La Rentrée or 0-100 in Paris

It's la Rentrée

 September means back to school.
Time to harvest the grapes.

 The oyster men in Brittany to get back to the sea

 And the chefs back to their kitchens

Everyone is back at their post - Paris buzzes with energy. After les vacances and major tanning, emails are answered, phone calls returned, appointments made, the museums and galleries burst with exhibitions.
Bon la Rentrée everyone,
Cara - Tuesday

it's time for la rentrée...back to school and work

It's said the French have become Julietists or Aoûtiens which means they join the ranks and take vacation in either Juillet - July or Août - August evidenced by the exodus to the seaside and the country.

However in August, despite the Julietists, there is a sense of a collective vacation. A proper two week (or more) holiday in the first few weeks of August is completely normal and for the majority, it will be a genuine break. No scrolling through emails or joining conference calls from a beach café, trying to pretend you’re not on holiday. It’s ok to switch off. It’s expected. Just look at the restaurants and bakeries that are closed in Paris in August, a city populated mostly that month by tourists.

So you start to understand that if your summer was a real break, it’s not so hard to come back. You’ve re-charged your batteries and you’re refreshed.

In September there's a social buzz of the Rentrée - it's back to school and work, all tanned and relaxed or supposedly. La Rentrée is a social occasion. Parents hover much longer at the school gate, catching up with friends. Drinks are arranged. There is a sense that the kids are back at school, we are back to our normal routines and this means we also get our social life back too.

There's a celebratory approach as well.  Much is made of children's progression into the next school year.  Adults talk to them about the return to school as though it is fun, and a mark of their growing up that bit more. 

I've written about la Rentée before because I love the energy. It's like opening a book to a new page. I love people-watching in the few days leading up to the Rentrée. You can notice three types of people. The first is the harried, normal maman, frantically ransacking the stationary aisle of Monoprix to get that last cardboard folder with the elastic bit, as specified in the very precise school supplies list.

The second is the very cool and serene Parisian maman who of course handed her supplies list in at the local stationary store ages ago and has naturally had the man at the store go around and collect it all into a bag for her and all she needs to do is pop in and collect it.

And then the third type, the highly stressed expat mother who quite honestly does not have a clue what in the world a ‘porte-vues’ is. It’s one of those books with about 80 plastic display wallets to display the child’s worksheets in.
The children have a new backpack filled with sharp new pencils and fresh exercise books, ready for going back to school after 9 long weeks!
Cara - Tuesday

la Rentrée

September arrives in Paris and the days are still long and light. Parisians have returned from their summer holidays and the cafés and boulangeries are reopening. It's la Rentrée - school starts, people go back to work tanned and relaxed after a month of off. September also is the hyped rentrée littéraire when some of the biggest books of the year are released in France - 654 novels to be exact.
Freedom is in bookshops with Jonathan Franzen fever hitting, there are new titles by Philip Roth, David Vann and French writers Marie Darrieussecq, Emmanuel Carrère and Amélie Nothomb - but perhaps the most talked about novel in Paris is Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. They'll have to wait another month for the English edition but there's an extract Town of Cats in The New Yorker.
Dominique Strauss Kahn - DSK - has also rentrée'd to Paris. Reporters, newsteams clog the 17th century square of Place des Vosges outside #13 his home. Distressing to me is this photo, it feels so American and unFrench and more obtrusive than I've ever seen. Not that I defend or sanction DSK but it looks like the NY paparazzi and that is not the French way which is to let private lives stay private.
A big part of la rentree is back to school. The head of the Education ministry is the Minister of National Education, one of the highest-ranking officials in the cabinet, named Luc Chatel. Minister Chatel has his own bodyguard, a former bodyguard of Chirac, named Joe who I met a few months ago. Joe says he's the busiest and one of the most powerful ministers in France. And he gets tired. Joe showed me a photo of Luc, snapped on his iPhone, asleep in his chauferred car en route to a round of meetings after an all night meeting at the ministry. Luc wields incredible power since he 'employs' the largest workforce in France. The teachers in public primary and secondary schools are all state civil servants, making the ministère the largest employer in the country. Professors and researchers in France's universities are also employed by the state.
At the primary and secondary levels, the curriculum is the same for all French students in any given grade, which includes public, semi-public and subsidised institutions. So Luc knows, after he's caught a few winks in the limo and off to another meeting, that in Bourdeaux students are learning the same geography lesson that the class is in Marseilles.

Madeleine, the 6 year old daughter of my friend Anne, who stayed chez nous this summer, started back at school in Paris today. Her school is two blocks from her house. According to the system Madeleine would be in the Grande Section -GS or Kindergarten in Ecole Maternelle
Ecole Maternelle (pre-K and Kindergarten)
Age Grade Abbreviation
3 -> 4 Petite section PS
4 -> 5 Moyenne section MS
5 -> 6 Grande section GS
École élémentaire (Primary school)
Age Grade Abbreviation
6 -> 7 Cours préparatoire CP / 11ème
7 -> 8 Cours élémentaire première année CE1 / 10ème
8 -> 9 Cours élémentaire deuxième année CE2 / 9ème
9 -> 10 Cours moyen première année CM1 / 8ème
10 -> 11 Cours moyen deuxième année CM2 / 7ème

However Madeleine's teacher recommended she skip a grade to Cours préparatiore because last year the teacher discovered Madeleine was READING on her own. In the French educational system skipping a grade like (from Ecole Maternelle to Ecole Elementaire) this is frowned upon and rarely done or encouraged. It's all about egalité no special or AP classes. Matter of fact, my friend Anne said it was all the teacher's doing and the teacher had to bypass a rigid supervisor to get other teacher's opinions. Anne hesitated because of maturity issues for Madeleine who has a December birthday but she didn't want Madeline to be bored while her classmates were learning to read. Anne couldn't believe our system here about AP. Or that parents volunteered and participated in the classroom...MON DIEU, she said, we're not allowed in Paris...quel differance!
Addendum - the University of Rouen workshop I did in November still hasn't paid me - aargh - I need to wake Luc up maybe?
Cara - Tuesday