Before we’d met, my husband Brent and I had both briefly lived in France the late 1970s,* and we were eager to find a way to return on a more permanent basis. We thought we’d found a way in the mid-1990s: the high-tech company for whom Brent worked in Boston had a lab in Brittany. However, the company wouldn’t pay the expensive tuition at the international private school (and we thought that our older children would do better in a mixed-language setting, rather than in the French system), and the work situation on-site turned out to be singularly unpromising. So it wasn’t until early in 2001, en route back home from a family vacation to Turkey during winter break, that we first laid eyes on Chambéry, where Brent interviewed with ProVoxCom Europe.
This was also our first encounter with the head of L2M, Dr. Kathleen Lindt, whom we had arranged to meet through ProVoxCom’s relocation agent. Dr. Lindt told us that she was French, and though we were a bit puzzled by her very un-French name, we were totally in awe of her accent-free American English. She was the best French speaker of English we had ever heard! It was disappointing to find out later on that we had misunderstood: what she had meant when she called herself French was that she was a naturalized French citizen; in fact, she grew up in Minneapolis and had been educated in the States. That misapprehension on our part could easily serve as a metaphor for events to follow: where Kathleen Lindt was concerned, things were not always what they seemed, and certainly not all that she presented them as being.
Although she confessed to being “a little worried” about the fact that Montgomery was on the verge of relocating to the brand-new Bellecombette international facility in downtown Chambéry, Kathleen assured us that the highest educational authorities had promised that there would be no changes to L2M because of the move. She told us all about the glories of L2M and touted its excellent cross-cultural education. Honors classes? Naturally! Advanced Placement classes? But of course! A big plus to the move—particularly in the eyes of our middle son, a good stage actor going into 11th grade that fall—was that the English section’s celebrated theatre program would most certainly let Americans participate! Astonishingly (and of no small importance to us), enrollment was free because of the aforementioned political and economic agreements. (Companies were supposed to donate a relatively small sum on a per-student basis to cover the costs of American textbooks, professional development, and inspection fees, and ProVoxCom was willling to donate.)
We were encouraged not just by how well Brent’s job interview seemed to go, but by everything Kathleen had told us about Montgomery. What was our dismay when month after month went by with no offer from ProVoxCom (due to a company-wide hiring freeze). We had pretty much written off the possibility of moving to France in 2001, but then—wonder of wonders, on August 1st Brent got an offer. We talked about it for a day or two, and then, on August 29th, Brent, Eric, and Eddie moved to temporary housing in Chambéry so as to be on time for La Rentrée—the official First Day of School. (Emma had already gone back to Macalester College, but the instant the airports reopened after the catastrophe of 9/11, she dropped out of school, came home for a little over a week, and then went on to join the others Chambéry.) I stayed behind to deal with the rest of the packing, selling our house, and the cats.
We learned only some months after my arrival in France just how ugly the entire move to Bellecombette had been. As I said before, when the Rectorat* (the administrative seat of the Academy of the Savoie) established the French international language sections at the behest of area business and political leaders, it did so with the idea in mind that these sections, installed at first in individual local schools, would somewhere down the line be grouped together in one as-yet-unbuilt facility. When L2M was established not long thereafter, French authorities unthinkingly lumped it in with the international sections, despite the fact that it had virtually nothing in common with them—not pedagogically, not philosophically, not even practically. Given such fundamental differences, however, it seemed highly likely that the authorities would permit L2M to stay in Myans as a separate entity—but then politics entered the picture.
