in uni, one of my french profs (she was born and raised in aix-en-provence) said that the french have the concept of reading for pleasure, but there is also reading 'pour la culture' that doesnt exist in the US. i had done some googling about it, but wasnt seeing much. so i was wondering if this was true or perhaps something more of french when she was young (she's 50-something and has lived in the US since she was 20-something)
The difference between French and American educative behaviors, the French “peer pressure.”Â
Maybe what she was refering to in weak words was a sort of peer pressure, from the general educative system, that consists into creating your own education. But that’s not a “reading for the sake of your culture” thing, it touches every stratum of education, all topics, not just literature.Â
That’s actually one real thing that differenciates us from the Americans. Our conception of schooling and education (and hence culture), is that school and parents are here to provide key points about education, and you’re supposed to dig deeper on your own and create your culture by yourself. Let’s take a simple example, the educative system in school. The American system is more about already providing the ressource and teaching the students to analyse this said ressource. In France, the teachers give you the topic, the basic ressource to understand what it’s about, and you’re supposed to find extra ressources to fully comprehend the topic and do the analyse of the ressource you found on your own. And the teachers are then here to correct or to reorient your researches, they’re not really here to teach you topics from A to Z. They teach you A and B, you’re in charge of C to Z. And you’ll get your grade on your C to Z work.Â
In the end, I believe both French and Americans have the same standards and knowledge in culture. The difference lies into the way to treat incoming informations and the way to “capitalize” on it. I also believe that it’s what your teacher tried to express, a sort of extra cultural duty that Americans don’t have. But it’s not just a cultural thing, it’s a full educative system that when linked to literature, can convey this idea. But again, it’s not a literature-related phenomenon, it’s one symptom of the whole system underlying it. Not to brag, but that’s this system that makes us particularly efficient when we become employees and that explains why French workers are particularly appreciated worldwide: we work faster, more efficiently, because we have always been taught to do everything on our own from the very beginning of our life. We do the same job, just as successfully, simply faster.Â
