The French School

Ah, the French school; finally strict schools and serious study.  Well, it was a little too much.  You see, the schools in France all had to be on the same page on the same day.  If the students couldn’t keep up, they failed.  And if they didn’t keep up the second time, they failed again. They could even fail three times. 

This was rather unacceptable to us North Americans, so we put the boys with the nuns in a French private catholic school, hoping support would be better.  Damon and Tyson survived two years, Brandon, one.  

It just wasn’t working for Brandon.  He was having nightmares and displaying depressive behaviour.  He produced superlative work, I thought, but he couldn’t pass.  So the next year we placed him in the local public school. I thought this would be much better for him and allow him to acquaint with local kids.  Unfortunately, his teacher was an old  badalax and hated the kids, it seemed. She yanked Brandon’s hair, and tugged on his ears.  In May, in frustration with her, I pulled him out of school and waited till the next year when he would go to an adjacent town with his school mates, up to the next level.  

My best friend, Jocceline, was the head mistress and teacher of that new school.  Brandon managed to lead the whole class into rebellion as he had figured out now that we were going back to Canada in the summer and he didn’t really need to learn anything. I was to find out later, that Jocceline would often go home in tears. She was so special.  She was beautiful and wore long skirts and gold shows… even to garden in!  She had long black hair, pulled back to show her exquisite delicate, Spanish features. She was such a good teacher and had the loyalty of all her students, and then along came Brandon. 

Damon and Tyson tried honestly to make the grade.  After two years of not getting great marks, Damon came home and ranted that he would NOT fail because of a language especially when he knew the subject matter.  He was so upset, and rightly so, that I immediately called the Ontario Ministry of Education and put the boys on correspondence courses.  Damon could never accept failure or substandard results. 

The rules were they had to get up in the morning, be dressed, fed, and beds made by 9:00.  Once the work was done, they were free.  We worked around their flexibility and took four and five day trips around Europe.  It worked for all of us. They sure knew what work meant when they returned home to finish up their high school; both were Ontario Scholars. Grade thirteen was a cake walk after all there pressure of the French school under the nuns and the self-educating experience of correspondence courses.