The mayor of Chambéry was a socialist on the far end of the political spectrum, as was Marcel Courtaude, who was then the proviseur (headmaster) of Chambéry’s Lycée Rousseau, which housed the Academy’s English international section. Courtaude, who was to be the first proviseur of the new Lycée et Collège International (LCI) Bellecombette, had been adamantly opposed to the creation of L2M in the first place. Further, he hated the centrist-conservative mayor of Myans—but he especially hated the centrist-conservative, very pro-American proviseur of the Lycée Polytechnique, Guy Prentous: they had sparred furiously over the years not just over politics, but also over the upstart American program, which Courtaude felt was inferior to French education in every way. Courtaude recognized, along with the mayor, that moving L2M out of Myans and into the LCI would be a major political victory; further, it would make it easier for the Rectorat to undo some of the very “un-French” aspects of L2M’s existence (if not stamp it out entirely). As Bellecombette was nearing completion in spring of 2001, the mayor of Chambéry leaned hard on the Rectrice,** while Courtaude fought tooth and nail with the educational inspectors in the Academy of the Savoie to get L2M moved. Eventually, the mayor and Courtaude having pulled numerous strings, and without any direct input from the American families or the companies concerned, the national-level French Education Minister decided to move this odd little American program to the new facility with the international sections.
The unilateral decision emanating from Paris touched off a crisis in greater Chambéry: L2M families complained to the multinational companies, whose representatives advised various local political officials that if their expat families became too unhappy, they (the companies) might have to rethink their plans for expansion in the area. The situation became so fraught that even the high and mighty Rectrice herself, Madame Sassens-Mauvey, convened a meeting of L2M families and personnel. She guaranteed that nothing would change with L2M’s move to Bellecombette. Despite her many soothing words (none of which were ever put in writing), at least half of the L2M families decided to keep their children in the Lycée Polytechnique as regular enrollees, rather than letting them accompany L2M downtown, thus hobbling L2M both pedagogically and financially by having so few students upon its installation at Bellecombette.
Transition years tend to be difficult under the best of circumstances, and the circumstances of L2M’s move to Bellecombette were far from the best, beginning with the Rectorat’s refusal to pay for the costs of transporting L2M’s pedagogical materials (including, among other things, hundreds of books) from Myans to the new facility. (Mrs Lindt and a handful of volunteers did it themselves during the summer of 2001.) Once installed, Courtaude treated L2M as a hated stepchild with complete impunity. Out of sheer spite, he made sure that the L2M office was as far away from the administrative wing as it could possibly be; ensured that L2M’s name was misspelled on the office door and in numerous official documents (“Mont-Gombéry”); at first refused to give L2M any computers for the office; then for months refused to allow L2M to have internet access. Kathleen had to fight for even the most basic things, including a telephone, and the worthlessness of Madame la Rectrice’s promises of parity and continuity became ever clearer. No, Mrs Lindt was not going to have secretarial support as she did at Myans, but more critically, L2M high school kids were being refused equal access to French-taught classes. Nor was Courtaude shy about publicly displaying his disdain for Kathleen and L2M, and for all things American—which disdain was shared by several other administrators, particularly Mr Pruneau, the high school head counselor.
Would it have made a difference had we known all this ahead of time?—if, for example, we had known that 100% of the L2M families had voted against the move, to no avail? I honestly don’t know, but given how very enthused we were at the thought of living in France, I suspect we would have come anyway, and besides, small classes are good, right?, and besides, how bad could it be?
Toward the end of October 2001, I finally arrived in France, cats in hand (as it were). By this time, Eddie was in CM2 (fifth grade) at École Primaire Léon Gambetta, a French public elementary school on the other side of Chambéry whose main attraction was that it offered some teaching in English and a fair bit of instruction in French as second language.
Son Eric was in a tiny 11th-grade class, which by itself was not a bad thing, except that he was the only L2M student who consistently did his homework, consistently went to Saturday LCI classes, and consistently fought to be admitted into French-taught classes. Despite a very good command of French, Eric was not allowed into French physics (he’d already taken the only science classes L2M offered that year, biology and chemistry). He did, however, get into a French economics class, and although his grades were low, his diligence and steady improvement made a very positive impression on his teacher, Mr Malin. Further, Madame Laurent, Eric’s FLE† (French as second language) teacher, was impressed enough with Eric’s grasp of French that she thought Eric could go ahead and take the baccalaureate exam for French language, which occurs at the end of 11th grade. (The French administration refused to let him do so, however, despite Mrs Laurent’s recommendation.) To top things off, despite Kathleen’s explicit assurance back in February, the heads of the English section refused to let any L2M students, including our talented son, participate in their play productions.
