Ophelia's Journal.

Ophelia · Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 1:52 pm Post subject: Ophelia's journal.

Back to immigration from North Africa (mainly) and other former French colonies in Africa.

Working in Education, I was aware of the fact that there are more children failing among second and third generation immigrants from those countries than from the rest of the children population.
I haven't worked in schools with many such children, so I don't know if there are aspects that could be analyzed.
For example, is the situation of immigrants' children in Education in France exactly the same as in other countries, the UK or the US for example, or are there differences?

General explanations for failing at school, such as parents not speaking French, or sometimes not being literate in their own language (Arabic dialects or Kabyle for example) are probably correct to some extent.

What I have seen on many occasions is bright kids not really wanting to learn. Why this happens is not quite clear to me.

I have read about (quoting from memory) "the bitter humiliation of school failure " for those kids.
I understand, but for some of them this takes me to the idea of a vicious circle: not wanting to make the efforts to get the grades (out of anger?) then failing, then bitterly resenting the failure spelt in the grades which is not due to intellectual inability in the first place.

As is often the case, such phenomena are easier to notice in other countries than yours: During my year in California I met a colleague who taught French and English as a second language in another school in San Diego, and I visited some of her classes.
I saw her, for exampler, giving back papers to an ESL group. Later she told me that she had given only moderate praise -- not that I would have noticed, the French having a different conception of praising-- because for many of her Hispanic male students praise from a teacher was the very last thing they ever wanted to hear in public: she said that over the years she had learnt the hard truth that in some circles being seen by your peers to be getting good grades meant exclusion from the group: the "strong" boys made a point of failing, and only resounding failure was the thing.

Perhaps explanations on similar lines would work in France too.

As in other countries , aid programmes have been put in place in schools; some of them help, but they are often under-funded and there is not enough political will to carry out the majority of them in the long term.

Better things that have appeared in the last 10 or 15 years are local citizens' organizations offering free tutoring in the evening for children
who need help.

To sum up, I knew that there were problems, but I had hoped, along with many people, that they would die out as second and third generation immigrants went to university and got better jobs, thus accessing the middle class.
Technical colleges and universities are virtually free in France, the Baccalauréat is no longer the selective exam it used to be, there was no
reason why it shouldn't happen, and it did happen.
A number of children or grandchildren of immigrants got say, a business degree. Some got the jobs they wanted, and blended in with the rest of society.

Then, starting in the mid 1990's, it became clear that for many of those young people, this was not working.
What we call "l'Ascenseur Social" (the "social lift" meaning social ladder), which had taken generations of French people into the middle class with free education, seemed to be stuck as far as immmigrants were concerned.

Penelope · Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 3:37 pm Post subject:

Ophelia - Here in the UK - well, just in this part of Cheshire. My daughter, like you, is a dedicated teacher. She loves her work. We do not have a large immigrant population. But she describes just the sort of problems that you are describing.

Bright children with no sense of self-worth.

How old are you? My daughter is 35. She cares about her pupils. She works in a town called Winsford. That was used as a Liverpool overspill area. In the 70's/80's the government moved people out of the slums of Liverpool to this area of Cheshire - promising them work. So young couples moved here for their work. Then the work dried up. So the men went back to Liverpool - leaving their wives and children here. The children were not much of a problem when they were small. Now they are teenagers.... brothers and sisters with different fathers often. Emma does not do family trees at her school - too complicated, she says.

She seems to have several classes of very bright, very angry young people. Nothing to do with race, colour or creed. How do we instill in them, a sense of self-worth? I would like to put you in touch with her, but I would need both of your permission.

It is odd, that I am hearing in your posts, the same concerns that I hear from my daughter - a caring teacher.

Ophelia · Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 4:57 pm Post subject:

Penelope wrote:

Penelope · Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:39 pm Post subject:

Ophelia - I was brought up in a one-parent family, by my Mum. When I was at school, there was only myself and one other boy (in junior school that is) who were from one-parent families. I don't know about the boy, but I felt as though I had 'sub-standard - second' stamped on my forehead.

When my children went to school - 25% of the children were from one-parent families.

I am sure it is a higher percentage now.

We don't like to feel 'different' when we are young - we strive to conform and fit in to what 'Society' tells us is 'the norm'. Now I am older and more experienced at life, I know that what is important is how we deal with these 'growing up' situations. That is what gives us strong, gentle characters. Everyone has differing problems in the fight to grow.

When I stopped caring about fitting in and began to care about 'what was right' . Then I began to feel that I belonged. I don't know how to word it more clearly. Sorry.

I never go to church....I can't cope with organised religion.....but I do know what it means to uphold ones denomination or ones belief system and I do know that is not right.....we must uphold what is kind, loving and true.....I call him Jesus. Hence the poem. It has helped me through my life.

When I do not know how to deal with a situation or a person, I stop and think, 'What would Jesus have done or said?' However, if I were on trial for being a Christian - they wouldn't find enough evidence to convict me. Sad

Ophelia · Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 6:04 am Post subject:

As I read about Heart of Darkness , I am sometimes brought back to the theme I am discussing in this journal.

Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, at the beginning of his his essay: "An image of Africa: racism in Conrad's HD" , mentions "two very touching letters" he received from high school children in Yonkers, New York, who had studied his book Things Fall Apart in class.

One student was "particularly happy to learn about the customs and superstitions of an African tribe".
Achebe notes that this student "is obviously unaware that the life of his own tribesmen in Yonkers, New York, is full of superstitions".

So this is what I am doing: attempting to understand better some of the odd customs and superstitions among the descendants of the many tribes of Gaul.

