Each year at the beginning of June, French media make a lot of fuss about what we call “Le Bac”. It is roughly the equivalent of the A levels for my British readers. It is a very important French institution in the national identity.
As part of the traditional media coverage, we’ve had interviews of stressed students in the middle of their revisions. We’ve also had the usual warning against cheating, and an update of the new methods used to cheat, using smartphones (although these should be turned off, and are not supposed to be kept on you, but in your bag, by the door of the exam room). In my days, people still used tiny pieces of papers, with tiny writing that they tried to hide in their clothes, or for sciences, they would use huge calculators and put all their courses on them (the advantage of these methods was that it took so much work to prepare that at the end you knew everything anyway and didn’t need your cheat sheets). Families were also been interviewed, and some last minute revision tips were given. The same pattern will be repeated next year.
The exams started today with philosophy, and as usual, the medias have published some of the subjects, and I expect to hear some self appointed “philosophers” comment on these later today when I listen to the news. Here are a few of the subjects students could have chosen (the translation is sometimes a bit rough, apologies for that):
- Is freedom threatened by equality?
- Is man condemned to have illusions about himself?
- Does self-control depend upon self-knowledge?