Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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168

economy

The French economy was radically transformed

after World War II. Economic stagnation in the

1930s, caused in part by the conservative atti-

tudes of businessmen and bankers, had resulted

in France lagging behind its nearest neighbours

in 1945 in terms of its degree of industrializa-

tion and modernization. A large proportion of

the population still worked in agriculture (us-

ing very outdated farming methods), and small

businesses, which were equally unproductive,

proliferated. The traditional image of France

was thus of a rural France profonde (depths of

France) dominated by artisans, small shopkeep-

ers and the peasantry. The economic history of

France in the latter half of the twentieth cen-

tury is thus, on the one hand, a tale of how

state intervention helped to turn the economy

around to make the country one of the top five

industrial nations of the world, but on the other

hand, the story of how the state was to become

the scapegoat for the country’s economic ills as

the ideology of economic liberalism took hold

in France.

After World War II, France’s first priority

was to develop its backward economy by

modernizing agriculture in order to liberate

the agricultural workforce for labour in the

factories which themselves were to be made

more productive and more efficient. This task

was not left up to the market, however, which

had come to be despised after the Great De-

pression. Instead, a consensus existed in the

country around the idea that it was the re-

sponsibility of the state to plan economic de-

velopment and to assist industrialists. It was

at this time that institutions such as the Com-

missariat Général du Plan were set up. The

1950s and 1960s were therefore set to become

the heyday of French state intervention in and

protection of the economy, or dirigisme. In-

deed, the years 1945 to 1974 are known as

the Trente Glorieuses because economic

growth rates were so spectacular during this

period and social and economic change so

dramatic. Equally, increases in real wages were

significant and the living standard of the popu-

lation rose accordingly. After the 1950s, in-

dustrialization and urbanization gathered

momentum and consumption patterns altered.

The consumer society was born. However, the

extent to which state intervention brought

about this situation is a debatable issue: some

argue that similar levels of economic growth

would have occurred even without so much

state intervention because France’s economic

success was based on technological progress

and a favourable international environment in

which raw materials were cheap and competi-

tion was not as yet coming from the newly

industrializing countries of the Pacific Rim.

All good things come to an end, however,

and this spectacular success also came to a fal-

tering halt. The first signs that all was not well

came in May 1968. The strikes and demon-

strations which took place during that month,

especially among the younger generation, were

an expression of the fact that French social

structures had not kept pace with economic

169

change. Nevertheless, the social discontent

manifested in 1968 was soon to be overshad-

owed by the economic troubles which were to

hit the country in 1974, when the first oil cri-

sis heralded a profound and irreversible change

in the international economic climate. The

immediate effect of the oil crisis was to send

French energy prices soaring because of the

dependence of the country on imported energy

sources. However, in the longer term, the oil

crisis led to an increase in the price of raw

materials as developing countries and

excolonies, particularly those with rich reserves

of raw materials, saw that they could exert

economic power over their former masters.

This rise in the price of raw materials coin-

cided with countries in new areas of the world,

such as southeast Asia, beginning to industri-

alize and challenge countries such as France in

traditional industrial sectors: heavy industry,

shipbuilding and textiles, for instance.

It was in the wake of the first oil crisis that

the role of the state in assisting and subsidiz-

ing the French economy began to be called into

question. The 1974 oil crisis caused recession,

but the high cost of energy caused inflation

and hence the entirely new phenomenon of

‘stagflation’. Raymond Barre, who became

prime minister in 1976, was one of the first to

suggest that state intervention might actually

harm the French economy. He declared that

one of France’s principal economic problems

was that industry had been too heavily subsi-

dized and protected by the state and, like a

spoilt child, it had become lazy and uncom-

petitive. Therefore, he proposed that state aid

for industry should be limited to those ‘sun-

rise’ companies which would constitute

France’s future, and ‘lame duck’ industries

should go to the wall. Equally, Barre was of

the opinion that lax monetary policy in the

past had made French industry complacent. If

costs in France rose too much and made French

goods internationally uncompetitive, then the

currency would be devalued in order to make

them competitive again. Barre, along with

Giscard d’Estaing, was one of the authors of

the European Monetary System, designed to

impose a degree of monetary discipline on

France and force it to be cost-competitive with

its nearest neighbours and rivals. Thus, it was

in the late 1970s that France had its first (al-

beit limited) taste of economic liberalism.

