French lessons and the hip-hop boulangère

For a country founded in some way on insolence and insurgencies, the French love their lessons. There is this strange need to comment when something is not done correctly, to remind the person who commits the occasional gaffe that, although the gaffe itself doesn't matter, a little shaming is in order.

Today, for instance, I telephone the reservation line for the SNCF to buy our group ticket to go to Beaune on Friday. Now I knew ahead of time that, while I was following protocol, I was about to get a lesson and a referral to the in-town office (I had every intention of using said referral to gain favor with the agents there). And so I was chided, like a child, for not thinking ahead to telephone their toll-free number from the States (?) or have a friend in France create a 'fiche client' (dossier) with at least ten, no fifteen or twenty days advance notice. I patiently took it, oui madame, et oui, like the excellent student of the culture of French shame that I am knowing full well that once I got to the agence in town, I'll patiently endure a second lesson, yet in the end, will have tickets in hand and the trip ready to go.

Worse case scenario, we can buy the tickets the day of. It's stressful, but can work.

What gave me pause is this alien link between shame and learning. How does shame function in the broader enterprise of learning, whether about cultural practices, or other more lofty materials? Do we, as educators, participate in this practice, a practice that does little more than produce silence, like my own as I took my lesson with a sneaky sense of quiet triumph in the knowledge that I would eventually and eccentrically get my way. I find it hard to square that as much as France makes irreverence as essential aspect of its cultural capital, the culture of compliance nonetheless persists, a premise totally counter-intuitive to the challenging insolence of the works of art we love and share with our students. I wonder sometimes about the value of these works in the real and if what they claim might not be out of sync with the social design of modern France. 

On my way back from my first attempt to go the agence SNCF, which was not yet open, I stopped by the local bakery for a croissant nature. The flaky buttery crust peels away in layers and it is as light as a feather, unlike the distant relatives that pass for croissants in the States.  Entering the boulangerie, you expect to see a true French dame who greets you with a sing song "Bonjour, Madame" as you enter bread and pastry paradise. Not the case here in downtown Dijon, quite to the contrary of what the quaint medieval avenues of the city appear to promise. The boulangère around the corner looks like an extra from a MTV special on hip-hip style. Each hand is covered in gaudy gold and rhinestone jewelry, sometimes even doubling up rings on a single finger in an opulent gesture, their defiant sparkle glimmering in the morning light. Her hair is pulled back in a series of small tresses each one held in place with a transparent plastic miniature clip, like the ones hairdressers use. There were probably fifteen to twenty tiny tresses adorning her hair pulled back into a ponytail, which like her overall style, felt strangely out of sync with the easy expectations one might have of French traditions, but for that very reason, it made me warm to her difference, to what might be understood as a form of sassy irreverence.

While lessons might be the rule, I prefer these sorts of surprises. 

Class begins this afternoon, so I'm off to get my next lesson, buy the ticket, head over to campus, and give a first lesson, hopefully with no shame, rather the pleasure of discovery. Looks like a warm beautiful day ahead here in Dijon, there isn't a cloud in the clear blue sky.