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 areas have left half-empty schools in the south, those of the north are jammed to overflowing. In Limoges, some lycée students sit three to a table; others have to use their knees as desks. In Rouen, classes meet on stairways, and in Le Mans, students must share a building with the local Garde Républicaine.
Progress & Poverty. Meanwhile, partly because of its paltry teacher salary scale ($85 to $420 a month), the nation faces an eventual shortage of at least 20,000 teachers. The Rennes school system spent months trying to find 35 qualified instructors in mathematics and natural history. A typical secondary school in Cherbourg spent two years looking for a physics teacher, and in 1954 Paris was short 160 science teachers. But of all of France's educational headaches, poverty is, in a sense, the least. The major problem that the ministry was facing last week: the very nature of the school system itself.
Not since the days of Napoleon has France changed its fundamental educational goals. The secondary schools are still so rigidly academic that only about one in every four children gets into them. Those who do must face the dreaded baccalauréat (bachot) exam to graduate. Many must memorize stacks of Greek and Latin verbs, know how to translate Seneca and Tacitus, analyze (in English) the works of De Quincey, Ruskin and George Eliot, be familiar with everything from the Pensées of Pascal to the characters of Corneille.
Looking Backward. Last week Minister Berthoin not only proposed that the secondary schools completely revamp their programs to take care of all French school children up to the age of 16, he also suggested that all current examinations, including the bachot, be abolished. With that, the Paris press erupted. Former Education Minister André Marie declared that despite its "injustices," the bachot should stay. Onetime Boxing Champion Georges Carpentier bluntly announced: "I am against the baccalauréat." Actor Jean-Louis Barrault said, "I adore it," but Actor Sacha Guitry, who spent six terms in one form, snorted: "Tellme, what good would the bachot have done Rodin?"