What is it about French teachers (professeurs or profs) and plastic? They’re obsessed with the stuff. I’m obviously not going to get on with Ruadhri’s new teacher. On the list of fournitures that he brought home last night – and which really should have been sent out to parents during the holidays – was the inevitable demand for pochettes plastiques, 100 to be precise.
In the past, I’ve caved and given the kids some recycled ones to take to school. Well, this year I’m sticking my heels in. I have written a note in Ruadhri’s cahier de liaison to explain that I won’t be providing said pochettes because they are unnecessary and about as environmentally unfriendly as it’s possible to be. They take between 200 and 500 years to biodegrade. Not every single sheet of paper that the children work on has to be put in one. In fact, none of them do. Surely, surely teachers can see that. It’s by making little gestures like not using plastic sleeves simply for the sake of it that we might actually get somewhere long term with combatting climate change.
Ruadhri’s cahier de liaison is itself encased in one of those hideous plastic covers which the school has provided. The book has a good, stiff cardboard cover anyway and will happily last the year with normal care. It doesn’t need the flipping cover. More plastic junk. Grr.
Teachers tend to ask for more than the kids actually need. Every year they ask for feutres, felt tips, and these only get used a few times. They dry out long before they’re worn out. They also ask for batonnets de colle, glue stick – same story as the felt tips. They even encourage the kids to use blanco, Tippex, or ink erasers to cover up mistakes with. What’s wrong with just crossing them out and carrying on? That doesn’t require something chemical based and encased in plastic. And we had to get Rors an ardoise, literally a slate, a couple of years ago. However, these days these are – you guessed it – plastic, and require special marker pens to go with them that hardly get used. I can’t see why the children don’t use paper and pencil instead of the ardoises. Rors is vague as to what they actually do with them at school, so almost certainly not much.
I don’t want to make life awkward for Rors by protesting to teacher. But I’ve got to the point where I am so exasperated by people who really can make a difference – here teachers when guiding parents what to buy – simply turning a blind eye to the realities of climate change and demanding pointless, plastic products that will outlast us all by centuries and add to the problems of pollution and landfill. It’s ridiculous and irresponsible.
OK, time to put the soapbox away now!
good for u steph, apart from issues rightly raised,,,do teachers think parents have a bottomless purse ? my own son at the age of 8 was told he needed football boots and socks. i spent my last £20 on these items…they were never worn. the next year at school same demands made….one very irrate mother arrived at head-masters office… ranting. my son didnt like football, never played it at school and if ever a situation arose that he had to..i gave the head-master my full permission to take my son to town in school hours, put his hand in his own pocket and buy these much needed items.
power to the people steph, power to the people
You did right Annette. We had to buy a dictionary at the start of term two years ago, about 15 euros, and then didn’t all the kids get given a dictionary by Pere Noel that year! So that was a complete waste of money. Teachers can be peculiar !!
I think it’s wonderful that you’re willing to take a stand on this issue. One can hope that the teachers are just being creatures of habit and that they aren’t trying to be willfully destructive or thoughtless. We all get stuck in our old ways sometimes, I suppose. Good luck!
Well done! ….. and what’s wrong with good old fashioned wax crayons? Marker pens are useless if you don’t put the tops back on properly, which I suspect most children don’t.
It’s crazy how much stuff teachers ask for. There was a communal box of wax crayons at my primary school. We thought that was the bees knees!
Sounds like overkill to me and very environmentally unfriendly. I taught English to some French school kids a while ago and was astonished by the amount of stuff they were required to have. I distinctly remember the oceans of Tippex they used to erase every mistake.
I imagine teaching must have been fun. What a great experience. Regarding the rentrée, I think teachers just trot out a list of things the kids might conceivably need without thinking it through. Time they stopped, though.