Hello, I'm excited to talk with you all about learning French, and how this
experience has informed my interest and philosophy of teaching. Coming to Smith, I
knew I wanted to learn French. Before Smith, I took five years of Spanish and
participated in a study abroad program in Costa Rica. I love language learning
because it has helped me to become a multimedia artist with my words. With the
tools of paint, pencil, and charcoal - English, Spanish, and French - I feel that
my thinking and my expression have become richer and more compositionally
varied. During my junior year I took a Smith course entitled Islam de France,
or French Islam, with Professor Mack, who is the middle person right there, whose
specialty includes immigration, gender, and sexuality in French politics and
culture, through music, poetry, literature, and historical writings. This course
explored how Islam has developed in France and how religion interacts with
French laïcité, or secularism. The summer before I took this course, I worked as a
counselor at Camp How, a camp for all youth. Camp How serves all children,
including those with a variety of special needs, diverse home environments,
and socio-economic statuses. As a camper, I vividly remember the positive impact
my counselors had on me. That's a picture of me as a kid, and then as a counselor.
Every day at camp I felt accepted and loved. Being a counselor was a
transformative experience and led me to realize my passion for education. During
that fall semester, I began thinking about my camp experience in the context
of my French course. As we learned about the cultural separation of Muslim
families into low-income housing in isolated neighborhood, called Laban Leo,
and the barriers these families faced towards upward mobility in French
society, I began to wonder how children fit into this picture. How do they honor
their multiple identities within French culture and secularism? I was able to
explore this question while abroad in Geneva, Switzerland.
During my semester I was an intern for Child Rights Connect, an organization
that coordinates efforts for children's rights at the international level. To
accompany this internship I completed an in-depth research paper on the subject
of French public schools, labeled as zones of priority education, or as ZEP.
Schools began as a national
education reform to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds improve their
standardized exam scores. In France, the pillars of the liberty, equality, and
fraternity have guided public education since the end of the French Revolution.
Public schools are intended to disseminate secular, French values
through student's academic development, in the hope of treating everyone equally.
However ZEP schools, which are more numerous within areas of working-class
populations, many of which are located in the Bentley, qualify for extra funds in
the hopes of boosting scores. These areas are home to fifty percent of second and
third generation Muslim youth and their
families, although Muslim students may enter the school environment with
different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. They are held to the same
neutral academic standards as all French students. Schools establish neutrality
by seeing all students as the same, regardless of their social, ethnic, or
religious backgrounds. This includes enforcing French to be spoken at all
times, teaching subjects that are congruent with French Republican values,
banning religious symbols, such as the Muslim foulard, or Hijab, and attributing
French student failure to personal aptitude or attitude.
For French Muslim students, I argue that attendance of a ZEP school further
isolates them from French society and increases discrimination
against this religious and cultural group. In fact, third-generation French
Muslim students report feeling very French, and feel connected to Islam in a
more cultural, rather than religious, way. However, the stereotype of French Muslims
as religious radicals has created prejudice and discrimination within
French society that is augmented within ZEP schools, where students are viewed as
violent and incapable of academic success. Unrest among French Muslim
families and communities in response to poor living conditions, racism, and police
violence has led to many riots within the French Muslim community, one of which
is particularly well known in the banlieu Clichy-sous-Bois, near Paris.
After the deaths of two teenage boys as they were running from the police, who
deemed that they look too suspicious, the most recent terrorist attacks
in France and increasing recruitment to the Islamic state have urged the French
government to develop programs that aim to quell radical French Muslim action.
However, the implications of these governmental programs have a significant
impact on prejudice and discrimination towards French Muslims. Such programs
risk creating stereotypes, encouraging race related violence and distrust, and
creating more barriers to assimilation and acceptance for French Muslim youth.
The discriminatory factors I just described are all
augmented in ZEP schools. They affect scholarly judgments that teachers apply
to French Muslim students, motivation students bring to learning, students'
self-confidence and self image, and the social climate of schools and
surrounding communities. Throughout my research, I was able to draw many
connections between the inequity of education in France and the US based
on student ethnic identity and socioeconomic status. To better explore
these connections, I chose to write my final paper for my Intercultural and
International Education course in Geneva on La Raza, or Ethnic Studies, in Tucson,
Arizona. The documentary, Precious Knowledge, was created to capture
student protests against the superintendent to keep Chicano/Chicana
ethnic studies in the classroom, and preserved students rights to learn their
history and the history of racism and inequity in the United States. This year
I'll be finishing my BA in Education and Child
Study, and I will begin my Masters of Arts and Teaching at Mount Holyoke. Through
studying comparative education between France and the United States, I learned
the empowering nature of history and identity in education. Studying identity
transforms the way students view their role in society and better equips
them to participate in democracy and question authority. I hope to bring this
understanding and experience to every day of my teaching. Thank you.