However, the second oil shock hit in 1979

and the ensuing recession disrupted Barre’s

plans. Unemployment rose steadily, reaching

over 1.5 million by the presidential elections

in 1981 which the Socialist François

Mitterrand won. In office, the Socialists, aided

by the Communists, set about introducing a

radical Socialist alternative to Barre’s strategy,

swimming against the tide of liberalism which

was sweeping across America and Britain. The

Socialists were elected on a programme based

on la rupture avec le capitalisme; that is, a

complete break with the capitalist system. To

this end, they introduced a sweeping round of

nationalizations of the banking sector and the

largest industrial groups. The Socialists be-

lieved that Barre was wrong to let whole sec-

tions of French industry disappear and that it

was necessary to make France industrially self-

sufficient again. They also spent vast amounts

of money on job creation. For a year, their

plan worked, in the sense that French unem-

ployment stabilized while in competitor coun-

tries the rate was increasing dramatically.

None the less, as the recession continued, the

Socialists found themselves in an untenable po-

sition since the cost of their policies far out-

stripped the state’s ability to pay. Particularly

because of constraints imposed by Europe, the

Socialists were forced to abandon their original

policies. Mitterrand turned his back on la rup-

ture avec le capitalisme and instead began to

work towards putting France at the centre of a

more integrated European Community. Thus,

by 1984 the country was back on the road to-

wards economic liberalism and the reduction

of state intervention. Between 1984 and 1986,

the Socialists reduced public spending and, al-

though not going so far as to privatize any of

the nationalized industries, public sector com-

panies were instructed to behave as if they were

in the private sector. Privatizations had to wait

until Jacques Chirac took over as prime minis-

ter in 1986. Influenced by the policies of Reagan

in the United States and Thatcher in Britain,

economy

170

Chirac set about a major programme of

privatizations. He proclaimed the virtues of a

less interventionist but more efficiently run state,

and his programme stressed the need to dena-

tionalize the banks, privatize nationalized com-

panies, deregulate prices, create more flexibil-

ity among the workforce and limit public ex-

penditure so as to be able to reduce taxation

and provide more incentive for entrepreneurs.

By 1988, the French had experienced both

a radical left-wing and a radical right-wing

government within the space of seven years.

Nevertheless, it appeared to the general public

that neither experiment had had the desired

effect—namely, to reduce unemployment and

increase standards of living. In the presiden-

tial elections of that year, Mitterrand put him-

self forward as the candidate of compromise,

promising neither to renationalize recently pri-

vatized industries, nor to pursue further

privatizations. This won him the election.

However, the Socialist government of 1988 to

1993 was never popular with the electorate,

even though from 1989 to 1991 the French

economy grew well and unemployment fell

before going into the recession sparked off by

the Gulf war. Ironically, this was because the

Socialist government applied strict monetary

policies to the country, keeping wages down

and avoiding a credit boom in order check in-

flation. This was proof indeed that the Social-

ists had learned the lessons of liberalism. How-

ever, it also meant that the electorate did not

benefit from the fruits of economic growth to

the extent which they might have done.

It is apparent, therefore, that by the end of

the century France had transformed its economy,

not only in terms of modernization, but also in

terms of the role that the state plays in the work-

ings of the economy. This is no longer a question

of ideology, since right-wing and left-wing par-

ties alike propose strikingly similar policies, all

of which advocate an acceptance of the rules of

the capitalist market and a limitation of the pow-

ers of the state. The concern on both sides of the

political divide, however, is that France might be

in the grip of a process of deindustrialization and

might slip eventually into the second rank of in-

dustrial nations.

JAN WINDEBANK

See also: employment; European Union; na-

tionalization and privatization

Further reading

Flockton, C. and Kofman, E. (1989) France,

London: Paul Chapman (an account of

French economic and social development

from a geographical perspective).

Holmes, G. and Fawcett, C. (1983) The Con-

temporary French Economy, Basingstoke:

Macmillan (an overview of French eco-

nomic development from 1945 to the early

1980s; includes text in French).

Jeanneney, J.-M. (1989) L’Économie française

depuis 1967, Paris: Éditions du Seuil (a dis-

cussion of the forces influencing French eco-

nomic development since the late 1960s).

Szarka, J. (1992) Business in France: An In-

troduction to the Economic and Social Con-

text, London: Pitman (an overview of the

French business environment of the late

1980s ).

écriture féminine

The term écriture féminine describes a mode of

writing which is deemed to overcome women’s

alienation from/in the order of language, and

to give voice to repressed feminine difference.

