FRENCH PEOPLE DO NOTHING BUT CRITICIZE EVERYTHING
- Oct 9, 2017
- 3 min read
If you have French friends or have met French people you certainly already know about that, don’t you?
Does that mean that we are negative and rude? I will say “no” and “yes sometimes”.
Criticize is part of French people way of thinking. Since we were young, we have learnt to be critical about everything. In France, starting middle school, students have to write essays and professors teach them the dialectical method, brought by the philosopher Kant and Hegel. It’s a framework composed of 3 parts Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. Why I am talking about it? Because this method imposes us to analyze a problem and the different point of views by being critical. And this approach is used during many subjects at school such as mathematics, philosophy, physics and chemistry. Students are not asked to learn everything by heart but to understand and have a critical eye on the method used to obtain a result. Criticize flows from our education at school but also at home, since we hear our parents criticize everything all the time. We also take the habit from them.
But you should know that it is not because we criticize things that we don’t like them. In France we have the expression “Qui aime bien, châtie bien!” (Spare the rod and spoil the child), which illustrates perfectly what I am talking about. We criticize because we care and want to see things getting better. For instance, I am the first to criticize France and I can say that France is too permissive sometimes and not able to take strong decisions when needed… But, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like my country, it’s totally the contrary I just want to see continuous improvements. If French people didn’t care they will just say nothing and stay a spectator of the situation. That’s why you should not perceive our critics as insults.
I had a time when I was against critics and tried to stop myself to think this way but I quickly stop. Why? Because I believe now it’s not that bad to have this way of thinking and to express my opinions! In fact, being critical help you to not take the information for granted and to think about every aspects and alternatives of things. Eventually, it is a good habit especially in the world of work. The funny fact is that even French people critics the fact that people critics too often… It is the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it? It even leads to some funny challenge like “a French will try to live one year without criticize”. Even in my family we say “no critics during this evening”, yes only for this short period of time, we should not especially try to refrain ourselves from making any critics when watching TV news. And you know what? …. We fail every time!
But there is one point I have to agree about, we may sound rude to foreigners. That’s why French people may need to be more careful when they are abroad because it can bother people who are not used to this attitude and don’t understand it.
Did you know this fact about French people? Have you ever encountered a situation where you were shocked by the attitude of some French people?
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