Today is D-Day for over 500 000 high school students, candidates for the Baccalaureat exam in France, the rite of passage affectionately called "le bac" which takes place over the next week or so. For several days , the TV news has been counting down. We've seen interviews with candidates (some stressed out, some not), with encouraging fathers of candidates, with helpful mothers who say they are preparing nourishing meals and trying to keep the household calm, with younger sisters rolling their eyes and saying how they have to be quiet so that "monsieur" can study, with doctors and teachers giving advice on how to best prepare yourself physically and mentally for the ordeal.This is more than your run-of-the-mill final exam. Yesterday's big news was the revelation that on Friday three young people from a Parisian suburb had tried to break into their high school to steal the keys to the room where the exam papers were being kept. They had been caught by the security person who lives on school premises and knew them. An interview with the Assistant Principal reassured us that it would have been impossible for the boys to reach their objective. Not only was the key to the reinforced steel door of the store room with her at all times but the exam papers were kept in a safe inside this room. There is good reason for all this. The "bac" is a national exam -- all candidates in France take the same exam at the same time on the same day. If someone in one school gets hold of the papers beforehand , questions are changed for all schools in the country so that no one has an unfair advantage.
The opening salvo of the exam is the most feared and the most respected -- all candidates have a four hour philosophy exam ( "le bac philo" ) on the first morning of exam week. As well as testing their stamina, this exam tests other qualities dear to the French -- the ability to analyse a question, summon arguments and quotes from philosophers to defend your point of view and express the whole with rigor and method in elegant language.
At 12:05 on this day, all over France, cell phones ring and anxious parents ask the important question: "What was the subject?" After reassuring themselves that all is well or cheering up the anxious candidate, the parents rush to lunch and impart the news to waiting colleagues . And for those who do not know anyone taking the bac in a given year, the lunchtime radio and television news always opens with this important information. Shortly after 1 p.m. the entire country knows and discussions are launched on the internet, in the media and in cafés and restaurants all over France.
I don't want you to feel left out so here are the subjects, translated especially for your benefit.
Note: the general "bac" is divided into three branches -- science, economy and social sciences and literature. Each set of candidates gets their own questions.
This year the science students chose between
- Is it absurd to desire the impossible? or
- Are there questions that science can't answer? or
- Commenting a text from Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" on how you can interest citizens in democracy.
The economics students reflected on
- What do we gain by exchanging? or
- Does technical development change mankind? or
- a text from Locke claiming that moral values are not innate but adopted because they are pragmatic.
And, finally, the literary students expressed themselves as deeply and elegantly as they could on
- Does language betray thought? or
- Does the objectivity of history depend on the impartiality of the historian? or
- a passage from Schopenhauer on the relationship between desire as deprivation and the satisfaction of desire.
You've got to love a country where, in the midst of an economic crisis and an explosive situation in Iran, the noon news opens with a ten minute segment on these larger and more universal issues.
Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for me to pour myself a glass of rosé and reflect.