The concept came to the fore in the 1970s.

Since the 1970s, a number of French femi-

nists have denounced the gender bias they per-

ceive to exist within language, and have argued

that the patriarchal, male-centred nature of the

linguistic realm militates against symbolic self-

definition by and for women. Elements of their

argumentation recall the complex psychoana-

lytic writings of Jacques Lacan. Lacan suggests

that women, by virtue of their different, uncon-

scious relation to the phallus, enjoy a problem-

atic and alienated relationship with the order

of language, also described more broadly as the

Symbolic Order. French feminist theorists such

écriture féminine

171

as Luce Irigaray (a psychoanalyst, linguistician

and philosopher) and Hélène Cixous (an aca-

demic and creative writer), both of whom ad-

dress the issue of women’s relation to language

and discourse, are certainly indebted to

Lacanian theory. However, unlike Lacan, nei-

ther woman believes the exclusion of the femi-

nine by and in the linguistic domain to be irre-

mediable. Both have produced texts in which

they indicate that there may in fact be linguistic

and writing practices which allow its articula-

tion—see Irigaray’s This Sex Which is Not One

(Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un) of 1977, and

Cixous’s The Newly Born Woman (La Jeune

Née) from 1975. Consequently, both women

have been associated with the related notions

of écriture féminine and parler femme, although

neither uses these terms extensively in her own

theoretical writings.

Before the precise nature of ‘feminine’ lin-

guistic practices can be explored, it is useful

to establish why Irigaray and Cixous were

ready to claim in the 1970s that women are

excluded and banished by the patriarchal lin-

guistic order. Irigaray’s broad-ranging discus-

sions of linguistic issues address language in

its everyday, communicative mode, as well as

more particularized forms of language and

discourse. One of her more accessible argu-

ments (Irigaray 1987) is that all of those lan-

guage systems which, like French, involve

grammatical genderization are somehow in-

trinsically ‘sexist’. This is because the feminine

gender is consistently associated within them

with nouns connoting inferiority/‘otherness’,

while nouns connoting superiority are

gendered masculine. Moreover (in French, at

least), seemingly ‘neutral’ expressions—il

pleut, for instance—in fact privilege the mas-

culine. In her more speculative, abstract writ-

ings, Irigaray denounces the phallic/masculine

bias present specifically within the language

of rational, philosophical thought (which she

views as occupying a key place within West-

ern culture). She considers this form of lan-

guage to be underpinned by certain, central

‘male’ principles; principles such as linearity

and non-contradiction. She suggests that these

principles, because they exclude ambivalence

and ensure that meaning remains single and

stable, may be symbolically equated with

‘monolithic’, masculine sexuality rather than

with women’s libidinal organization—which

she theorizes as plural and multiple. She ar-

gues that rational, philosophical discourse re-

lies on a goal-oriented syntactical model (sub-

ject-verb-object) which is alien to women, be-

cause ‘female sexuality is not unifiable, it can-

not be subsumed under the concept of sub-

ject—which brings into question all the syn-

tactical norms’ (Irigaray 1977b). Cixous

analyses philosophical discourse and the sec-

ondary discourses it has engendered—includ-

ing literary discourse—in a comparable way.

She considers these signifying systems to be

governed by an either/or logic and by a sys-

tem of hierarchized binary oppositions (activ-

ity/passivity, black/white, nature/culture, etc.),

which can be traced back always to the un-

equal couple man/woman and to the inequali-

ties of the patriarchal value system. This argu-

ment is advanced in an early section of her

highly influential 1975 essay, La Jeune Née.

According to Irigaray, the ‘reinscription’ of

the repressed feminine within the masculine

Symbolic, linguistic order necessitates a radical

linguistic project, a travail du langage. On the

one hand, women must mount an assault on

the representations of femininity which mascu-

line discourse offers them. This assault must take

the form of an ironic ‘rewriting’ of such repre-

sentations. The parodic, ‘mimetic’ strategy she

envisions will, she argues, reveal (potentially) a

‘feminine’ operation within language (Irigaray

1977a). Furthermore, women must evolve a new

kind of writing practice aimed at disrupting the

‘phallicity’ of (rational) discourse. The disrup-

tion Irigaray recommends rests upon a modifi-

cation of structural and stylistic discursive fea-

tures. If ‘male’ language is characterized by a

linear, logical syntactical organization, then, says

Irigaray, a feminine linguistic mode, a langage

autre, must be one whose style and structure

allows fixed significations to be subverted. The

language she has in mind would ‘undo the

unique meaning of words, of nouns, which still

regulates all discourse’ and ‘would have noth-

ing to do with the syntax we have used for

écriture féminine

172

centuries’ (Irigaray 1977b). Its plurality and

multivalence, since they stand in a metaphori-

cal relation to the non-unified form of wom-

en’s genital anatomy and to the decentred, mul-

tiple nature of female pleasure, may be consid-

ered to be ‘vulvomorphic’, i.e. to bear the ‘mark’

