“Saying Bonjour Doesn’t Make you French” – Why Knowing the Words Isn’t the Same as Doing the Work

Someone wrote online recently:

“People say they are trauma-informed… I can say bonjour, but that doesn’t make me French.”

It made me smile. It actually made me laugh. It’s painfully accurate.

Education is full of borrowed phrases. Trauma-informed. Restorative. Poverty-aware. Phone-free. Evidence-led. We say the words fluently. We attend the training. We add the slide to the policy. And then we, nearly always, assume understanding has followed.

The risk? Well, listening and training is not the same as understanding and culture.

You can memorise vocabulary without grasping meaning. You can follow a script without understanding the story behind it. And when that happens, well-intentioned ideas don’t just fall flat – they quietly do harm.

Being trauma-informed has become a badge of honour. A line on a website. A tick in an inspection conversation. When done well – something to be incredibly proud of. But trauma isn’t a concept you learn and then deploy when convenient. Trauma lives in the nervous system. You cannot out-policy a dysregulated brain. Yet too often, “trauma-informed” means a one-off twilight session, a list of ACEs, and a shared understanding that someone else (the ‘trauma person’) will deal with it. Behaviour policies remain unchanged. Sanctions remain rigid. Adults remain confused when the training doesn’t magically “fix” behaviour.

That’s not trauma-informed. That’s trauma-aware at best. Bonjour, not fluency.

It isn’t just trauma, either. Consider this: a school proudly announces it is “poverty aware,” then offers a 25% discount on a £2,000 skiing trip for pupils from vulnerable families. A real bargain, then! On paper, it looks generous. In reality, it shows a complete misunderstanding of poverty.

Poverty isn’t about percentages. It’s about thresholds. It’s about shame. It’s about knowing you are still hundreds of pounds short and now painfully visible as the one who almost belongs. Jonathan Haidt talks about how young people are exquisitely sensitive to status. Poverty-aware practice isn’t about gestures that make adults feel fair. It’s about decisions that protect dignity, because status is the invisible currency young people are constantly trading in. It’s about decisions that preserve dignity. Without that understanding, training becomes theatre.

Restorative practice suffers a similar fate. In theory, it is about repair, accountability, and relationships. In practice, it is often reduced to: “Say sorry.” Forced apologies are not restorative. They are performative compliance. They teach young people that emotions are irrelevant and that repair is something done to them, not with them.

True restorative work requires emotional safety, time, and trust. It requires adults who can tolerate discomfort and delay resolution. It requires beautifully crafted scripts that don’t contribute to shame or chip away at self-belief. Without that, the language of restoration becomes another tool of control – the very thing it was designed to move away from.

Many schools are now proudly “phone-free.” Again, the intention is sound. But the implementation often misses the point. Phones are not just distractions; they are carefully engineered dopamine machines. Addiction, blue light disruption, sleep deprivation, social comparison – these are health issues, not just behavioural ones. The Anxious Generation lays this out clearly. When young people don’t understand why phones are restricted, the policy becomes another arbitrary rule. When adults don’t understand the neuroscience, enforcement becomes inconsistent. Predictability disappears. Conflict rises. Rules without rationale don’t build self-regulation. They build resentment. 

Most schools have stunning teaching and learning policies. Carefully worded. Evidence-informed. Professionally designed. And yet, walk into classrooms and you’ll see ten different interpretations of the same document. Policy is not practice. Implementation is everything. As the EEF repeatedly reminds us, change is a process, not an event. Without shared understanding, coaching, and reflection, even the best policy becomes wallpaper.

Navigate exists to join these dots. Not to add another label. Not to create more “experts” in the room. But to build a shared, collective understanding that leads to genuine culture shift. We don’t treat trauma, poverty, behaviour, technology, and learning as separate initiatives. Because young people don’t experience them separately. Their nervous systems don’t compartmentalise. Their lives don’t arrive in neat categories.

Instead, we return – relentlessly – to three anchors:

• Safe relationships

• Predictable environments

• Accessible change

These are not buzzwords. They are conditions. When they exist, training sticks. Policies breathe. Practices align. When they don’t, even the best ideas collapse under pressure.

You can say bonjour all you like. But fluency takes time, immersion, and humility. Navigate isn’t here to teach the phrasebook (although, we do like a few scripts). We’re here to help systems learn the language and understand the principles – properly, collectively, and for the long term.