette. Girls were steered along a narrow path 75 years ago.

The ones related to sewing fascinated me. I grew up learning to sew. My mom made a lot of my clothes, very much like Ramona’s in Beverly Cleary’s books. I remember going to the fabric store and flipping through the pattern catalogs, where anything was possible. The suits I wore to my first post-college job I made myself. They were dreadful. And I HATE sewing. But while I might not enjoy it, it is useful to know. 

“Pieces on thick fabric”

Cross-stitch.

General notions of sewing. Necessary materials: thimble, two pairs of scissors, long needles (50mm) for thread, pins, tailor’s chalk…

I can’t sew without a pattern (unless it’s a simple rectangle, like curtains), just as I can’t play piano without sheet music. Sewing without a pattern–creating a pattern–is like composing music or at least like improvising jazz. I am in awe.

How to make different kinds of sleeves.

And then there’s the absolute worst: ironing.

Instructions for ironing napkins, including folding.

Did you take home ec? I refused. I also refused to take typing, upsetting my mother to no end, though I eventually took it in summer school and now can type as fast as a person talks. I’m still not sure an entire year-long class on sewing, ironing and baby care is a good use of school time, but we might be a lot healthier and less wasteful if people knew how to cook and how to repair their clothes. The wonderful blogger Garance Doré (a must for francophiles!) interviewed Jean Touitou, the founder of A.P.C., who said that everyone should know how to mend their clothes, to not throw away perfectly good pieces that are, say, missing a button.

The young generation seems to be into DIY; the last time I was in a fabric store here, the other customers were very young, pierced and tattooed. I had the impression they knew not just how to mend but how to create and improvise–play jazz with material.

Do you mend? Iron? Actually sew and enjoy it?