of the female body. It is important to note that

Irigaray’s vision of ‘vulvomorphic’ discourse is

not based on the concept of a linguistic mode

that would ‘speak’ the female body directly. Such

discourse, for Irigaray, is not in any way pre-

destined by anatomy. It constitutes, rather, ‘a

symbolic interpretation of that anatomy’ (Gal-

lop 1983).

In her explorations of language, Cixous

concurs that the creation of explosive modes

of discourse represents the means by which the

feminine can be (re)born into/from within the

phallocentric Symbolic Order. She argues in

parts of La Jeune Née that the type of language

she envisions—a language whose refusal to

repress feminine difference marks it out as ‘bi-

sexual’—need not necessarily be the province

of women alone. Male writers such as Jean

Genet, she claims, are capable of producing

texts in which the feminine is decipherable.

However, in other sections of her study she

seems to reverse her position and to move into

‘essentialist’ mode. She implies that women are

in fact far more likely to produce the kind of

discourse in question. This is because, unlike

men, they are psychically more open to bisexu-

ality. She suggests, moreover—far more em-

phatically than Irigaray may be taken to do—

that a direct link can and does exist between

the female body and libido and the pluralistic

écriture which she recommends (Cixous 1975).

Cixous’s vision of feminine language/writing

is summarized comprehensively in her essay

The Laugh of the Medusa’. In spite of her claim

that it is impossible to define a feminine mode

of writing, because such writing eludes the dis-

cursive and conceptual limits of the patriar-

chal system, she outlines in this essay certain

of its key characteristics. These are:

• its poetic quality;

• its open-ended heterogeneity;

• its connection with orality and with the

voice (specifically the voice of the archaic

Mother); and

• its function as a space of decensorization,

in and via which woman can access her

(forbidden) sexuality and unconscious.

In summary, both Irigaray and Cixous privi-

lege forms of language characterized by ambi-

guity, polyvalence and poetic quality. Both

women relate these ‘feminine’ linguistic and

discursive forms, however symbolically, to the

sexuality and anatomy of the female subject.

This latter connection is not without its prob-

lems. As a result of it, both theorists have been

accused of biologistic essentialism; that is, of

endeavouring (dangerously) to ghettoize

women within their bodies and within their

(biological) ‘natures’. Materialist, socialist

feminists—those belonging to the Questions

féministes group, for example—were particu-

larly keen in the 1970s to level accusations of

this type. The discussions of language and dis-

course produced by Irigaray and Cixous may

also be considered to be elitist and overly ab-

stract. This is in part because they are the prod-

uct of an intellectual training and context

which is alien to many readers. Further, they

seem in their evocations of ‘womanspeak’ to

take no account of (racial, cultural, social) dif-

ferences between women, and of the way in

which these differences can or might affect lin-

guistic practice. Finally, and most pertinently

perhaps, Cixous’s and Irigaray’s notions of

what, in formal, stylistic and syntactical terms,

constitutes ‘the feminine’ may be viewed as

wholly arbitrary. None the less, their writings

on language have proved highly influential.

These writings have been exploited not least

by contemporary feminist literary critics—es-

pecially Anglo-American critics—eager to scru-

tinize women’s creative productions for evi-

dence of sexual/textual ‘difference’.