Penelope · Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 8:49 am Post subject:

Your comments about the problems with second and third generation, North Africa immigrants struck me as pertinent - vis a vis - superstition, and tradition.

There is an old Lancashire saying from the area where my OH and myself grew up - Clogs to Clogs in three generations....

Ophelia · Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 8:22 am Post subject: Discrimination at work.

Until the 1990's I had sometimes heard people grumbling about other groups of people who lived in their neighbourhood, but I had never witnessed anything myself and I didn't know whether said problems were serious.

Then, we began to see interviews of young men (I wonder if women are not yet another enquiry) , the grandsons of immigrants from the Maghreb who had diplomas, looked every inch the type of person a company would want to hire, and were not getting jobs.
Unemployment has ben high in France since I was a teenager, and immigrants are only one of the groups who have problems, but the explanations they gave, and which have been repeated so many times since,was that the discrimination was based on their names.
When the denunciations began, things had probably been like this for a long time but those young men spelt it out in the open: answering a job offer , they had sent answers to the companies, with every time a version in which the candidate called himself Cédric Lepage, and one with their real name, say Mohammed Zaki.
As they had the right qualifications, some of the French name letters got answers with offers of interviews.
The the Zaki letters never got an answer, and much less an interview.

Another element is that, if they managed to get an interview (perhaps under a false name?) they sometimes got a job-- so not a 100% clearcut situation.

Anyway, as the stories enfolded over the years, we learnt that in the computer systems of some companies ( I have no idea which or how many) the classified files that were cleverly hidden listed candidates (and company employees?) with the following headings: BBR (meaning Bleu, Blanc, Rouge: French, meaning white)
and "N- BBR", non-white, and they answered only the BBR candidates.

This was the first shock wave: How could this be happening?

Were we the racists we had often been accused of being, were we more intolerant and meaner than other people?
Was the behaviour of those companies extreme, or did it reflect the mentality of the average man in France?

If some companies had taken those sorts of habits, the problem was not going to be easy to fix.
In a context of unemployment, and a lot of other people are not getting jobs, it's not easy to prove that the discrimination starts with race.
In the cases of the "BBR" companies, they can be sued if you can give the police enough elements to make them access the files.

Any sorting people into even such categories that may be accepted elsewhere, such as "white " or "black", is unconstitutional (I'll need to return to this).

But in the cases of the thousands of letters that are just thrown away, there is nothing you can do.

About employers: they behave like this because they can (unemployment) and because
they can get away with it. The " BBR" letters are old hat now, the police* knows about it, so they now use little circles or triangles for example.
The following sites (in French) will show you.
(* Rather, l'Inspection du Travail-- my dictionary's translation is unhelpful here, there must be a government agency with a different name in different countries).

Site 2 also shows that the one company may just be part of a system: they have big clients who specifically don't want to employ descendants of immigrants, and the big client will claim that the only reason is that his customers (your average Mr and Mrs Dupont) don't want to deal with them.

Sadly, sites on the inernet on this theme seem to run in the hundreds or perhaps thousands. I've only read a few, and that's how much I can take for the moment.

Here is another example with a big company, l'Oreal.
Over the years, several associations like SOS-Racisme have been created or strengthened, and they are the ones who sue companies in such cases.http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/actualites/societe/20070514.OBS71 52/liste_reactions00e5.html?l=0

http://saintgraaljob.blog.pacajob.com/index.php/post/2007/05/15/DISCRI MINATION-A-LEMBAUCHEET-OUI-MALHEUREUSEMENT

Penelope · Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 10:27 am Post subject:

How heartrending -

On our news our Police are often accused of 'targetting' coloured and Asian youths. In Liverpool and Manchester - Asian young men say they are twice as likely to be pulled up in their cars and questioned, as are white young men.

Our police do have black and Asian recruits - but their numbers are few.

I know their are African Drugs Gangs and Asian - but which came first - the feelings of anger at not being allowed to pursue their careers fairly, (especially if they are extremely bright) - or the unlawfulness?

However, in the UK - we still have a class system - although it is not acknowledged. One of the questions for accepting a child into a public school is, 'Does the father have a tattoo?'. I believe this type of question also exists if a young person wants to join the 'officer' section of the armed services also.

Ophelia · Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 11:40 am Post subject:

I'll be writing about the police later, but what you write about tattoes is a surprise.

Many years ago I heard someone mention that if you were a man looking for a (manual) job it was wise to wear a long-sleeved shirt for your interview if you had a tatto as the sight of it would probably mean not getting the job.
It didn't worry me much, but the idea of asking about the father's tattoes is a big step further.

By Public school, do you mean "Public" as in Eton Penelope?

A colleague of mine from Northern Ireland told me (this was the 1980's) about how they made their lists in those days.
You could not find out who was Catholic and who was Protestant by looking at people's faces and names, so the question that was asked was: "Which School did you go to?"
Invariably, the Catholics had gone to St Leonard's School, and the Protestants had been to Londonderry East High School (I've just made up the names).

Penelope · Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 12:10 pm Post subject:

Yes - Ophelia by Public Schools I mean fee-paying schools.

We still have two football teams in this town - Northwich Victoria (Protestant) and Witton Albion (Catholic). Although I don't think people realise that now. When I worked for a few years at our local Salvation Army - a lot of the older men used to tease me because my son played for Witton Albion under seventeens team. Laughing

Well also - the Scottish Glasgow football teams are Celtic (Catholic) and Glasgow Rangers (Protestant). And I don't think that fact has been quite forgotten. Aren't we a sad lot!!! Rolling Eyes


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