missteacher

The training year at the IUFM is composed of two kinds of training : you have the one concerning your subject. Fairly good, not complete but good. And you have one made out of conferences on the broad subjects of school, education, teenagehood, etc. They are the worst. This institution (IUFM) financed by the State is losing so much money paying people who don’t know what they’re talking about and who talk about it very badly. This is one of the (few) strange things about teachers’ training: we have to listen to people who are NOT teachers, who, for the main part, have NEVER been in front of pupils but who think they can teach us somehow. This is utterly immodest.
We had the best example last Wednesday for one of the last conferences (thanks God). He was a philosophy University lecturer... yes... philosophy. Oh my. You can imagine. He was supposed to talk about secularism in school. We didn’t even approach the subject of school.

He was the perfect example of the GEEK. I don’t think we have an exact equivalent in French. I love the word GEEK. The geek is completely dressed in green (yes... completely) but not a normal green you see, no no, an ugly green (the kind you can find in sick animals’ excrements). Yes, the geek has no taste in clothes – and in other things actually. He has glasses (suuuuure), but too big for him, too old, not even clean (yuck). His hair is pressed on his skull; he’s actually always looking older than he is. The attitude is stiff, shy. The words are far way too complicated, the sentences too long as if he wanted to compensate his predicament by a highly elaborated vocabulary (only understandable by his fellow geek-friends). The geek doesn’t care. He despises you because you are everything he’s not: sociable, open-minded and secure about yourself. So he’s showing off with his knowledge since it’s his only way to exist. He spends his life in books (or nowadays in front of his computer) not to have to face the real world, full of those (also despicable) girls he’s afraid of.

I know what I’m talking about, I saw one. It’s a chance, they’re not going out often.