French women authors who, rightly or

wrongly, have been associated by critics with

the practice of écriture féminine include

Chantal Chawaf, Marguerite Duras, Jeanne

Hyvrard, Marie Redonnet and Monique

Wittig. In the writings of these authors, issues

such as feminine sexuality and desire and the

écriture féminine

173

female body play a key role. All of them,

moreover, have developed unusual, formally

innovative, textual and narrative strategies. In

the work of Chawaf—see, for instance, Le

Soleil et la terre (Sun and Earth) from 1977—

we find a sustained focus on the link between

bodily experience and language, and a struc-

turing of sentences which privileges the fluid,

the convoluted and the mellifluous over the

rational, the ordered, the univocal. In the writ-

ings of Marguerite Duras—notably Moderate

Cantabile (1958) and 1964’s Le Ravissement

de Lol V Stein (The Ravishing of Lol V Stein)—

‘blanks’, ‘silences’ and the non-dit (the unsaid)

disrupt narrative coherence and flow, creating

an elliptical, illogical narrating mode. Monique

Wittig’s avowed textual project is to create a

‘political’, anti-patriarchal language, rather

than a gender-specific ‘women’s writing’. How-

ever, her Les Guérillères (1969) and The Les-

bian Body (Le Corps lesbien) from 1973 have

been taken (by virtue of their accounts of new

relations between women and between the

sexes, and their startlingly experimental nature)

to represent key examples of écriture féminine.

If French women writers of the 1970s and

early 1980s engaged upon avant-garde textual

practices which echoed and exemplified the

notion of a poetics of the feminine, in more

recent times, French écrivaines appear to be

effecting a return to more conventional, real-

ist narrative modes.

ALEX HUGHES

See also: Kristeva, Julia; feminism; feminist press;

feminist thought; women’s/lesbian writing

Further reading

Cixous, H. (in collaboration with C.Clément)

(1975) La Jeune Née, Paris: Union

Générale d’Éditions. Translated B.Wing

(1986) The Newly Born Woman, Manches-

ter: Manchester University Press.

——(1976) ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, Signs

1–4. Translated in I.de Courtivron and E.

Marks (eds) (1981) New French

Feminisms, Brighton: Harvester Press.

de Courtivron, I. and Marks, E. (eds) (1981)

New French Feminisms, Brighton: Harvester

Press (a selection of a variety of French femi-

nist texts, translated into English; an invalu-

able introduction to French feminism).

Gallop, J. (1983) ‘Quand nos lèvres s’écrivent:

Irigaray’s Body Politic’, Romanic Review

74. Reprinted 1988 Thinking through the

Body, New York: Columbia University

Press (an interesting account of the role of

the body in Irigarayan thought, which as-

sumes a certain theoretical sophistication

on the part of the reader).

Irigaray, L. (1977a) Ce Sexe qui n’en est pas

un, Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Translated

C. Porter with C.Burke (1985) This Sex

Which is Not One, Ithaca: Cornell Univer-

sity Press.

——(1977b) ‘Women’s Exile’ (interview with

Couze Venn), Ideology and Consciousness 1.

——(1987) Le Sexe linguistique, special issue

of Langage 85.

Jones, A.R. (1986) ‘Writing the Body: To-

wards an Understanding of écriture

féminine’, in E. Showalter (ed.) The New

Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Lit-

erature and Theory, London: Virago (an

excellent introduction to theories of femi-

nine writing).

Mitchell, J. and Rose, J. (eds) (1982) Feminine

Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the École

Freudienne, Basingstoke and London:

Macmillan (translation of Lacan’s essays on

feminine sexuality, prefaced by two illumi-

nating introductory essays glossing Freud-

ian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory).

Moi, T. (1985) Sexual/Textual Politics, Lon-

don: Methuen (a sophisticated but accessi-

ble comparative account of Anglo-Saxon

and French feminist theory).

Schiach, M. (1991) Hélène Cixous: A Politics

of Writing, London: Routledge (essential

reading for students of Cixous’s work).

Sellars, S. (1991) Writing and Sexual Differ-

ence, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan

(a broad-ranging introduction to post-1968

French women’s writing and its preoccu-

pations, set in the conceptual context of

French feminist theory and its influences).

écriture féminine

174

education ministry

The central and regional services of the edu-

cation ministry form the backbone of the pub-

lic education service. They devise policy, and

then supervise and monitor all operations

within this heavily centralized system. The

ministry is also a major force within French

economic life, as one out of every eighteen

members of the working population is em-

ployed by it (three out of four of whom are

teachers). All full-time teachers in state insti-

tutions in France are civil servants.

