Comenius Cultural Exchange

 Matotea's school is involved in an EU funded cultural exchange program. It's a funny little advantage of being part of a French territory. At the moment we've only had opportunities for the staff to travel between schools. Monsieur Vaitea spent a week in Norway (now that's going to be a cultural shock!) and other staff have been to the UK and Spain. Likewise, we had a delegation of teachers from Europe visiting last month. The program is an opportunity for both children and educational staff to travel between countries including Croatia, France (read Rurutu), Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain and the UK. According to their blurb the program promotes linguistic and inter-cultural understanding, encouraging our children to become active European citizens, responding to global issues! I am a fan of any kind of program that encourages our children to become more conscious of the world outside, my big fear for my girls is that they grow up in a Polynesia bubble (lotus-eating), without understanding how life is so very different elsewhere in the world (not better or worse, just fundamentally different). Here in Polynesia we all seem to be expert navel-gazers, it's true we're very geographically isolated, and live a life that is quite detached from mainland Europe, but still there's a whole wide world out there. Sadly, few people here are aware of or interested in international news affairs. The French presidential elections were played out on local tribal alliances (who supports the mayor or not), really not anything to do with the merits of the presidential candidate to govern France. Anyway, last week the school held a "European Fete", I went along out of curiosity, the children were all dressed up in 'pareo' and flower leis, even though each class had been learning about other countries. It seemed mostly to be a rather uninspired show of folk dancing to German and English rock music, with  everyone cheering at the end when the group representing Rurutu came on! Matotea's class did a great job of repeatedly pointing at their nose and ears, along to a German nursery rhyme. The class that were "Happy and they Knew it" were a little less convincing!