Advice for road warriors
Going on vacation? Then turn on your rip-off radar, says L’Express. Mindful that the rate of vacation swindling remains constant year after year at about 14%, the magazine catalogued French travelers’ most common complaints. It cited disillusionment created by hotel packages and charter flights as the major head-bangers. Vacationers should also beware of overbooked flights, outrageous commissions at foreign exchange bureaus, misleading or hidden car-rental costs and draconian insurance policies.
That ain’t workin’
“Me, the boss? Never!” examines major attitude changes in the French workplace. Obsessive-compulsive “work-is-everything” and “cult-of-performance” trends might have ruled ’80s and ’90s attitudes, but the 21st-century employee wants to breathe easy. Liaisons Sociales reports that the nature of job colleague rapports and work atmosphere in general now rank higher than titles and responsibility on professionals’ wish-lists. One company, Dassault Systèmes, conducted a survey of its young engineers and found that only 15% of them, as opposed to the anticipated 25%, aspired to becoming managers. A significant 63% of French people claim that their personal life is their number-one priority.
A lesson on French education
The Education Ministry may be dumbing down, hints Télérama’s June 15 story pitched on “Should we ditch the dissertation?” A composition on a major literature-linked subject will be replaced in 2002 by a creative or argumentative writing exercise. The Ministry claims that the new standards will further “democratize” the intellectual playing field, but many academics are decrying the measures as a descent into demagogy. By limiting the breadth and depth of literatury texts taught in schools, they say, the system will further marginalize “disadvantaged” pupils not inclined to read such works on their own. All students regardless of their intelligence level would be at risk, says Philippe Meirieu, director of a teacher training college in Lyon. “If we don’t introduce them to books, they’ll rush after American thrillers, which only exploit their inner anxieties in an obscene and voyeuristic way...”. The Ministry reassures its critics that “Formulate an argument convincing your mother to buy a cellphone” will not be among the topics proposed.
Another French revolution
The number of self-avoid unsuccessful couples has surged in recent years says L’Express in its June 13 issue.: 400,000 partners seek sex therapy today as opposed to 250,000 in 1998. To boot, a minuscule 4% of the public refuses to answer questions about its sex life, compared with 12-15% three years ago. “This is real progress,” says Dr. Marc Ganem, “We could even call it a revolution in mentality.”
Playing solitaire
Still single? That’s OK, even “normal,” reassures Le Point in its June 8 issue. One in every three people in France today will spend a significant portion of their middle-age alone, oftentimes by choice — although no figures exist to confirm the supposed self-imposed nature of the trend. Sociologists cite two major explanations: French women are no longer as willing as they once were to sacrifice professional advancement for family life; and the fear of quotidian ennui persists in both men and women.
