The Foreign Service Journal, December 2003

ne of the main challenges for any par- ent is how to give their children the best possible education. That task is even more daunting for Foreign Service families, who already have to cope with the effects of the frequent disrup- tions inherent to an itinerant lifestyle. Often there are few good local schools, and even when there are, the next assignment is usual- ly only two or three years away, raising the issue all over again. Some FS parents therefore decide to keep their children in boarding schools, either overseas or back in the U.S., to give them a more consistent curriculum and enable them to make friends with peers. Others choose local American- or British- affiliated schools at posts wherever possible to minimize the impact of language and cultural barriers. There is no one answer that is right for everyone, of course, but we would like to recommend an approach that we have found worked well for our children, Marc, age 20, and Catherine, age 18: educating them in French-language schools, beginning with French-Moroccan nurseries 17 years ago. The French Connection This was not an easy decision by any means, but Roy had had a happy experi- ence in a European high school as an AFS exchange student in Austria, and his moth- er’s parents came from France’s Languedoc region. We worried at first that we would have to choose posts based on the availabil- ity of a lycee, but happily we’ve always found a place for them — though in Kinshasa, Marc and Catherine did have to attend separate French and Belgian schools. There were plenty of other challenges, too, beginning with the fact that native Tagalog-speaker Ninette had to pick up French along the way to deal with teachers and PTAs. Then there was the fact that while the French educational system is superb, it is also complex and opaque to those not well-grounded in Gallic logic. To the American parent, everything in the French pri- mary and secondary systems seems unfamiliar. French kids start not with first grade, but with a “Preparatory Course.” Once in middle school, they take 10 demanding courses per week and homework is brutal. There is a chan- neling system in which the most ambitious study sciences while others do literature or economics: even aspiring poets or diplomats major in mathematics! And besides being a tough course, “French-style” mathematical reason- ing is taught very differently than in the U.S; for that mat- ter, Belgian math is distinct from French math. Wherever they are located, French schools are strin- S CHOOLS S UPPLEMENT Roy Whitaker joined the Foreign Service in 1979. He has served in Manila, Madras, Rabat, Kinshasa, Brussels, Bangkok, Sofia and Washington, D.C., and was recently public affairs officer in Antananarivo. He has been chief of the political section in Dakar since mid- November. Ninette Whitaker, a Foreign Service GSO specialist since January, has worked as an Eligible Family Member or contractor at embassies and USAID missions in Rabat, Kinshasa, Brussels, Bangkok and Sofia. She has also worked for the Una Chapman Cox Foundation in Washington, D.C. She is currently acting post manage- ment officer for Afghanistan. A F RENCH -B ASED E DUCATION ? M AIS O UI ! F OREIGN S ERVICE PARENTS SEEKING TO GIVE THEIR CHILDREN A GOOD EDUCATION MAY WISH TO CONSIDER F RENCH - LANGUAGE SCHOOLS . H ERE IS ONE FAMILY ’ S EXPERIENCE WITH LYCEES . B Y R OY L. W HITAKER AND N INETTE G.V. W HITAKER Graduates of the French system usually do extremely well at college, and American students are no exception. Continued on page 78 O D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 77