Established in its present headquarters in

the rue de Grenelle in 1860 as the Ministère

de l’Instruction Publique, the ministry has

been reorganized many times since, and its

precise function has been redefined. It became

the Ministère de l’Éducation and acquired its

proud ‘National’ epithet in 1932. The govern-

ment appointed in May 1995 added responsi-

bility for the transition from classroom to

workplace, in its full title of Ministère de

l’Éducation Nationale, de l’Enseignement

Supérieur, de la Recherche, et de l’Insertion

Professionnelle. In this case, the minister him-

self is flanked by three secretaries of state: one

for schools, one for higher education and one

for research. Rue de Grenelle (as it is gener-

ally known), assisted by its national advisory

bodies, is responsible for national policy with

regard to curriculum design, school organiza-

tion, examinations and awards, and educa-

tional development, and also for the recruit-

ment, appointment, promotion and remunera-

tion of teaching and other staff in state schools

and universities. In addition, a network of de-

centralized subsidiary departments oversees

the application of national policy at local level.

In each of the twenty-eight académies (edu-

cational subdivisions) of France and her over-

seas départements, the minister is represented

by the recteur and his staff, and by the two

regional inspectorates, which together have

local administrative responsibility for: super-

vising national examinations and awards, as-

sessing the performance of schools and stand-

ards of teaching, monitoring the implementa-

tion of national policy, encouraging innova-

tion, and dealing with staff counselling, pro-

motion, development and training.

In the early 1980s, decentralization poli-

cies resulted in duties traditionally discharged

by the ministry being devolved upon local gov-

ernment. The regions acquired responsibility

for future planning, building and maintenance

of the lycées (senior high schools), while the

départements were given similar powers with

regard to the collèges (junior high schools). In

each case, however, the ministry remained re-

sponsible for the allocation of teaching posts

and for staff remuneration. In addition, it con-

tinues to exercise control of higher education

through the pluri-annual contracts it signs

with universities, together with scrutiny of

their senior staff appointments, and through

the sanctioning of the diplomas awarded by

the grandes écoles.

RON HALLMARK

See also: educational elitism: the grandes

écoles; education, secondary: collèges, lycées,

etc.

Further reading

Auduc, J.-L. and Bayard-Pierlot, J. (1995) Le

Système éducatif français, 4th edition,

Créteil: Centre Regional de Documentation

Pédagogique (a succinct, but comprehen-

sive account of the system; a revised edi-

tion is published every year).

Durand-Prinborgne, C. (1994) L’Éducation

nationale, une culture, un service, un

système , 2nd edition, Paris: Nathan (a well-

informed discussion of the presiding phi-

losophy, and of the organization in context).

education, primary

Schooling in France is compulsory from 6 to

16 years of age. Elementary schools teach chil-

dren aged from 6 to 11. However, primary

education in France cannot be discussed

education ministry

175

without consideration of the wholesale nurs-

ery provision, which, though optional, in-

volved some 80 per cent of 2- to 5-year-olds

in 1995 (35 per cent of 2-year-olds, and over

99 per cent of those 3 and over). Nursery

classes are formally programmed into the

planning of the initial educational process.

Schooling from 2 to 11 is organized into

three successive periods (cycles), in principle

by age groups. The first period consists of the

nursery classes for the petits (the infants, aged

2 to 4), the moyens (intermediates, aged 4 to

5) and the grands (the seniors, aged 5 to 6).

The second period encompasses the first three

years of elementary school, defined as the

cours préparatoire (CP), the preparatory year,

for 6- to 7-year-olds, and the cours élémentaire

1ère et 2ème années (CE 1 and 2—elementary

years one and two, for 7- to 8- and 8- to 9-

year-olds, respectively). The last two years of

elementary school, called the cours moyen,

1ère et 2ème années (CM 1 and 2—intermedi-

ate years one and two, for 9- to 10- and 10- to

11-year-olds), constitute the third period. The

boundaries between periods are not, however,

rigid. There is an overlap between the top class

of nursery education (section grande) and the

first year of the elementary school (cours

préparatoire), to ensure continuity and facili-

tate integration; and, to take account of dif-

ferent rates of development and individual

learning capacities, it is possible to complete

each cycle in two or three years.

No set syllabus is laid down for nursery

education, but its aims are said to be ‘to help

the child to develop and become active; to ar-

rive at an awareness of the outside world, and

to relate to and communicate with others’.

Methods are based upon play—whether or-

ganized or independent—and a gradual intro-

duction to the three Rs. The second and third

cycles are designed to ‘ensure a grasp of the

skills basic to all learning (oral communica-

tion, reading and arithmetic) as well as the

development of the child’s intellect, sensitivi-

ties, physical potential and and manual dex-

terity’. They must also introduce the child to

fine arts and music.

