Sacrificing freedom for equality in France&#39;s schools
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As students in this high-rise slum on the northern edge of Paris enter their grim high school each morning, they pass a battered steel sign reading &quot;LycÃ©e Suger: LibertÃ© - EgalitÃ© - FraternitÃ©.
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Some parents are opting to ÂunschoolÂ their children, a philosophy broadly defined by its rejection of not only the schoolhouse but also classes, curriculums and textbooks.
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(InfoWorld) - French authorities will give out 175,000 USB memory sticks loaded with open-source software to Parisian high-school students at the start of the next school year. The sticks will give the students, aged 15 and 16, the freedom to access their e-mail, browser bookmarks and other documents on computers at school, home, a friend's house or in an Internet cafÃ© -- but at a much lower cost than providing notebook computers for all, a spokesman for the Greater Paris Regional Council said Friday. It's a way to reduce the digital divide, said spokesman Jean-Baptiste Roger. The sticks will probably contain the Firefox 2 Web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, an office productivity suite such as OpenOffice.org 2, an audio and video player, and software for instant messaging, he said. The exact mix of software will be defined by the company that wins the contract to supply the sticks, but will be open source, he said. At the European arm of the foundation behind the Firefox browser, Mozilla Europe president Tristan Nitot hailed the news as "an excellent surprise." It could even be a way to fight software piracy, he said, since the open-source software that the sticks will contain may be freely and legally copied. "It's better to copy that than Microsoft Office: it's cheaper, and it's legal," he said. School heads will distribute the USB (Universal Serial Bus) sticks to 130,000 students at the start of the next academic year, as they arrive for their first of three years at high school. There are 476,000 students in the 468 public high schools operated by the council and the 213 privately run schools it funds. Apprentices at the 173 professional training centers funded by the council will receive the other 45,000 sticks. If the project goes well, there's no reason why funding shouldn't be renewed next year, said Roger. The council plans to spend â¬2.6 million (US$3.4 million) on the USB sticks this year, a small fraction of its overall educational budget. School funding in France comes from many sources. Teachers are paid by the national government, while the provision of teaching facilities including the construction and maintenance of schools is paid for by local governments: city authorities, in the case of primary and middle schools, and regional councils in the case of high schools. In 2006, the Greater Paris Regional Council's budget for maintaining high school facilities, including buildings, libraries and its 120,000 computers, totalled â¬728 million. It also spent â¬195 million on facilities for apprentices in professional training centers.
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The legal case of a girl with special educational needs could prompt a rethink of the use of restraint in schools.
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Challenging one of the great taboos of French politics, a new book has laid bare the love life of the country's amorous leaders.
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Academics claim that patriotism should be taught as a controversial issue in schools.
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For an increasing number of public schools, the formula for a better education requires a little arithmetic: divide the girls from the boys.
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An official report suggesting that French children should be forced to learn English in school from the age of eight has provoked an outcry among nationalists, teachers and unions.
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For some French Muslims, two worlds collided as the ban on wearing Islamic head scarves in public schools took effect. Many described Thursday as crunch day, when they were forced to question the meaning of being Muslim in a Roman Catholic country where life since Sept. 11, 2001, has become more tense and divisive.
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A Sikh religious body said it was &quot;deplorable&quot; that a French ban on the wearing of religious symbols, including turbans, in state schools was depriving boys of education in France.
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PARIS -- About a dozen history and political science students huddled against the blustery cold outside the main entrance to the Sorbonne university, the bastion of Left Bank intellectualism. The topic, as they puffed away: France's new law banning smoking in public places such as schools and...
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PARIS A fragile truce between the government and Islamic organizations in France over the country&#39;s ban of Muslim head scarves in public schools appeared to hold Wednesday even though five female students have been expelled from schools for refusing to
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The European Court of Human Rights has overturned French court rulings and prevented a single lesbian woman from adopting a child. Will this pave the way for similar challenges elsewhere?
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School saga is inflaming old divides between ethnic groups.
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France's bold effort to reign in Muslim fundamentalism was put to the test Thursday, with a new law that bans students from wearing Islamic head scarves taking force with the start of the school year.
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The decision by the European Parliament&#39;s Civil Liberties Committee to reject the nomination of Rocco Buttiglione as European Commissioner for Justice and Security over his comments on homosexuality and marriage is very unfortunate.
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A Muslim schoolgirl has bowed to France&#39;s ban on Islamic headscarves in state schools by returning to class and removing her veil to reveal a head shaved bald in protest.