—In short, all of Kathleen’s fears had materialized, both spoken and unspoken (or more accurately, spoken only after the fact). Further, there were no AP classes.
Starting with a unilaterally-imposed single-digit cap on the number of students admitted into L2M’s sixth grade, there was no end of perfidy and disappointments, the most egregious of which was the “new” L2M admissions policy. After months of meetings, memos, and ostensible accords drawn up with Mr Courtaude’s participation, the new policy mirrored in most respects what it had been Myans (i.e., that anyone with a legitimate interest in pursuing an American education could be admitted, regardless of nationality). What was the dismay of the L2M board admissions committee to discover that Mr Courtaude’s hand-picked “communications liaison,” Madame Sanfoy (through whom all requests for admission were to be funneled “for administrative purposes”), was applying a very different policy, responding to all inquirers that admission to L2M was not allowed for children considered to be French. (By law, this means anyone with one French parent, regardless of whether one or both parents held U.S. citizenship, and regardless if the child had been in an American school setting previously.)
Was the policy re-clarified before the school year ended? There is no record, nor was the exact number of families turned away from L2M ever determined.
***
At the end of his junior year at Bellecombette, Eric convinced us to let him go back to Boston for the summer to participate in the “Shakespeare on the Charles” acting program he had been in the previous summer. When summer was over, however, he flatly refused to return to France—and not so much because he had been marginalized and shunned along with the other L2M kids (derisively called “Monties” by the students in the LCI international sections), but because he was genuinely afraid he would not be able to get into a good college, given the French-based restrictions placed on L2M students, and especially given the low number of available L2M class hours (to say nothing of the dearth of Advanced Placement and honors courses). He had seen the writing on the wall, and while we were not at all happy about it, we recognized that he was right. We were able to arrange for him to board with a lovely family and to re-enroll him in his former high school for his senior year.
Marcel Courtaude retired at the end of the 2001-02 school year and was replaced by Mr François Almoudhil, an outsider unembroiled in local politics and infighting. In the French system, it is not necessary to ever be a teacher to become an educational administrator: they are separate “tracks” or majors in the university system; however, one can be a teacher in France and then train to be an administrator, as in the U.S. and most other educational systems. Courtaude had never taught, which I thought explained a lot about him—and about why nearly the entire LCI staff hated him. Further, Courtaude spoke only French; by contrast, Almoudhil spoke both Spanish and Italian fluently, and had spent several years teaching geography in French international schools in South America (where he had met and married his wife). He knew what it was to be a teacher, and what it was to be “a stranger in a strange land”; in short, although he had never been a proviseur before, there were many reasons to expect that Almoudhil would be a clear improvement over Courtaude—and in any event, consensus was that he could hardly be worse.
At this point, were I able to print the following in at least 72-point outline typeface, I would invite you to fill in these characters with your favorite colors: HA! HA!§
________
* Note how I subtly side-step the fact that we were both in France as Mormon missionaries. By the time we returned to France, however, we were no longer “active” (that is, no longer practicing)… which made for some interesting interactions with various Mormon families in the school, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.
** Each French academy has a Rectorat, which is its administrative headquarters and where the politically-appointed head of the academy, the Recteur (male) or Rectrice (female) has his or her office. “Rectorat” is pronounced “rec-to-rah”—the final “t” is silent. On the other hand, all things considered, if you want to mentally pronounce it “recto-rat,” I won’t mind.
† “FLE” stands for Français Langue Étrangère, or French [as a] foreign language. I will use FLE throughout the book; although we all called it “fleuh,” you are welcome to call it whatever you’d like.
§ In literary circles, this activity is sometimes called “the death of foreshadowing.”
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