Cheating, zero points, shame… Our readers tell their worst memories of dictation at school

We often read that dictation is a French passion. The exercise has even crossed the barriers of the school to invite itself in formidable contests or competitions. Sunday, moreover, a world record should be broken on the Champs-Elysées: that of the largest number of participants ever gathered to bend in the dictation game. A French passion, we told you.

However, at the time of collecting the testimonies of our readers in order to know their memory of young schoolchildren, the verdict was final. The dictation sounded more like a nightmare. “Even the best were scared, remembers Anseaulme, a student in a small country school in the 1970s. Terror was in the classroom. Once the dictation was over, we each had to go to the teacher’s office to correct our copy. It was anxiety because he considered that there were acceptable faults and others absolutely not. And in these cases, we could take a little bit of a book… ”

“The only subject where I received a zero point! »

They have not all experienced the terror of schoolmasters, but dictation has often been synonymous with disillusionment. Christian, 61, bears indelible marks of that time: “Even if it was fifty years ago, it was not the best memory of my schooling, because it is the only subject where I received a zero points! This did not prevent him from entering a major engineering school. Sandrine, 48 years old and who considers herself “null in spelling”, experienced a sacred emotional lift: “With each dictation, I had 0. One day my mistress gives me back my copy, I have 18! I am really happy. It was then that the teacher turned around and said to me: “I made a mistake, you have 2 not 18!” 18 was my number of faults…” False joy.

To undergo this ruthless and visibly traumatic ordeal for our readers, some lucky ones could count on sympathetic classmates like Adi who, despite his 48 years, remembers perfectly well that after the dictation, “the table between me and my friend José was covered in words that he wrote on the table so that I could copy them correctly”. You can call it a little nudge… or cheating, it depends.

” The shame of my life ! »

Cheating, Simon, probably preferred to use it so as not to tarnish his reputation as a gifted student in dictation. He recounts his “worst schoolboy shame”. “In CE2, the moment everyone corrects, I realize that I made several mistakes. Suddenly, I exchange the ink reserve of my green pen with blue, incognito. Bad luck, the teacher passes behind me and asks me why my green pen writes blue. I sink in with a convoluted and totally unbelievable explanation, crimson with shame. They won’t catch me again, he swears. From that day, I understood that a clever idea is not enough: to know how to cheat, you also need a confidence that I do not have! »

Our readers have a sense of humor and the prize goes indisputably to Maxime, who spent his college years in the North of France: “I remember the dictation of the patent in an establishment in Pas-de-Calais. It was given to us by a math teacher who came from the South West. Result: almost all of us failed because of his accent…”

source site