4 ms·

I’m French, but spent a portion of my childhood living in the USA (South Carolina) due to my father’s work. The one thing that my extremely French parents coul

by GuiA 9y ago

I’m French, but spent a portion of my childhood living in the USA (South Carolina) due to my father’s work. The one thing that my extremely French parents couldn’t stop making fun of at the time, and still can’t stop making fun of now 20 years later, is the American habit of praising children repeatedly, putting stickers on homework, giving participation ribbons for every event, etc. It was actually an interesting dichotomy: I’d get my homework back from the teacher with it saying “Great job!” with a cute little star sticker, and then at home my mom would get mad at me because she thought I made dumb mistakes and would make me do it all over again. Definitely a strong contrast between French and American values in schooling, at least in the 90s. I’m left handed, and in the 2nd grade I had a teacher who would tear apart any piece of paper I gave her that had any ink smudge on it (fountain pens are mandatory in French grade school - which also confused my parents when we moved to the US and I was expected to write everything in pencil) and make me do it all over again. I do have really neat handwriting now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 15 years later, as a grad student in the US, teachers I TA’d for repeatedly told me I was too harsh in my grading and that I shouldn’t take off points for small mistakes, typos, etc. That’s another big difference between French and US schooling: in France, you’re graded out of 20; but at the high school/college level, if you have an average above 15/20, you’re most certainly in the top of your class. In fact, in some top tier universities the class average might be 8/20. In grad school in the US, I had a 90%+ average, and routinely got 100% on tests - something just completely foreign to me.

abritinthebay 9y ago
As someone from the UK your experience sounds similar to my perceptions of the US education system. It's... quite strange.
GuB-42 9y ago
Worth noting that in France, a perfect score (20/20) is extremely rare if the test has open questions. Not unheard of in maths, where precise answers are expected, but in literature, most teachers probably never gave a single 20/20 in their entire career. There is this idea that nothing is perfect and as a result, there should be no such thing as a perfect score.
- intopieces 9y ago
  If the teachers never give a single 20/20, that just means there is grade deflation, right? Effectively, 18/20 or 19/20 becomes the "perfect score," since it's the highest possible to obtain.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    > If the teachers never give a single 20/20, that just means there is grade deflation, right? Effectively, 18/20 or 19/20 becomes the "perfect score," since it's the highest possible to obtain. "Perfect" means that there is nothing to improve - which is hardly ever the case. Hardly anybody is perfect, so hardly anybody can get a perfect score.
jackaroe78 9y ago
This is quite baffling to some Americans as well (anecdotally speaking of course)
intopieces 9y ago
Anecdotally, I find this same attitude when I deal with entry level candidates who are right out of US colleges. I'm 'too harsh' for demanding that they correct their mistakes, and 'mean' for correcting them. Their work has real world, monetary and time impacts on the company and my colleagues, but I can't seem to find any one in the bunch who is willing to strive for anything beyond 'good enough.'
- magic_beans 9y ago
  Wow... yours is a team a sane person would do well to bypass.
alsetmusic 9y ago
> 15 years later, as a grad student in the US, teachers I TA’d for repeatedly told me I was too harsh in my grading and that I shouldn’t take off points for small mistakes, typos, etc. I am surprised that you got resistance on this in an educational setting, of all places. When I notice typos and grammatical errors, it almost always lowers my opinion of the material. It signals sloppy writing or possibly unclear thinking. It calls into question the meticulousness of the work as a whole. I expect more from a news outlet or a review journal with a copy editor. Professional writers and publishers should produce expert writing. I should note a few things, for the sake of context: I had some years of private schooling early on; my father would make me write book reports during summer vacation; he self-published a book later in life and was very proud that others repeatedly complimented it for being free of typos and grammatical errors. (None of my peers had this experience growing up, to my knowledge.) University standards should impose higher standards than what is typically expected in regular life. This is how writing is taught and reinforced. I think the internet, as a whole, dumbs-down writing skills by exposing readers to terrible writing on such a regular basis that they no longer perceive the difference. I don't know a solution to that problem.
- GuiA 9y ago
  It was a mid ranked state university, and the professors were not that great. I had a professor who made me regrade an entire batch of homework because, in her words, my comments explaining the mistakes were unnecessary - the students just care about their grade. Eye roll.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
mschuster91 9y ago
> The one thing that my extremely French parents couldn’t stop making fun of at the time, and still can’t stop making fun of now 20 years later, is the American habit of praising children repeatedly, putting stickers on homework, giving participation ribbons for every event, etc. Basically: Gamification. This trend, especially in games, really really sucks; as a German I'm not really used to it either, although it has swapped over to us in the last years, possibly due to the rise of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, all of which use one or another form of karma points.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
Liberté, égalité, fraternité ... unless you're a lefty then you have to conform to unrealistic constraints.
interfixus 9y ago
> in France, you’re graded out of 20; but at the high school/college level, if you have an average above 15/20, you’re most certainly in the top of your class. In fact, in some top tier universities the class average might be 8/20. In grad school in the US, I had a 90%+ average, and routinely got 100% on tests - something just completely foreign to me For many years Denmark (where I come from) had an official grading scale from 0 to 11. And then 13, not the usual top grade, but reserved for rare occasions of unique, original, outstanding performance completely outside the norm. Alas, some years ago this system was scrapped, officially because "abroad" (meaning to a large extent the US) didn't get it. When Danish candidates turned up with their perfect 11-scores, they were reportedly often handicapped by having not a single top grade.

