Category: French Society

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?

Esther was told today that in one of the classes in Jean-Baptiste’s school, out of 26 children, 13 are from divorced families. Let’s pray.

There are many differences between the French school system and the British one. Here is one.
In Cardiff, we were always told when the children were going to do something with food, and eat something. We were asked to let the school know if we didn’t want our child to eat this type of food. No such thing in France. Jean-Baptiste has had different cakes, they’ve even baked at school. But we’ve never been asked before hand whether he was allowed to. I suppose it would be our responsibility to let them know at the beginning of the year that he had any food allergies. But also, the school system being thoroughly secular, they wouldn’t asked if you have any special diet on the ground of religion, since religion is completely excluded from the school system.

The law was voted by the Senators at the end of last week, and should be definitely accepted today by the parliament. A lot of unions are still angry, but people are slowly going back to work. The strikes do not do the headlines anymore, are are gradually moving to the background.

There is still a day of demonstrations tomorrow, and another one on 6th November. We’ll see then if the Unions can still gather people around them. In my opinion, everything will slowly get back to normal in the coming weeks, until next time.