The curriculum to be followed in pursuit of

these aims is laid down centrally by the educa-

tion ministry. In terms of the circular of March

1995, which defines the second period as the

cycle des apprentissages fondamentaux (period

for learning the basics), the following weekly

hourage is prescribed: nine hours of French, 5

hours of mathematics, 4 hours devoted to ‘ex-

ploration of the world’ and civics, 6 hours of

PE, sport and art, and 2 hours of directed work

(conceived as an opportunity for the teacher

to help pupils develop independent work hab-

its). The ‘directed work’ is to take place in half-

hour sessions at the end of each full school

day. The curriculum for the third period, the

cycle des approfondissements (period of more

advanced learning) is similar, but adds an ad-

ditional half-hour of mathematics instead of

half an hour of PE, sport or art. With effect

from 1995, modern foreign languages were

introduced into the elementary school curricu-

lum: one hour of French per week in CE 2 and

one and a half-hours maximum in CM 1 and

2 were to be sacrificed to this end. Begun on a

voluntary basis for the first year, this teaching

is designed to be extended to all schools as

training and resources permit.

The balance and design of the school week

(26 hours, spread typically over 9 half-days)

and of the school year remain a matter of de-

bate. The subject was raised again by the re-

port of the Fauroux Committee on education

in June 1996. In 1992, when the teaching week

was reduced from 27 hours, the same annual

total of classroom time (972 hours) was main-

tained by adding extra days to the academic

year. In 1995–6, three experiments with dif-

ferent weekly patterns of primary education

were being conducted in different areas of the

country.

Since the early nineteenth century, primary

education has been the responsibility of the

commune and its local council. In this respect,

the decentralization legislation of the 1980s

meant little change to the status quo. It is the

duty of the local authorities at that level to

provide and maintain state schools and sup-

port facilities (such as school canteens), and

also to engage and pay maintenance staff, or

such auxiliary classroom staff as may be

education, primary

176

required to help with the younger children

(Agents Spécialisés des Écoles Maternelles or

ASEM). For its part, the state, via the educa-

tion ministry, appoints and pays the teaching

staff. The latter are no longer trained in the

Écoles Normales that were set up, on the ba-

sis of one per département, by the Guizot law

(1833), and fulfilled this function until the late

1980s. As from 1990, teachers in state schools

are mainly the products of the Instituts

Universitaires de Formation des Maîtres. Re-

cruitment to these is selective, and candidates

must have obtained the licence or equivalent

before entry. In the course of their studies

there, during which they may be paid, intend-

ing teachers prepare for and sit the competi-

tive examination for the Certificat d’Aptitude

au Professorat des Écoles, as well as spending

periods on observation and teaching practice

in schools.

Declining numbers of pupils in elementary

schools from the 1960s to the 1990s, together

with population loss in country areas, have

had both good effects and bad. On the one

hand there has been a reduction in average

class sizes in state elementary schools from 30

in 1960 to 22 in 1995; on the other, it has

meant the threat of school closures, and the

creation of inter-commune groups in rural ar-

eas to protect and run a local school.

To complete the picture, mention should be

made of the distinctive provision made since

the 1980s to cater for groups with special

learning difficulties, whether the handicapped,

taught in small groups in the classes de

perfectionnement attached to some elementary

schools, or the non-francophone children of

recent immigrants, for whom were devised the

beginners’ classes—classes d’initiation

(CLIN)—within the context of the special cen-

tres set up to this end (Centres d’Études pour

la Formation et l’Information sur la

Scolarisation des Enfants de Migrants or

CEFISEM).

RON HALLMARK

See also: education, the state and the church;

education, secondary

Further reading

Auduc, J.-L. and Bayard-Pierlot, J. (1995) Le

Système éducatif français, 4th edition,

Créteil: Centre Regional de Documentation

Pédagogique (an official account of the sys-

tem, incorporating the most recent changes;

a revised edition is published each year).

Vasconcellos, M. (1993) Le Système éducatif,

Paris: Éditions La Découverte (a more sys-

tematic critique with historical perspective).

education, secondary: collèges,

lycées, etc.

After completing primary education, pupils at-

tend a junior high school (collège) from the age

of 11 to 15 or so, and then choose to pursue

further study in a senior high school (lycée), or

to enter the world of work via, for instance, an

apprenticeship training centre (centre de forma-

tion de l’apprentissage). For their own part,

lycées are of two kinds: general and technologi-

cal, which offer a three-year course leading to

the general and technological baccalauréats; and

professional which, in addition to preparing

pupils for the professional baccalauréat, pro-

vide courses leading to a range of more practi-

cal, work-orientated qualifications.

