Facing History and Ourselves

“Why study history?” is a question students ask, not because they lack passion for the subject, but because they seem to be naturally more focused on the present than on the past. The answers I myself would give are myriad, ranging from the importance of building collective memory to that

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Qu’est-ce que le bonheur?

Most often, I think back on growing up in Vienna as an extraordinarily happy period. For three years, between the ages of six and nine, my three siblings and I had the pleasure of playing for hours in the gardens around Schönbrunn Palace, taking the tramway, going to the opera, among

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Percival’s Question

Two thoughts kept coming to mind this past Thursday evening, as I listened to the remarkable discussion on social entrepreneurship taking place in the Lycée Français de New York Cultural Center. The first was one of gratitude to Pascale Richard for organizing such a brilliant event, which from the large

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A propos de la rigueur

The early morning at the the Lycée Français de New York is a wonderful time because it is then that we welcome our students to school. It is also when we have the opportunity to engage in many a thought-provoking conversation about education. “Mr. Lynch, by any chance have you

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Found in Non-Translation

English-speakers will have heard the expression, “lost in translation.” In all humility, I would like to propose a complementary saying, that of “found in non-translation”.  This thought occurred to me last weekend when a friend and I were discussing an article we had both read on huffingtonpost.com, entitled “Eleven Untranslatable

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The Snow Day that Wasn’t

One would be hard-pressed to find a place more full of cajoling than the entrance to the Lycée Français de New York this past Wednesday morning, particularly on the primary side of campus. Student after student had but one feeling to express: dissatisfaction, good-natured dissatisfaction, but dissatisfaction nonetheless! No matter

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FAQs about Design Thinking

One of the most exciting concepts being explored by educators today is known as design thinking. The education departments of leading universities like Harvard and Stanford are conducting research into it; professional development conferences for faculty and administrators are providing workshops in this field. Following a conversation I had about

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Madiba

This past Tuesday morning, we celebrated the life of Nelson Mandela by observing a minute of silence in all of our classes from CE2* through Terminale, just as leaders from around the world gathered in Johannesburg to attend the official memorial service for this extraordinary human being, universally considered to

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