Thursday, October 15, 2009

In the "comments" section of my previous post, I was repeatedly congratulated for my restraint in not offering the erring English teacher a hearty punch in the face.

That would have been a very unlikely outcome. Even if he'd gone beyond telling me that "Americans sound dreadful" and ventured into "your momma wears army boots" territory, I wouldn't have offered him physical violence.
I'm from the "stern glare and sharp retort" school of martial arts.

And any stray temptation to resort to administering a good old American knuckle sandwich would certainly have been crushed by the possibility of getting six months in prison. That's the new penalty under French law for assaulting a teacher.
I know about this because our houseguest this weekend is a recently retired collége (junior high) teacher and he keeps up with the latest news. Apparently, France has crazy nutjob parents (or 'parents fous de noix de travail' which makes absolutely NO sense in French, btw), just like the USA and a few French teachers have been punched out in the playground. No wonder people are so freaked out about "Americanisation"...

4 comments:

La Framéricaine said...

I am sure that the exhortations to "punch" your children's teacher were, plutôt figurative.

I am always in favor of "the look" backed up by a stellar use of vocabulary when I or anyone else in the process of being treated like "toy" person.

Amitiés,

Beth said...

Considering the demographics of my readership (100% nice people), I figured that was the case... I just needed a silly point of departure for my rather silly post.

oreneta said...

Rarely an actually sensible approach...just a strong temptation upon occasion.

Momma Bee said...

I'm all for protecting teachers from the crazy walnuts of work. I wonder if it works both ways? Do the students have protection from teachers who step beyond the breaking point?