Until 1995, the four years of junior high

school study (known as classes 6, 5, 4 and 3

respectively) were divided into two periods

(cycles): classes 6 and 5 formed the observa-

tion period (cycle d’observation), while classes

4 and 3 were known as the period of career

and study choice (cycle d’orientation). In all

four years, pupils followed a curriculum de-

termined nationally, consisting of French,

mathematics, a first modern language, history

and geography, civics, life and earth sciences,

technology, music, and physical education.

Physical sciences and a second foreign lan-

guage were added in classes 4 and 3, together

with a choice of options from Latin, Greek,

extra technology or extra modern language

teaching.

education, secondary: collèges, lycées, etc.

177

However, the 1990s are witnessing a major

reform of the collèges. A pilot scheme to this

effect was launched in 1994–5 in 368 schools

across the country, and all other institutions

were to follow suit in 1995–6. On this basis

the progressive renewal of the four-year cycle

will be complete in 1998–9.

The aims are to make the curriculum more

flexible and more responsive to individual

needs, and to provide appropriate extra teach-

ing support for pupils in difficulty, thereby

keeping pupils in the mainstream of the sys-

tem as long as possible. To this end, the two

cycles are transformed into three: class 6 be-

comes the observation period, with special ar-

rangements for remedial teaching for pupils

in difficulty, and a focus on the consolidation

of basic skills and knowledge; classes 5 and 4

are henceforth the period of more developed

learning (cycle d’approfondissement), where

a more flexible timetable will enable greater

individual choice; and class 3 becomes the

period of career and study guidance (cycle

d’orientation), where resources will be put into

a major counselling and information effort.

The redefinition of the cycles involves a delay

in the timing of crucial decisions on a pupil’s

progress (proceed, repeat the year, choice of

study/career path, such as via the ‘general’

stream in the lycée, or the less highly rated

technological stream, or professional studies).

A diploma (the brevet des collèges) marks

the successful completion of junior high school

studies. It is awarded on the basis of marks

gained in classes 4 and 3, together with writ-

ten examinations in French, maths and his-

tory/geography.

Pupils able and willing to continue their

studies in a general and technological high

school (lycée général et technologique) do so

with the aim of achieving the broad-based di-

ploma awarded at the end of three years of

further study, the baccalauréat. This aims to

provide a good general education, as well as

to enable successful candidates to embark upon

higher education. An initial year (known as

seconde) based upon common core subjects,

to which are added options chosen by the stu-

dent, is the prelude to increasing specializa-

tion over a further two years (première and

terminale) in terms of one of the three general

subject categories (literary studies, economics

and social studies, and science) or four defined

technological areas (industrial science and tech-

nology, laboratory science and technology,

medical sciences, tertiary-sector science and

technology). The curriculum remains broadly

based throughout, however: even in terminale,

a specialist in mechanical engineering (within

the general area of industrial science and tech-

nology) must cope with maths, history/geog-

raphy, a foreign language, philosophy, and

physical education, in addition to his or her

chosen specialism.

The lycée professionnel (formerly, lycée

d’enseignement professionnel and, before that,

collège d’enseignement technique) is open

mainly to students from class 3 of the collèges

who wish, or have been advised or directed,

to seek practical qualifications which will give

direct entry to the job market. To this end,

two-year sandwich courses lead to the

Certificat d’Aptitude Professionnelle (CAP) or

the Brevet d’Études Professionnelles (BEP).

After this point, however, it is possible to go

on to attempt a baccalauréat professionnel,

whose twenty-nine specialisms lead directly to

the world of work; or, indeed, by taking a

year’s reconversion course, to take a techno-

logical baccalauréat. It should also be pointed

out that some students take advantage of their

professional baccalauréat to follow courses in

higher education, particularly in advanced

technical departments (sections de techniciens

supérieurs—see below).

Student numbers in the lycées have in-

creased dramatically over the last forty years

of the twentieth century, from 800,000 in

1960 to more than 2.3 million in 1995. This

expansion looks set to continue, in view of

the national objective of bringing 80 per cent

of the age group to baccalauréat level by the

year 2000 (in 1995, almost 63 per cent of the

age group achieved the diploma). Hence ef-

forts have been made to adapt what was origi-

nally a general, cultural diet for the elite to the

needs of much wider audience. In 1969, the

baccalauréat technique (renamed

education, secondary: collèges, lycées, etc.