[etni] France scores an F in education

From: Laura Shashua <lasha205@xxxxxxxxx>
To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 12:31:04 +0200
Every June, toward the end of the school year, a ritual takes place in
France that speaks volumes about a nation that is both passionately proud of
its education system and, at the same time, deeply worried about why it has
gone so awry. It is the publication, in most national newspapers and on
dozens of websites, of the questions posed in the philosophy paper that, by
tradition, kicks off the *baccalauréat* school-leaving exams.
In most countries, philosophy isn't a subject taught in secondary school at
all, and even where it is, it tends to be taught as a history of thought,
rather than as a discipline to be practiced and perfected. But in France,
the land of Pascal, Voltaire and Descartes, philosophy is an integral part
of the national school curriculum, and a compulsory subject for the 650,000
students ages 17 and 18 who every year sit the *bac*. The paper they must
take is no SAT-like multiple-choice exercise: the students are required to
write well-structured, clearly argued essays that refer to the ideas of past
thinkers to bolster their own case. This year's questions included, "Is it
the role of historians to judge?" "Should one forget the past in order to
construct a future?" and "Can art dispense with rules?"

At a time when nations including the U.S. and Britain have made a priority
of fixing their school systems, this French way of doing things could, in an
ideal world, be a model. Anchored at the heart of French education are two
notions that have become the mainstay demands of reformers elsewhere: the
importance of setting high educational standards through a national
curriculum and the enforcement of those standards through rigorous testing.
Indeed, as part of his Race to the Top campaign to fix failing schools, U.S.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has already persuaded more than two dozen
U.S. states to back a national curriculum for subjects including English and
math.

But if France, with its high national standards, is a model at all, it turns
out to be a severely dysfunctional one.

Read more:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2021009,00.html#ixzz116Mr3kxq

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[etni] France scores an F in education

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