La Formation Civique

I was not looking forward to this class that all foreigners are required to take to learn about living in France. For one thing it would last from 9:00 to 5:00. For another, most of the session was to focus on "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité." Eight hours of brainwashing straight out of George Orwell's 1984. I was sure of it.

I arrived 15 minutes early and joined a few other shy-looking foreigners outside of a building with the sign INSTEP posted on its door. I guess INSTEP is the private company that does this formation. Close to 9:00, a young woman greeted us with a friendly "Bonjour", invited us to come inside and offered us some coffee. This was not what I was expecting at all. Once we were in a small classroom, she introduced herself as Clotilde and told us she would like us to introduce ourselves and tell how long we had been in France and where we were from. A lot of people were from Africa, mainly Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, but also some people from Mali, Cameroun, and the Ivory Coast. Others came from all over. There were people from the Philippines, the Ukraine, Mexico, China, Argentina, Brazil and Haiti. I was the only American and I had been there the shortest amount of time out of everyone.

Everyone was really nice, including the teacher. We started with a short history of France, all the way up to the present day. That was okay. But then we talked about living in France, French government, voting and some French laws. I had thought that France was pretty much just like the U.S. when it came to some basic freedoms. But apparently the freedom of speech is a little more limited. For example, it is against the law to spout off neo-nazi ideas. In the U.S. we can totally say those kinds of things no matter how awful they are.

We also talked about really practical things like finding an apartment, signing up kids for school or finding daycare. (In France, you have to apply for a daycare center when you're only 2 months pregnant. Otherwise you won't get a spot because there's just not room.) The teacher also helped us know what to do if we ever found ourselves facing any kind of discrimination or even spousal abuse. She gave us numbers to call and everything.

One of the most interesting aspects of the whole thing though was hearing about everyone else's countries. We did a lot of comparisons and people asked a lot of questions. Some of the Maghrébins (people from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) were shocked and kind of upset when they found out that people from the USA and Mexico didn't need a VISA just to visit France. Considering their histories with France, I would have been kind of mad too if I were them.

The formation lasted until 4:30--we got to go a bit early. Before we left, the teacher congratulated us and then presented us with blue certificates stating that we had completed our formation civique. Yay! Now we just have to keep the certificates and bring them with us when we renew our green cards.

All in all, although I still would have preferred to do my own work that day, it really wasn't a bad class to have taken. Or maybe Big Brother just got to me. o_O (wink)