It is interesting that some of the American replies to
this question included informing the teacher that a
student has cheated, whereas none of the French did so.
In Ukraine and Russia, for example, it is considered
shameful to tell on another student, and even the
teachers discourage it. "Tattle-tales" are not looked
upon favourably by anybody, and they can sometimes even
end up with a bloody nose, as a 'reward' from their
classmates. That is much less true for the US. I
wonder if in France the views on tattle-taling are
similar to the ones in Ukraine and in Russia.

Just to add to my last comment, in the countries of the
former Soviet Union, those who opposed the regime were
actively sought out by the government. Sometimes people
informed on others simply for personal gain (like in the
Crucible by Arthur Miller), so tattle-tailing naturally
became associated with something base, something
ignoble. In the United States, on the other hand, it
was always more or less permissable to criticise the
government, so that maybe anti-informer attitudes did
not root as firmly. France, like other European
countries, was a monarchy until quite recently, and then
it suffered authoritarian rule under the Nazis during
WWII. I wonder wheather the dislike for telling on
others stems from that (if my original assumption that
the French don't like informers was correct, that is).

Your comment was really interesting because I can
identify with some of what you said.

Based on my experience in school (outside America), I
think cheating during tests was pretty common and no one
would really think about speaking to the teacher about
it. If a student was angry about it, he/she would
probably let the student know in a joking way that
he/she saw what happened. It would have been considered
petty to bring it up to the teacher.

C'est vrai Natalia, en France comme en Ukraine et en
Russie, on aime pas ceux qui dénoncent. Peut-être que
c'est un héritage de l'occupation durant la seconde
guerre mondiale...

Je ne suis pas du tout d'accord avec ton idée Raphael.
Au contraire les élèves ont beaucoup plus l'habitude de
travailler individuellement . La culture de
l'individualité dans les études est centrale en
France.

Message 302

Les réactions à cette situation sont diverses et
variées, pour les francais comme pour les américains. Je
crois que la reaction a cette situation est personnelle:
chacun a un point de vue différent sur la triche et ne
partage pas forcement l'opinion de son voisin. C'est
pour cela que les reponses sont aussi differentes:
certains approuvent, d'autres sont passifs, d'autres
encore dénoncent... Je ne pense donc pas qu'il y ait ici
une différence de culture majeure, dans la mesure ou la
réaction à cette situation fait appel au jugement de
chacun

I think you have to understand where Raphael is coming
from Francois. From what we have gathered from the
associations, it seems like the French in general do not
see cheating as a big problem or situation that needs to
be brought attention to. When we looked at the American
responses we observed that at least 5 people would tell
on a student that cheated. Why is it that in France,
people are not willing to report a certain individual
for cheating if your culture, as you say, is centralized
in individualism?

I've taken quite a number of exams at Brown where the
questions are given to us before the day of the exam and
we are encouraged to form study groups to work on the
questions together.

So perhaps, because of this "sanctioned" collaboration,
no one feels the need to cheat

But then again, this explanation might only be specific
to particular situations..

Because in France, to tell on someone is dishonorable.
It is betrayal of one's friends, classmates. Remember
that in their school system, classes don't mix like in
America. They stay together as one class for a very
long time and get to know each other well. That makes
telling on someone even worse.

Francois, you said:

"Je ne suis pas du tout d'accord avec ton idée Raphael.
Au contraire les élèves ont beaucoup plus l'habitude de
travailler individuellement . La culture de
l'individualité dans les études est centrale en
France."

But I am quoting another French student, who in one of
the other forums said this:

"As you answered in french i reply in English. For
French people success is deeply linked to work in
groups. It is thought to be harder to achieve a great
purpose if our aim is only a personnal success."

Do you disagree with that statement about working in
groups, or are both of you perhaps talking about
different things?

In response to your conjecture, Julien... Perhaps I am
misreading, but it seems to me as though you imply a
rather strong distinction between cultural
differences/opinions and personal differences. Do you
not think that one's "culture" informs one's
personality, morals etc at all? Also, to account for the
differences in responses given by our class, I think it
is necessary to note that not all of the students in our
class are/consider themselves American.

Julien and Marcy,

This definetly sounds like the nature vs. nurture
argument. While Julien is arguing for nature, Marcy is
arguing for nurture. I have to say that I agree with
both of you to some extent. While, I do that the
culture is an influence, I also think that an
individual's personality is somewhat separate from it.
I think that in any culture, there are varying degrees
of compliance to overarching cultural mores/influences.

I think that the reponses to the situations are unique
in that we can see not only the cultural response, but
also the individual response. The responses to the
words and sentences leave much less room for
personality to show thou

Clifford

Tu souligne là un paradoxe intéressant de la société
française. On est individualiste.Cela signifie qu'on est
libre de faire ce qu'on veut. Si les autres ne sont pas
contents, tant pis pour eux !

Jonathan

What is interesting for us (french students and american
students) to see is that although we, as students here
at Brown, may not consider ourselves all American, our
responses are very similar to one another's and to the
responses of previous years. So, even though we may
consider ourselves very different or even not American,
there is something about the environment in which we
live that, to a certain extent, conforms us to a certain
norm.

Do the French students find that although many people
see themselves as Arab, European, or African etc., that
it is still nearly impossible to say that they dont
conform to some common idea of what it is to be french?

to add in several qualifiers..

each time we analyze the responses to the questionnaires
in class, we are making generalizations. So the few
responses, or even 1 response which deviates from the
general impression isn't taken into account most of the
time. Due to the anonymous nature of the responses, we
can't distinguish between the responses of those who do
identify as americans and those who don't.

On another note, it was pretty evident (to me at least)
that the purpose of the questionnaires was for us to
analyze the different responses between american
students and french students. For me, that meant that
even though I attempted to quickly associate a
word/phrase/situation with several words, I did so in
the person of _an american student_ and answered the way
I did because of the country I was in. For example, for
the word "suburbs", I immediately associated it with how
a suburb would be viewed in America, rather than how I
would view the word "suburb" when I am at home in
Singapore.

I guess it can be pointed out that what I am saying
merely points to how we conform to the environment. And,
I agree we do, to varying degrees. However, at the same
time, I think that we can also consider the fact that in
responding to the questionnaires, its difficult to keep
out the purpose of this activity in mind. i.e. the
"general american student's view vs. french student's
view". And, this could have the effect of influencing
the similarity between the responses.

François a écrit lui-même ces deux messages...alors si
tu trouves cela contradictoire...

Quand je disais que la culture de l'individualité était
centrale en france cela signifiait que les gens n'ont
pas le reflexe du travail en commun et que le système
éducatif ne le favoise pas non plus... Mais
paradoxalement la dénonciation de quelqu'un qui
tricherait à un examen reste trés mal vu.Sans doute car
les Français n'aiment pas faciliter le travail des
"autorités".

Those messages are both from me but they were posted in
different contexts.As a matter of fact until our final
examination,the baccalauréat, the emphasis is put on
personal work.Your success is yours & only yours, you
don't need any help from others.While post-baccalauréat
schools you are encouraged to work in groups cos this
method iis far more effective.And in the second message
it was my personal opinion that one could achieve
greater things by working with others than by
oneself.This is maybe one of the idea conveyed by the
european construction,don't you think so?