Fourth round in the schoolvine

A major part of the vines near Verzy have been pruned now. It seems rather common to wait cutting the rachet and the courson completely down to the permitted two and three buds till later. No doubt to minimize the risk of frost damages.

The fourth Thursday of ten on the stony road towards a diploma in pruning the vine is a lot about differences in how you teach.

For most of the 20 pupils on this course for grown-ups this will hopefully be their way to get a job. For me - apart from the pruning itself - this is also a firstclass introduction to the differences between how you teach in Denmark and à la Francaise. And honestly, I cannot help identifying myself with an old stubborn turk in Brøndby Strand, Copenhagen, and - mind you - neither ethnicity nor geography are in any way decisive.

Choose your fights carefully
Now, nobody demands that I love the French method of teaching. I just have to know it to be able to use it on the day, I may do the pruning exam.

Asked directly, I tell the teacher, that I am no longer convinced that I want to do the test. She is absolutely asthonished.

"But you have payed." (Too bad, that is life.)

"But you know how to prune." (Yeah, I know. I can feel it too, even without a diploma.)

"But that would be such a shame." (Well, sometimes you just have to choose which fights are really worth it for you. And I am no longer very sure that this is one of them for me.)

What really makes me want to get off is all the contradictions, I must learn to work with. I must understand how to explain the theory when in class, which in some instances may be the opposite of the way I must prune in the vineyards. And then on top of that, there may be a third way to use in real life. Outside school.

According to Alain it is mainly the work with such contradictions, that gives French pupils in the higher levels heaps of homework. It is their responsibility to learn, what answers to use in which contexts, and thus not necessarily the teachers objective to present the subjects in a coherent way.

Everybody must learn to live with this. My limited French language makes it rather difficult for me to distinguish between the nuances though. It is also rather difficult for me to accept the method at all... which is where and when I start to identify with this old and stubborn donkey...

But of course I will continue the course. I want to learn the Cordon de Royat-pruning, that we have not yet been taught. This will still make it possible for me to attend the test, should I feel like it. Mentally it seems fine for me to put some distance to the test. I am who I am.

Learn to prune or to pass the test
Being a Dane, I originate from a country that through decades has chosen a very cautious handling of exams and marks. Unlike France, that adores numbering everything and demands signatures of the parents on all papers as a sign that they are informed. In Denmark the diploma from your final exams may have a significanse for your first job - in France, for most, it will mean everything for all jobs you will ever get in the rest of your life.

Which is why it is not that strange after all that the our teacher focuses so extremely on the test and nothing else. But you may wonder - and I do - whether people will actually learn to prune or the objective is only to pass the test. Not necessarily the same thing. And this is a true surprise for me.

Just have a look a the root of the vine. It may be so old and maybe even infertile, that it does no longer shoot at the bottom. This makes it necessary to move your root some centimeters further up. Instead you will prune your rachet and your lancement on this position a number of centimeters on top of the real root. If you do not use this trick you are not able to prune the rachet that is necessary for the rejuvenation of the plant. But not in the schoolvine. Here the correct answer is to leave a vine without the rachet.

This is where it gets rather difficult for me to understand the wise idea in learning something by heart just for the benefit of the exam. I just do not get the point. But I can prune a chablis now, which I was not able to one month ago.

Did I mention by the way that I made eight out of 10 and nine out of 10 in the two written tests of Thursday morning? Without dictionary, ladies and gentlemen. A little touch of French style may have left its stamp on me after all.


These Cordon de Royat-pruned vines follow theory so nicely, that I can understand and explain most of it.

På dansk

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