French High School Blues

...They are annoyed that attempts by some heads of faculties to group students in accordance with their abilities have met with hostility from the Ministry of Education...

...Teenagers tend to cavalierly mouth the Leftist clich...

...Education expenditures have risen from $32.7 billion in 1988 to $59.9 billion for 1991, when for the first time they will exceed the defense budget...

...A portion ofthat will help finance renovations where they are desperately needed...

...These and other grievances indicate, that, while still one of the best in the West, France's educational system is suffering from growing pains as it tries to live beyond its means...

...At present, not every Baccalaur?at is equal...

...They include, naturally, the sons and daughters of Socialist academics and politicians hostile to "selection" in the arts or humanities departments of French universities...

...Baseball bats appeared too—in the hands of teenage hooligans who raided Paris department stores under the cover of November's student demonstrations...

...Much of the increase over the past three years has gone to hire teachers and raise salaries, although so far primary schools seem to have benefited most...

...What makes the material questions acute is the Socialist government's goal of having 80 per cent of France's 18year-olds achieve the Baccalaur?at level —roughly equivalent to two or three semesters at an American college—by the year 2000...

...On the other hand, it is true that credits for physical plant improvements have not always been used as might be expected...

...That the extreme Left climbed aboard the bandwagon, with discreet help from left-wing Socialists eager to embarrass a Prime Minister they consider too moderate, came as no surprise...

...Overall, however, the mood of the pupils who took to the streets to express discontent was peaceful and constructive...

...Following massive rallies by lyc?ens on November 11, Rocard added almost $1 billion to education outlays...

...Currently they rarely number more than half a dozen in schools of up to 2,000...

...Monory, and has been adopted by Jospin...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...that their "Bac" will be little more than "a ticket for the dole queue," yet at the same time they insist that it should be their ticket to higher education...

...With approximately 50 per cent of today's 16-to-18-year-olds studying for a Baccalaur?at, against 25 per cent less than a decade ago, the system is already bursting at the seams...

...Whatever the ministry's reasoncontempt of nonscientific subjects, a wish to disguise unemployment figures by keeping youngsters of f the labor market as long as possible—such leniency has forced universities designed in the early 1970s for 8,000 students to accommodate 20,000...

...Students have asked for the creation of independent local commissions to supervise the carving-up of the educational cake...

...According to a recent opinion poll, most lyc?e and university students accept that only those with the proper Baccalaur?at should attend a science or medical department (everyone wants competent engineers and doctors...

...Nevertheless, it was pursued by his Center-Right successor, Ren...

...Given the second-rate facilities and a pay scale far below that of private industry, senior instructors fear that this will become the norm...

...Some are "academic," demanding a high degree of proficiency in both sciences and humanities in preparation for university study...

...Soon, lyc?ens in other areas were complaining about incidents ranging from drug-pushing to knife-point demands for money or Walkmen...

...But Rocard and Education Minister Lionel Jospin resented Mitterrand's meeting with student leaders, who later boasted to the press that the President agreed with "most of what we told him" and said all decisionswere"in the hands of the government...

...Chev?nement actually was echoing the cries of French businessmen for a better-educated workforce in an era of rapid technological change...

...Jospin was lucky that university students did not join ranks with the high school protesters...

...In another region, also controlled by the opposition, more was spent on schools in middle-class than in working-class districts...

...The Education Ministry, which commissioned the poll, apparently agrees, because it obliges those faculties to admit all applicants, regardless of whether they have the appropriate Baccalaur?at or strong grades in the subject they have chosen for specialization...

...Vaulx-en-Velin, a town of 40,000 on the edge of Lyons, has no lyc?e, and Nanterre, near Paris, has only one for its 90,000 inhabitants...

...The demonstrations were sparked by the rape of a girl in an overcrowded high school on the outskirts of the capital...

...Students, meanwhile, are worried about the value of their diplomas...

...This, of course, would require more staff, and Socialist Prime Minister Michel Rocard has promised additional supervisors...

...A frequent request of depressed suburbs is that schools remain open in the evenings to provide pupils living in cramped homes with a place to study...

...Lectures with 300in attendance are conducted in ampitheaters built to seat 200, and tutorial sessions intended for groups of 15 squeeze in 50 or 60...

...Many professors think he would have deserved it...

...There would no longer be any room for students like Audrey, one of this autumn's prominent young leaders: Among the best pupils in her school, she is studying for a demanding Baccalaur?at—to the pride of her mother, a charwoman who has brought up her five children alone...

...The May 1968 strike and the lesser protests in '76 and '86 were essentially university, middle-class, political movements...

...This time, the unrest began in schools attended by working-class students—many of them the children of immigrants for whom education means social advancement...

...And a cartoon in Le Monde showed President Fran?ois Mitterrand leading a march like a modern-day Pied Piper: baseball cap askew, hiphopping beside a boom-box...

...In some cases, parents, students and teachers have already tried to take matters into their own hands by spending part of their vacations repainting classrooms, rewiring obsolete electrical systems and even knocking down walls to enlarge technical workshops...

...Rocard and Jospin's aggrieved amazement at the student complaints is somewhat understandable...

...The students who met Mitterrand say they told him they wondered how the Education Ministry spent its money, and that the President replied: "So do I !" He was either joking or stabbing Rocard and Jospin in the back...

...But except for a tiny minority, they unconditionally reject "selection"—a taboo word—where humanities and the arts are concerned...

...Very quickly, though, banners were calling for "More Chairs, More Books, More Profs, More Money" and smaller classes—65 per cent now have 30 or more pupils, compared with only 5 per cent in 1980...

...An invention of the French Revolution, these schools are the highest rung of an educational system conceived as a ladder that could provide the humblest peasant boy with all the learning he needed to make it to the top...

...Parents and teachers were sympathetic: Education is a popular cause in France...

...Last year.inaregion run bythe Center-Right opposition, government subsidized private schools received more public funding than state schools...

...the rest will be used to improve safety in workshops and labs, buy more books for libraries, and set up film clubs and other extracurricular activities, particularly in poorer areas with few cultural provisions for teenagers...

...The Education Ministry has had to recruit stopgap teachers who are often underqualified...

...Curiously, not even the most radical student unions have ever challenged the selective grandes ?coles, whose stiff requirements have contributed to their prestige...

...Petitions initially sought safer conditions and a greater number of supervisors...

...Since standards are declining in certain schools, students at the grandes ?coles are increasingly coming from educated, middle-class families...

...Moreover, regional administrations responsible for the upkeep and building of schools spent $2.4 billion in 1990—one third more than in 1986...

...Those lyrics were heard often this fall in lyc?es, or French senior high schools...

...When this objective was proposed in 1985 by then Education Minister Jean-Pierre Chev?nement, it was dismissed as Leftist baloney...

...others lay greater stress on technology...

...In its bid to please everyone, it may instead be disappointing thousands...

...These schools are typically overcrowded and run-down...

...It would be tragic if, owing to ministerial lack of foresight combined with a blend of ideological hypocrisy and na?vet?, France's educational system shed its image of fairness and enlightenment and became an English-style separator that reinforced social differences by offering a minimum for the masses as it carefully educated a social ?lite...