From Atheism to Faith in God: Part 3 - High School Years

My testimony: From convinced Atheism to joyful fellowship with God

Part 3: My High School years

In France, primary and secondary education are a little different from the US. 

From 3 to 6 years old (3 years) we have the école maternelle (before primary school) where most children go. From 6 to 12 years old, we have the primary school. 

What corresponds to a US High School has often two parts in France: collège (12-16, 4 years) and lycée (16-18, 3 years), although in some cases collège and lycée are fused together in a same physical building. The name of each year are like a countdown up to the baccalauréat or ‘bac’ - an academic qualification when you finish high school. When you are about 12 years old, you enter the collège, first in the class called ‘sixième’ (sixth), the next year is the ‘cinquième’ (fifth), then the ‘quatrième’ (fourth) and ‘troisième’ (third). Then you enter a lycée for the last three classes: ‘seconde’ (second), ‘première’ (first) and finally the ‘terminale’ (terminal).

In my case, I went to a collège in Crosne and to a Lycée in Montgeron, both in the South-East of Paris. The trip between my house and the school would take about one hour each morning and one hour each evening, because we were located at the most distant stop on the path of the school bus. This meant that each day I spent about two hours sitting or standing in a bus, bored to death, since I did not have friends with whom to discuss. I just hoped that nobody would bother me. Most of the time, I would be day-dreaming all the way long. I would dream that I was a kind of super-hero, able to fight back if someone attacked me. I would dream that a pretty girl would become my girlfriend, something impossible in the real life because of my paralyzing fears and debilitating timidity.

As I was beginning collège (12-16 years old, not to be confused with a US college), I was welcomed in a group of 5-6 teenagers, which gave me a sense of protection and belonging. The key person of this group, as I perceive it, was Patrick. He was kind and friendly, with a joyful personality. I was not joyful and not friendly, but they welcomed me. I did not know much how to interact and did not have many subjects of interest in common with them. For instance, like most groups of kids, they would be interested in music, while I had no idea and was not very interested in listening to music. Just to pretend that I was like them, in the beginning of college, one time I wrote on my little green US army bag (which was then a trendy school bag at school) all the names of the music groups that others would write on their bags, although I did not listen to a single song of these groups. I rapidly felt how foolish it was, and rapidly replaced this school bag. 

At one point, Patrick read the book “The Lord of the Rings” of Tolkien and became passionate about it. I did not like to read, so I would read this book perhaps only 20 years later. Yet, out of this passion he proposed to the group to start playing the role-playing game (RPG) ’Dungeons and dragons’. I was happy to be part of this group, so I proposed them to come for these games in the basement of my house. 

I guess that it was a wise move of my mother, to be sure things were OK and that nothing wrong happened, to offer that we play during the night in the basement of our home. 

Most of the time, Patrick would be the ‘dungeon master’. During my collège years, we would then come a few times a year to spend part of the night playing as if we were heroes with magic powers, fighting monsters and delivering prisoners from wicked masters. Patrick and his friend Yann were giving a good direction to the group. None of us smoke or drank alcohol. (I believe that my parents would not have allowed that). There was no insult between us, and no aggressivity or fighting, as far as I remember. It was friendly times together. There were only boys, no girls in this group, so no seduction or love stories to complicate the relationships. I came to enjoy playing with others, and to have a certain level of friendship was a relief to me.

Yet, it would take me a long time before having friends with whom I could share what really mattered to me. For instance, personal computing was in its infancy during my collège years (1981-1985) and none of this group was interested in programming because they did not have computers at home. It took years before this became widespread. Because of the good pays of both of my parents, I was introduced in the world of computers years before most other teenagers around me. When I learned to solve the Rubik’s cube, my relational skills were pretty low so that I did not know how to explain to someone else how to do it. This meant that it remained only a personal interest, allowing me to perform but not to communicate in a friendly way.

One day in 1983, my mother invited my math teacher, Mr Marsac, to our house to show him a computer, something that he did not see before. I was supposed to show how to write a program for finding the prime numbers, which I had done a few times before. Under the pressure of performing for my respected teacher, I was fumbling but I believe that he could still get an idea of why computers would matter for education in the future, in particular when associated with mathematics.

As I studied in the Lycée (16-18 years old), I focused most of my energy on studies. I was a very good student in Mathematics and science, but not as good in other subjects. As I look back on this, I believe that one of the challenges was my difficulties to concentrate and not start to day-dream in class. In math, with a few elements I was able to catch up, but not in subjects like French, English or History.

Already around 13 years old, my mother could see that I was not very good in English. Since she rightly believed that it would be important for me to learn well, she decided to send me and my sister (later followed by our younger brother) about every year for a few weeks in England. We would travel by train and by boat. There was not yet a tunnel for trains between France and England, the future chunnel (channel tunnel). We were then hosted by a family near London and studied English each morning. If I wanted to eat or communicate basic needs, I had to be able to communicate with the members of the family in English. Therefore, I learned to speak English. 

In these days, there were groups called Punks (rather lower class, with torn clothes and crazy hair) and of Mods (rather lower-middle class, with jackets). As French people, we were sometimes called ‘Froggies’ (the little frogs), because in France one of the meal dishes is cooked frog legs. In the late evening we could be chased by these groups of young people, so I learned to speak - when needed - without my strong French accent. One time, a large group of punks was at a bus stop and asked us: ‘froggies’? And I responded in a perfect londonian accent: No. On our side we could call the English ‘bifteck’ (an abbreviation of ‘beef-steak’, widespread in England since 1711, used as a derogatory term in France already around 1836) or ’rosbif’ (roast beef, grilled meat cooked in England already in 1774). If our countries have been allied in the two world wars, before that we had been enemies making war for centuries, from around 1100 to 1900, and it left marks even in our respective vocabularies.

In France, we tend to be a revolutionary people, so once in a while there would be a strike related to school and we could participate. I did not care about any of the debates, but just enjoyed a day away from school, sometimes with a free ride to go to Paris and demonstrate. 

One demonstration I remember of, while I was in Lycée in 1986, was against the law of a minister, Devaquet. This law was supposed to allow the French universities to select their students. At the time and still today, any student applying has to be accepted by the university, with almost no fees to pay during these studies, something very different from universities in most other countries. The syndicates made sure that the trains were free, and by the hundreds and thousands we went to Paris and demonstrated in the streets shouting ‘Devaquet au piquet’ (Devaquet, to the picket = be punished as a bad student, put him in the corner). When I look back, I am very sorry of having been, like so many, sheep that the syndicates manipulated with ease and efficiency, crushing a law that could have been good. The law was rejected shortly after, and still today selection is not an option in French universities. Yet, it is useful to know that the best students in France don’t go to universities but rather to ‘Grandes Écoles’ (to not confuse with High school), high quality and selective schools for students after the baccalaureate (18 years old), with difficult exams that take years to prepare in ‘classes préparatoires’ (preparatory classes). This mix of absent selection and very selective exams for higher education is one of the hallmarks of the French paradoxes. 

In the next post, I will share about how I became solidly grounded in Atheism:
Atheism 101.