La semaine de la Presse (french)

 What do the pupils do during the week ?
 What are the aims for pupils ?
 A Ministry of Education project

 They set up newspaper kiosks inside their schools to display publications given them by publishers. This symbolises the welcome given by the school to the press in all its diversity and plurality.

 They take part in numerous study workshops on the press with subjects like: writing for the press; comparing coverage of the same event in different dailies; the foreign language press; the importance of the image in news treatment; news in brief; agency dispatches; how news is treated in the newspapers, websites, radio stations and on television...

 They organise debates, round-tables and conferences on current affairs with professionals, e.g. on themes such as: "Can one say, write and show everything?" ; "The press in USA"; "Sports journalism"; "In search of music radio"; "Media and teaching" ; "Press layout" ; "The social role of the press" ; "The place of weather reports in the press" ; "How a big daily uses multimedia today"...

They discover new communication tools and contribute to issues of fax!; they create a Cybergazette on the Internet, an inter-school newspaper. The pupils designed their own Internet newspaper; or a dazibao of good news, from the regional press... They compare the news in daily, weekly or monthly newspapers. They also create bulletin boards by subject or taking a historical approach.

They take part in competitions organised by schools or newspaper publishers (best comic drawings or caricatures, school newspapers, reporting, press photo, a "press marathon" for pupils: putting together in 24 hours a four-page spread on set themes...).

 They edit and make up school and college newspapers with advice from professionals.

 They respond to newspapers that invite pupils to say whatever they like on "freedom and citizen responsibility" and to discover the reality of journalism on the inside by creating a schools' newspaper, a radio station...

They respond to knowledge quizzes set by teachers on the basis of the content of newspapers given out during the Week.

 They design exhibitions about newspapers yesterday and today, the history of press photos, news flow, the history of a title through its front pages, the development of printing techniques, how a title's layout has evolved.

They reply to questionnaires about their press reading habits that are often prepared by high-school pupils.

 They set up displays and meetings on themes like "the image". By means of exhibitions and lectures, teachers and pupils together discover the thousand and one facets of news.

 To initiate or deepen school work on the press, by means of a comparative method based on strict respect for pluralism.

 To discover the diversity of the French news media : written press in daily or magazine form, but also radio and TV stations, the Internet and the young people's press...

 To encourage pupils to read the press while using many sources and information aids.

 To know where news produced and distributed by the media comes from.

 To learn to decode news distributed by the media : how it is presented and how the media (re)construct reality.

 To situate, in time and space, the selective happenings that make up current events.

 To get to know the economic function of the media and to understand their role and socio-political importance.

 To understand that news media are (sometimes distorting) mirrors and that they also act as echo chambers amplifying reality.

 To build constructive relationships with media professionals to train, in due course, demanding users of quality information.

Because the media are an integral part of the pupils' environment from childhood, most representations they have of world's reality are mediated. But, from the social and cultural point of view, young people are not all equal before the media. It is, therefore, essential that those responsible for education take this fact into account and initiate pupils into the techniques, practices, languages and usages of media's professionals when they try to reconstruct reality. Several prerequests are necessary to undertake this kind of initiation : strict pluralism, enormous impartiality and a teaching method based on comparing news and putting it into perspective.

Shaping the citizen of tomorrow

As a part of civic education, the Press Week in the School helps pupils to understand concretely the world of the press. It favours comparative reading of news and develops critical judgement. By using teaching methods that rely on news analysis and production, it contributes equally to mastery of reading and writing. In the course of the Week, it is also a matter of showing the great variety of French information media : the written daily or magazine press, public and private radio stations, national and regional TV stations, new information networks, and the young people's press.

Organisation

The Press Week in the School is organised by the Ministry of National Education, Research and Technology, with the active and constant participation of professionals from the written press, audiovisual news (radio and television), press distribution services and agents. Clemi, which initiated the Week, is responsible for guiding and co-ordinating it. Since its foundation in 1983, Clemi, together with media professionals, has undertaken work in partnership based on shared aims and has proved its impartiality and pluralism.
The media and the schools regularly join the Internet network of the Ministry of National Education :
 Publishers post their offers of samples of their publications and announce proposals for or expectations of animation activities. They register during the month of december on the Clemi website.
Teachers choose the media they want to use with their pupils. Using Internet, they can consult proposals and the media's requests for animation activities. They register from mid-january to mid-february on the Clemi website.

The Week's three principles

In the context of strict pluralism, the Press Week rests on three fundamental principles :
 Partnership. The school assures a welcome for the press and teaching work with pupils (discussions, workshops...) ; publishers provide dailies and magazines. They encourage information professionals to take part in the animation activities organised by teachers in the schools. The distribution services organise sending newspapers to the depots.
Voluntary service. Every school's establishment, media and distribution depot is free to join in the Press Week.
 Free. The Press Week is not a commercial enterprise but a teaching activity of a new order.

Support and evaluation

To help teachers to begin or to deepen work with their pupils, Clemi and other press partners publish specific teaching materials. Each registered school receives a Teaching Dossier drafted by the Clemi.
The whole operation is evaluated in numbers and quality. Information data figure in the data base and each participating establishment receives an evaluation dossier.

Some pupils' opinions

 I wish it could last longer (boy, 16).
 that a journalist comes to explain what the press is (girl 14).
 choose a journalist who has done an interesting article and ask him questions (girl, 11).
 visit a press « factory » (boy 9).
 go and visit a TV studio (boy, 10).
leave at least one period free to flick through newspapers and magazines (boy, 17).
I think if we were to do a newspaper again, I'd like it to be a daily that we'd bring out over 3 or 4 days to see what a journalist's job is really like. Then we'd have to finish in time, print the newspaper and distribute it. Of course we'd have to change the articles every day as well according to what happened in the school (boy, 15).