I've wondered if the onerousness of lesson planning is due in part to the extremely fragmented nature of American education, where every school district formulates its own curriculum. I'd be curious to know what it's like for teachers who teach a standardized, national curriculum like France's.
I don’t know, although there are some rigidly standardized curricula in use in the US. One is in military base schools—since kids might move from virtually any school in the system to another, the curriculum has been designed so that, e.g., every Algebra I classroom covers the same material on the same day and every Freshman English class is reading the same book at the same time.
The other case is the Integrated Math curriculum which specifies lesson plans on a daily basis.
