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Local France
10-07-2025
- General
- Local France
French word of the day: La prépa
Why do I need to know la prépa ? Because you'll likely hear your French friends swapping war stories about this. What does it mean? Prépa - roughly pronounced pray-pa - is unique to the French higher education system. Instead of going to la fac (university) after the baccalaureate, students can opt for la prépa , which is a minimum two-year school programme whose goal is to prepare students for the entrance exams to renowned French universities and engineering schools. Advertisement La prépa is actually short for Les classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles - preparatory courses for prestigious schools/universities. The words préparatoire or préparation (preparatory or preparation) can be used in any context, and are used in the same way as the English words. But if when it's shortened to prépa , you know that it is specific to these type of classes. There are three main types of preparatory courses: one for economic and business studies, one for literary studies, and one for scientific studies. La prépa is known for its intensive workload and the difficulty of the entrance exams for prestigious schools. Students who fail to get the school they wanted often repeat for a third year, sometimes even a fourth. You might be wondering why students would choose this option when la fac is available. The answer is simple: la prépa opens the door to some of the most prestigious French undergraduate and graduate schools, such as HEC business school or Ecole Polytechnique for engineering - which in turn open doors to the top levels of professions or politics. But because the courses are famously gruelling and intensive, French people usually reminisce about these in roughly the same way as veterans share war stories - although people people often make friends for life at prépa . Use it like this La prépa, c'est la voie royale - Doing a preparatory course is the best path (after high school). J'ai khûbé ma prépa - I repeated my second year of prépa.
Edmonton Journal
03-07-2025
- Edmonton Journal
Boys are adopting Andrew Tate's misogynistic views — and bringing them to class, study finds
Article content 'Sometimes it's a little more overt than that,' Cousineau said. 'There are some illusions to folks saying, 'I think my administrator actually agrees with them.'' Article content 'We really wanted to demonstrate this is happening in real time, and it's having some significant impacts,' he said. 'There are real and tangible dangers to continuing to do nothing. Not recognizing this as a real issue allows it to proliferate and continue.' Article content This isn't just the immature actions of some boys. 'While it is tempting to be reductionist about a problem like this, we have zero social tolerance for overt racism, especially in the classroom. Why should we tolerate identity-focused hate based on gender,' Cousineau said. Article content Violent misogyny is never fine. 'It only takes one violent misogynist to carry out a Toronto Van Attack or another Ecole Polytechnique.' Article content In 2018, Alex Minassian drove a rented van into pedestrians on a busy sidewalk on Toronto's Yonge Street, killing 10. Minassian once told a psychiatrist after the attack that he realized his victims were random pedestrians and was 'wishing for more females.' Article content Article content In December 1989, 14 women in a mechanical engineering classroom were killed by gunman Marc Lépine at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique. Article content How to monitor what kids are exposed to gets into thorny territory, he said. 'Do parents know what their kids consume online? Are lots of parents having in-depth, connected conversations with their kids about what they're consuming and what the implications of that are? Generally, no.' Article content 'These are really hard things to do. But if we don't know what kids are exposing themselves to, and we're not engaging with them, that stuff might not come out at home,' Cousineau said. 'It might come out at school.' Article content 'We have evidence in this country, and many other places around the world, of the most extreme form of these kinds of violent misogyny, and nihilistic violent misogyny, where young men go out and kill people because of these ideas,' said Cousineau. Article content Article content Those acts of violence don't come out of nowhere, Cousineau said. People grow into them. 'All of the data we have about radicalized violence show us they develop over time,' he said. Article content 'We need to be addressing it young and at source.' Article content
