Figure 1.--
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Figure 1.-- |
I do remember of clothing, especially short trousers, coming up a couple of times in a classroom situation. One was in my third year at the school and we used to have a French
woman come in so we could practice French conversation. This in itself was a big event as all of the normal teachers - or masters as we called them - were men it being an all boys school. She would come in once a week and talk away in French prompting us to try
to get us talking. Anyway on this occasion she was trying to get us to use the "past tense" in French by asking us what we used to do when we were younger, what we used to wear etc. and writing up any new words on the blackboard. Of course short trousers came into the conversation! She latched onto this as a practice sentence for us to try to repeat to her "Quand j'etais a l'ecole primaire je portais un culotte courte mais maintenant je porte un pantalon long" or something - meaning when I was at primary school I wore short trousres but now I wear long trousers. I remember this being a fun lesson as some boys would try to explain when it came to their turn that they didn't wear shorts at primary school (in French - she wouldn't let you speak in English). There was also one boy in the class who was still in shorts and she had to feed him the word for "still" and there was some laughter at all this that carried on after the class. Quite a lot of these sessions were based around cultural differences between France and England and clothing would crop up and we'd learn new words. For instance she told us then that the French had no word of their own for jeans and borrowed the English word for them - "le bluejean". Our French text book had a lesson on French clothing. Because of the section on French clothing in our French text book, we had a class discussion on the topic. Our French teacher (who was from Marseilles in the South of France) had told us that French boys wore shorter shorts than even the English boys did at the time. I only knew one French boy. His name was Didier. He was about a 13 yeaars ols and lived with us a short time. He came as part of an exchange program with my younger brother's school. I was a little surprised because he didn't wear the short cut short pants like our teacher describes.
Our regular French teachers were men. All English teachers who had learned French.
I do remember of clothing, especially short trousers, coming up a couple of times in a classroom situation. One was in my third year at the school and we used to have a French
woman come in so we could practice French conversation with an actual native French speaker. This in itself was a big event as all of the normal teachers - or masters as we called them - were men it being an all boys school. She would come in once a week and talk away in French prompting us to try to get us talking.
Some boys were more adept as I think they had been taken on foreign holidays by their parents. ( English children on holiday is another topic I could address> I won't go off into another digression here, although I have some memories of these that may be of interest to HBC.)
Anyway on this occasion she was trying to get us to use the "past tense" in French by asking us what we used to do when we were younger, what we used to wear etc. and writing up any new words on the blackboard. Of course short trousers came into the conversation! She latched onto this as a practice sentence for us to try to repeat to her "Quand j'etais a l'ecole primaire je portais un culotte courte mais maintenant je porte un pantalon long" or something - meaning when I was at primary school I wore short trousres but now I wear long trousers. I remember this being a fun lesson as some boys would try to explain when it came to their turn that they didn't wear shorts at primary school (in French - she wouldn't let you speak in English). So she fed them new words like "sometimes" or "when I was very young" and wrote them on the blackboard for us to copy
down.
There was also one boy in the class who was still in shorts and she had to feed him the word for "still" and there was some laughter at all this that carried on after the class. (This boy, by the way, had a German-sounding name and always wore a leather type satchell but I don't recall him getting any real stick over this. I remember a lot of the masters used to pronounce his name wrongly and he always loudly corrected them so he was not the sort of boy you'd mess with. It was unusual then to "answer back" to the teachers.)
Our French mistress never mentioned the idea of “Garçons Modeles” as decribed by HBC's French readers. She did always say, however, that French boys were better behaved than English boys--though I think she was goading us into trying to respond and so practice our French on her. (She wouldn't allow us to speak in English). She'd also say that girls,no matter what country they were from, were always better behaved than boys which never failed to stir us
up.
I remember some of the images from a French textbook we used in our French classes. (I didn't pinch these books – we had to buy them
at my school so got to keep them. This was another headache for my mum and why she would have preferred that I went to the same type of grammar school as my brother where textbooks were provided free). These “picture stories” were intended to provoke discussion on what was being depicted.Our French mistress would then write down any words that we needed and we would then have to write an account of the story in French for homework. One of these assignments brought up the subject of clothing. There were about 20 or 30 images. The ones here show the beginning and end of the story. After church on a
Sunday a boy's mother suggests that he and his sister go on a picnic. The boy tears his shorts climbing into a field and then burns his shirt while trying to dry it out over a fire.When he gets home his mother is furious as the clothes were new and he is punished.
Quite a lot of these sessions were based around cultural differences between France and England and clothing would crop up and we'd learn new words. For instance she told us then that the French had no word of their own for jeans and borrowed the English word for them - "le bluejean". She also gave us her word for skinhead -"rase-tete" - but did not think it was an official word as they didn't exist in France. We needed these new words as we were supposed to write an essay in French on the topic we had been
discussing for homework and we could not always find them in the dictionary - let alone the slang words we used for some clothes. Anyway I'll also tell you more about that some other time if you'd like .
Our French text book had a lesson on French clothing. We used the book in 1972, although it is dated 1969. There was a few new vocabulary words of cloth materials and an explanation that newly invested materials often have the same name in both Enlish and French, like nylon. Most of the article was about adult clothing. I remember the book said that men and women dressed rather sumilarly in France and England, but did mention "le chic parisien". It stressed that not all French men went around wearing berets, but they were still common in central and southern France. There was only a brief paragraph on children's clothes. It read, "French children have always been dressed more like adults than has been the practice in England until recently. [HBC note: We are not sure that this is correct.] Little girls usually wear dark colors, often tartan designs with white collars. Boys have tended to be dressed according to the dictates of the weather, small boys wearing long trousers in winter and boys, quite old by English standards, still wearing very short shorts and ankle socks in summer. This, again, is more common towards the south where there are greater extremes of climate.
Because of the section on French clothing in our French text book, we had a class discussion on the topic. Our French teacher (who was from Marseilles in the South of France) had told us that French boys wore shorter shorts than even the English boys did at the time. I wonder if there was a regional difference?. I know there was in England, omparing London to Yorkshire where my cousin who was about my age lived,but this was not so much to do with climate as in France but attitudes generally.I append a page from the textbook we used for French at school in the 70s--although the book was published in 1969 and fashion can change so quickly.
I only knew one French boy. His name was Didier. He was about a 13 yeaars ols and lived with us a short time. He came as part of an exchange program with my younger brother's school. I was a little surprised because he didn't wear the short cut short pants like our teacher describes. Didier (who was from Grenoble) wore knee-length shorts unlike any English boys were wearing at the time.
70s).
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