by GuiA 9y ago

abritinthebay 9y ago

As someone from the UK your experience sounds similar to my perceptions of the US education system. It's... quite strange.

GuB-42 9y ago

Worth noting that in France, a perfect score (20/20) is extremely rare if the test has open questions. Not unheard of in maths, where precise answers are expected, but in literature, most teachers probably never gave a single 20/20 in their entire career. There is this idea that nothing is perfect and as a result, there should be no such thing as a perfect score.

intopieces 9y ago
If the teachers never give a single 20/20, that just means there is grade deflation, right? Effectively, 18/20 or 19/20 becomes the "perfect score," since it's the highest possible to obtain.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > If the teachers never give a single 20/20, that just means there is grade deflation, right? Effectively, 18/20 or 19/20 becomes the "perfect score," since it's the highest possible to obtain. "Perfect" means that there is nothing to improve - which is hardly ever the case. Hardly anybody is perfect, so hardly anybody can get a perfect score.

jackaroe78 9y ago

This is quite baffling to some Americans as well (anecdotally speaking of course)

intopieces 9y ago

Anecdotally, I find this same attitude when I deal with entry level candidates who are right out of US colleges. I'm 'too harsh' for demanding that they correct their mistakes, and 'mean' for correcting them. Their work has real world, monetary and time impacts on the company and my colleagues, but I can't seem to find any one in the bunch who is willing to strive for anything beyond 'good enough.'

magic_beans 9y ago
Wow... yours is a team a sane person would do well to bypass.

alsetmusic 9y ago

> 15 years later, as a grad student in the US, teachers I TA’d for repeatedly told me I was too harsh in my grading and that I shouldn’t take off points for small mistakes, typos, etc. I am surprised that you got resistance on this in an educational setting, of all places. When I notice typos and grammatical errors, it almost always lowers my opinion of the material. It signals sloppy writing or possibly unclear thinking. It calls into question the meticulousness of the work as a whole. I expect more from a news outlet or a review journal with a copy editor. Professional writers and publishers should produce expert writing. I should note a few things, for the sake of context: I had some years of private schooling early on; my father would make me write book reports during summer vacation; he self-published a book later in life and was very proud that others repeatedly complimented it for being free of typos and grammatical errors. (None of my peers had this experience growing up, to my knowledge.) University standards should impose higher standards than what is typically expected in regular life. This is how writing is taught and reinforced. I think the internet, as a whole, dumbs-down writing skills by exposing readers to terrible writing on such a regular basis that they no longer perceive the difference. I don't know a solution to that problem.

GuiA 9y ago
It was a mid ranked state university, and the professors were not that great. I had a professor who made me regrade an entire batch of homework because, in her words, my comments explaining the mistakes were unnecessary - the students just care about their grade. Eye roll.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

mschuster91 9y ago

> The one thing that my extremely French parents couldn’t stop making fun of at the time, and still can’t stop making fun of now 20 years later, is the American habit of praising children repeatedly, putting stickers on homework, giving participation ribbons for every event, etc. Basically: Gamification. This trend, especially in games, really really sucks; as a German I'm not really used to it either, although it has swapped over to us in the last years, possibly due to the rise of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, all of which use one or another form of karma points.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago

Liberté, égalité, fraternité ... unless you're a lefty then you have to conform to unrealistic constraints.

interfixus 9y ago

> in France, you’re graded out of 20; but at the high school/college level, if you have an average above 15/20, you’re most certainly in the top of your class. In fact, in some top tier universities the class average might be 8/20. In grad school in the US, I had a 90%+ average, and routinely got 100% on tests - something just completely foreign to me For many years Denmark (where I come from) had an official grading scale from 0 to 11. And then 13, not the usual top grade, but reserved for rare occasions of unique, original, outstanding performance completely outside the norm. Alas, some years ago this system was scrapped, officially because "abroad" (meaning to a large extent the US) didn't get it. When Danish candidates turned up with their perfect 11-scores, they were reportedly often handicapped by having not a single top grade.