French culture vs American culture

Read the text.

The French take immense pride in their nation and government and are typically offended by any negative comments about their country. Visitors, particularly Americans, often interpret their attitude toward foreigners as rude.

Abstraction 

"The collective life of the Frenchman is controlled by this fact : the Frenchman regulates his conduct and judges that of others by means of intellectual standards " (the Englishman focuses on action, the Spaniard on soul, the Frenchman on thought). Everyone knows jokes such as "It is not good : it is consistent with the facts but not with the theory : let's change the facts..."

This is why the French are notoriously good in mathematics, one of the few domains where they can challenge the USA. Two other examples illustrate it. The French have immediately adopted with enthousiasm Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis. Why? They love the global consistency of the theory, the general nature of the concepts, the (apparent) logic of the systems. This is also why in France 90% of people suffering autism are still treated by psychoanalysts with Freudian methods, with no result. 

Anti-communautarisme

France sees as morally unacceptable the maintenance of separate communities (Jewish, Arab, Polish, Greek). This policy, called "communautarisme ", is very unpopular and largely rejected. In France, no group can declare religious freedom or respect of religious traditions as means for maintaining a lifestyle, schooling or social customs that would be visibly different than that of the majority. Therefore, many groups, such as the Amish, which are perfectly natural in the U.S., would be considered a separatist group in France. 

For Americans, who believe each group should maintain and even accentuate its differences, the French attitude represents a lack of democracy. The French believe, on the contrary, that forming a common nation and a common culture comes from a desire to be different from one's origins and to strive for the higher goal of "melting " into one nation with the same schools, the same language, and that all people are French (in France minorities do not describe themselves as African-French, Chinese-French, etc.). 

This is why the proportion of immigrants who get French nationality is among the highest in the world. This is also why it is forbidden by law to collect any data relative to race, religion, sexual orientation, etc... 

The State must be involved. In the USA, general interest is the sum of individual interests ; in France, there is a general interest above all individual interests and it is the responsibility of the state to identify and defend it. 

Answer the questions below:

1)Communautarism in France

1. is supported

2. is a disputable problem 

3. is abandoned as a value

2)American believes that

1. each group of people should stay independent

2. everyone should retain their identity

3. each group of people should be assimilated

3)Why does the author believe that the French are notoriously good at Maths?

1. They are resourceful and can easily change the facts to suit the situation.

2. They are intelligent.

3. They know all the Maths formulas by heart.

Discuss questions with your classmates:

1)How might people from one culture differ from people from another culture? 

2)Do these differences facilitate communication or create misunderstanding?

3)Have you ever experienced another culture? Where?

Write an essay comparing the culture of your own country with the french one. (300-350 words)

Follow the structure: introduction, 2-3 points of comparison (with examples), conclusion.

Every sentence in you essay should refer to the topic of the assignment, and all the tasks specified in it should be fulfilled.