Why should our children be more like the French?

I’ve no particular beef with the French, gruesomely tortured beef as it would no doubt be, but I’m a little tired of being told we ought to follow their example with our children. Elizabeth Truss, the normally quite sensible education minister, is the latest culprit. She believes that Britain’s nurseries are chaotic, noisy places. Children would be better prepared for school, she feels, if British nurseries were more like French nurseries, in which toddlers wear couture, click their heels whenever an adult enters the room, and never laugh.

I daresay she’s right, just as I’m sure people are often right when they marvel at the flawless behaviour of little French people. But they always seem to be overlooking something pretty major, which is that little French people turn into big French people. And pleasant as the French can be, in a social or catering trade capacity, they do also often give the impression of being unhappy, humourless philanderers, somewhat. Indulgent parent that I am, I’m just not sure I want that for my children.

It probably takes more than merely French nurseries to turn the French French, though. Let’s not be simplistic here. (There’s also the way they’re constantly surrounded by French people, for example. That can’t help.) In fact, I suspect the nursery thing is probably a pretty minor part of it. Kids are pretty resilient, and the kids who are the most resilient are the indulged, loved, -middle-class ones who have parents who spend their time agonising over exactly how like the French they ought to be at the age three and a half. You mess up a toddler by abusing it, neglecting it, or otherwise assaulting the foundations of its little bright-eyed life. Really, what Ms Truss is talking about here isn’t the welfare of kids at all. What she’s talking about is the welfare of mums, and it’s not the same thing at all.