Les bons samaritains

On two occasions in the past two years my spouse and I have benefited from the assistance of les bons samaritains (good samaritans) along U.S. and French highways.  The first time was on the eve of our family's move to France when the car we were driving inexplicably stalled in the middle of a busy Washington state highway span, just outside of downtown Seattle.  Cars behind us were traveling at highway speeds and we had no shoulder to which to escape.  We could do nothing except call 911 for help and hope that no one would hit us from behind.  A very brave and kind man stopped his car just behind ours to offer assistance and to alert other cars to the stopped traffic.  Luckily, a tow truck driver reached us before any damage could be done to cars or humans alike, and our good samaritan departed safely and anonymously.

On a very wet Saturday in Provence this past weekend, we had another similar experience, as we were trying to head south for a sports tournament and camping weekend.  As I was easing our car onto the autoroute, the car fishtailed suddenly, and then began hydroplaning, causing me to lose complete control.  We somehow slipped between the highway entrance barriers without touching them and spun around at least 1 1/2 times across three lanes of the highway without getting hit, and then came to rest with a little crunch, against the center median.  We all caught our breaths for a moment, and then suddenly realized that our car was wedged into the barrier and was directly facing oncoming traffic in the fast lane!  As my family escaped the car, scrambling onto the small gap in the center median, a driver in a minivan just entering the highway and perhaps witnessing our spinning, pulled over.  The driver ran up along the autoroute, opposite my spouse, and in the rain, both waved their arms up and down to slow the oncoming traffic as best as they could.  It appears that another good samaritan stayed in the car to call for assistance on our behalf.  Meanwhile, another car also stopped, with a third good samaritan making a call on his cell phone while yelling to us across the slick wet lanes to ask if anyone was hurt, and reminding me to put on the gilet (safety vest, an obligatory piece of car equipment in France).  Thankfully, highway traffic and public safety crews arrived shortly after, blocking our lane of traffic and helping us get out of the mess.  While these men were not what we would call good samaritans, as they were doing their jobs, their professionalism was dosed with empathy, and I appreciated that they didn't smirk or act frustrated with our French, which was even shakier than usual.  The man with the lane closure equipment and the tow truck driver were both especially kind, and somehow, all of these strangers were able to help us enough to send us back on our way.  (We didn't even merit a visit from the local gendarmes, or police, and the resulting damage to our car doesn't quite tell the harrowing story, although we tried to describe it the best we could to the waiting football families at our campground near Montpellier.)

The big surprises to us from the past weekend (besides the fact that our son's team actually won the tournament that we struggled to get to!) were the assistance and expressions of kindness from strangers that we experienced.  These are certainly not what one is taught to expect in France, if the countless books about the French are to be believed, and at least in terms of French drivers, in my experience, they aren't often even very generous about moving over for ambulances or police cars whose sirens and lights are on.  In the U.S., on the other hand, it seems that often, if a stranger is hurt, people will try to help in some way.  In fact, there are some interesting national differences in the sociolegal expectations associated with being a good samaritan.  In the U.S., being a good samaritan is seen as personally risky, especially if help is rendered without consent and if something goes wrong.  So, good samaritan laws, which vary by state, tend to protect the good samaritan's actions against liability, but don't require anyone to offer assistance.  The French law, on the other hand, actually requires passers-by to be good samaritans.  The protection lies with the one who is in danger, and thus, assistance must be rendered if it can be done so without peril.  Not helping someone can result in the charge of la non-assistance à personne en danger (non-assistance to someone in need), and a hefty fine and/or jail time. (Click here for a short piece in The Global Times, Oct. 31, 2011, comparing 3 different kinds of good samaritan legal scenarios, in China, U.S., and France.)  In a sense, these differences accentuate the U.S. protections of private rights and the French expectations of public responsibilities.  (The different assessments of risks are clear too; see La sécurité, Oct. 2011 for more on this topic.)  Yet, I think for those requiring assistance, whether due to car accidents in France, or tornadoes in the U.S. midwest, or even wars as in Syria and elsewhere, in the moment of dire need, it matters little what the civil incentives and protections are.  I have to speak from experience on this one: what matters the most then is that someone has stopped to help.

Contentement

In a talk that I gave at the local Institute for American Universities earlier this afternoon about how the French spend their time, I also summarized French economist Claudia Senik's argument about why the French seem to be less happy or satisfied with their lives compared to others.  She blames in part the authoritarian and rigid French school system for creating citizens who lack the self-confidence and the contentement (contentment or satisfaction) that one might expect in a country with so many wonderful attributes.  (See Claudia Senik's homepage here, or click here for a direct link to her paper The French Unhappiness Puzzle, Working Paper, 2012.)  My family's limited experience with the school system, at its middle school level, suggests that the system is firmly focused on staying within the lines and structure of the nationally established curriculum (this feels especially true in the maths and sciences), and that the teaching and learning within the system is generally not very creative or active or nurturing.  At first glance, it's hard to say if such schooling could lead to broadly-experienced passivity and pessimism among adults.  

I can say that I see more and more how a centrally-organized society uses its national school system to impart broader social values and practices to its emerging young adults.  This process begins early, at the crèches and maternelles (nursery and preschools) where very young French children, from ages 2 and 3, spend hours away from home in the care of others, learning how to sit patiently and how to eat meals like little grown-ups.  It is the recounting of this by some expatriate foreign mothers that has caught the attention especially of the American and English reading public. (See my discussion of one such book in Encadrement February 2012.) 

This week I had another revelation of how the school system may pass on social values and skills.  Faithful readers may recall that just over a year ago I embarked on the painful and expensive process of acquiring a French driver's license (See A is for Autoecole, April 2012).  For weeks, I grumbled about the ridiculously tricky theory questions that had more than one answer and the authoritarian teaching styles of the driving instructors.  Now I have learned that as 2nd year middle schoolers (French 5th graders), my twin sons will be taking the ASSR1 test this month, while students two years ahead of them will take the ASSR2.  The ASSR's are exams offered by the Education Sécurité Routière (Road Safety Education) arm of the National Ministry of Education to middle school-aged French kids to test them about their knowledge of the appropriate behaviors in shared traffic situations.  The parent representative of our boys' class suggested that these exams will be beneficial for the kids when they begin riding motor scooters and eventually prepare for their automobile driver's licenses.  Learning the rules of the road at age 13 is not a bad idea, particularly given the new interest among my boys and their classmates in skating around the busy streets in town on skateboards and longboards.  However, I was amazed to discover after one son took some practice exams on the traffic safety education website, that these were really quite similar to the practice driving theory exams I had taken last spring, right down to the tricky questioning.  So, I think I now understand better why I felt out of my element in driving school; it wasn't just the language.  By the time most French turn 18 or start driving school in earnest, they have the French-style examination drill down, from years of practice: they know what to expect in terms of testing methodologies and teaching styles, they know that it won't be easy to pass the exams the first time, and they know if they don't pass, everyone else is going to know about it.  These students were simply better prepared for the process and its potential outcomes.  And, it might not be such a big leap to consider the possibility that these same students may feel less satisfied or less sure of themselves later in life, when social scientists come along asking them to assess their personal happiness.  Social institutions, such as political and school systems, do have that kind of influence; some may empower their members, with the right to vote, for example, while other institutions may limit their members, say by stifling their intellectual creativity.  Senik's thinking about the French school system may be on the right track after all.

Various wheeled modes of transportation parked on the landing below our apartment