Growing up in Canada, I had French classes in school for nine years. Never used it again. Life happened and I have discovered that France is my favorite country to visit.

A few months ago, I signed up at the University of Texas to brush up on my long-
forgotten French skills. I was surprised at what I remembered and surprised at what I forgot but the biggest surprise was the learning style itself.

Long gone are pens and notebooks. Long gone are textbooks, even. Today’s youth all have smartphones and tablets then log onto the University’s internet to access all the lessons and learning tools.

The professor doesn’t write on a chalkboard, her laptop goes through an overhead projector and onto a screen that comes down from the ceiling. Homework is emailed. Exams and quizzes are multiple choice, online.

To force our hands at speaking French, she had us ‘listen and speak’ the lines of a poem. Of sorts. It wasn’t really a poem, it was lyrics from popular and current
French songs off YouTube.

We recited stories of heartbreak and loss, unrequited love and one between a
matchstick and a match-head that went up in flames.

This is a huge departure of the method that our teachers – many long gone by now – used back when I was in our one-room schoolhouse with dirt floors.
We learned French Nursery Rhymes.

A favorite of mine was Sur Le Pont d’Avignon about a bridge that people danced on rather than walked across because it kept getting washed away. It was popularized in 1853.

Another, from 1780, was Freres Jacques, about a Friar’s inability to wake up on time for his morning mass.

Petit Papa Noel from 1946 was about Father Christmas coming down from the sky.

However the one has put me in shock is a French-Canadian song from 1879 called Alouette, Gentille Alouette. We all repeated and eventually memorized the lines that the teacher spoke…

Alouette, gentille alouette,
Alouette, je te plumerai.
Je te plumerai la tête.
Et la tête!
Alouette!

“Tete” in French, means head and as the song progresses it mentions the beak, the eyes, the wings the tail and the back, with the purpose, I assume, to teach us all the names of body parts in French.

In sixty years I have never questioned the song but the other day I finally looked
up the English translation.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

First off, an “Alouette” is a Lark. Like the bird. A Lark.

“Je te plumerai” means, I am going to pluck you…. then goes on to list, I am going
to pluck your head, your beak, your eyes, your wings and your back.

If I had known that when I first learned the song at age 8, I might be a vegetarian
today. A chicken might have been one thing… but a Lark? Even a chicken. I eat a lot of chicken but I don’t want to learn how it went from clucking in the barnyard to thin sliced and on my plate.

Lord have mercy. How to traumatize an eight-year-old. Making him learn French
then tell him about plucking the feathers off songbirds.

If I had known what those words meant back then, I would be even more warped
today.