THE CURRENT fad for teaching Chinese to secondary school pupils is not just remarkably unrealistic (even at university age, it takes a year or two of hard slogging to read and write good Mandarin, and if you do not regularly use it, it quickly grows rusty). It is also throwing up some interesting cross-cultural issues, as Chinese teachers encounter their first classrooms full of European adolescents.

The French newspaper, Le Figaro, reports this morning how three French cities are either using or preparing to use a "survival kit" for Chinese language teachers, most of whom are Chinese-born or Chinese nationals, and who are "going through Hell" as they struggle to keep order, to quote one education boss from the city of Rennes. Numbers of French pupils applying to study Chinese rose by 30% this year, and nationally 20,000 teenagers will be embarking on their first steps with putonghua this autumn.

Top piece of advice in the survival kits? Guidance on how European adolescents differ from those in Asia. "Your class will be filled with pupils of differing ability: appearing to be the best will be a source of shame to them, and they think exploring how far they can push an adult is funny," the French guide suggests.