My Students Hate the Environment!! ;)

This is the classroom situation every language teacher dreams of, I thought, as I corrected the occasional “Ze people is…” and “Everybody are…” It was a class of eight sixteen-year-old girls, led by a very young, much loved English teacher. The students were meant to talk about a Vegetarian Society ad, which portrayed a puppy sitting on a plate with the caption “Why not? You eat other animals, don’t you?” Originally, the students expressed their opinions about the ad. All of them thought it was different levels of ridiculous. (This doesn’t surprise me one bit, based on the fact that they’re French, and the French love their meat!) The wonderful part was when the girls started to dig deeper into the context of vegetarianism, and this simple exercise spun into a spontaneous debate about the environmental movement, in English.

One very outspoken student claimed that the Environmental movement is just a fad. She thinks recycling is overrated and that life before all of this talk about sustainable living was much easier. At first, the teacher was miffed. She brought up global warming and pointed out that, living in Martinique, we are more susceptible to global climate change than anyone else! The weather has already become erratic here. (As I write this, it is pouring rain, in what should be the hot, dry season on the island!) And the rising sea levels are already encroaching upon the beaches. The girls sat back in their chairs, arms crossed, lips pursed to the side. Then another student tried to support the first. She brought up the idea that companies just say their products are eco-friendly in order to charge higher prices. Now even the teacher was sympathetic. She explained to me that it’s true that the government has started adding “environmental taxes” to product after product, like refrigerators, gas, etc. Now it was the teacher who began to back down. She sat back in her chair, crossed her own arms, and admitted that she can see where her students are coming from. She, too, feels like she is being taken advantage of by both the public and private sector in the name of “the environment”.

Now I am beginning to see where a lot of this Martiniquan conservativism comes from. It is true that religion plays a part. (It always plays a part.) But in the end, it comes down to the fact that life in France is expensive. And life in Martinique is even more expensive. Martiniquans pay French taxes, which go toward taking care of the French people to an astounding extent. Even the most conservative party in France believes in the value of universal health care. To the French, it’s the equivalent of the state providing free public education, or any other basic service. However, the French are taxed for much more than that! I know state employees for whom the state pays half of their rent and also gives them books full of certificates worth 6 Euros each to spend at grocery stores and the like. The state pays higher salaries to unemployed people than these unemployed people can sometimes get at entry-level jobs. And the state pays me. French tax payers pay for language assistants like me to come supplement the foreign language teaching efforts of teachers in their public schools. Could you imagine the US tax payers paying French and Spanish people full salaries to help language teachers do their jobs all over America? I mean, it's a good set-up for me! (Thank you, France!) I can see how the paying forty percent more for everything, and the extra environmental taxes, and the recycling (which requires the French to sort their recyclables into three separate bins) would add up. It causes people to be frustrated. And when people are frustrated with the state, a conservative dialogue holds sway. (::cough::Tea Party::cough::)