Education: Allons, Enfants . . .

With monotonous regularity, the French Ministry of Education has boldly announced that something must be done. And with monotonous regularity its sweeping suggestions for reforming the nation's creaking educational system have bogged down somewhere in the National Assembly. Last week Minister Jean Berthoin decided to try again. To some Frenchmen, he seemed to be after nothing less than another French Revolution.

In view of the condition of the schools, a revolution may well be in order. In 1952, France found it would need at least 29,000 new classrooms, but only about 5,000 have so far been built. While migrations from the rural...

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