{"id":90,"date":"2013-07-05T22:24:46","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T21:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=90"},"modified":"2013-07-05T22:24:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T21:24:46","slug":"french-textbooks-class-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"French textbooks:  Class struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"<hgroup>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h1>Hostility to free markets starts at school<\/h1>\n<\/hgroup>\n<aside><time>Jul 6th 2013\u00a0<\/time>|\u00a0PARIS\u00a0|<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/printedition\/2013-07-06\">From the print edition<\/a><\/aside>\n<div>\n<p>BOTH relief and tears will greet the results of France\u2019s school-leaving\u00a0<em>baccalaur\u00e9at<\/em>\u00a0exam on July 5th. With breathtaking efficiency, the entire country\u2019s exam papers are corrected and marked within just two weeks. Founded in 1808 by Napoleon, the\u00a0<em>bac<\/em>\u00a0is an entry ticket to university as well as a yearly national ritual, which opens with a gruelling compulsory four-hour philosophy general paper that even scientists have to sit. This year the papers seem particularly revealing of how French youngsters are taught to view the world.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do we owe to the state?\u201d was one essay option in the philosophy exam. In the economics and social science paper, pupils were asked to comment on a wealth-distribution table, showing that 10% of French households owned 48% of the country\u2019s wealth, and then told to \u201cdemonstrate that social conflict can be a factor behind social cohesion\u201d. We still have the mentality of the class struggle, says Nicolas Lecaussin, of the Institute of Fiscal and Economic Research (IREF), a think-tank, and author of a report on economics textbooks.<\/p>\n<p>France excels at producing top-rate academic economists. But high-school teaching of economics is uneven. The IREF study last year showed that, in one tome\u2019s 382 pages, only 18 were devoted to business. \u201cEntrepreneurs and business leaders are almost absent,\u201d noted the report, and \u201cglobalisation and free trade are treated with distrust.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The national syllabus has been somewhat revised since 2011. Basic economic concepts, including supply and demand, have been reinforced. Economics and sociology, the two component parts of the combined paper, have been partly separated. The portrayal of companies has become more neutral. With government backing, B\u00e9atrice Couairon of the Institute of Enterprise, a think-tank, runs a programme to bring together business leaders and lyc\u00e9e economics teachers in order, she says, \u201cto close the gap\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the curriculum remains heavily tilted towards social conflict. The analysis of social structure starts with Marx. One textbook\u2019s subheadings move depressingly from \u201cMore and more suicides at work\u201d, to \u201cMore and more insecure jobs\u201d. In another textbook, a chapter on \u201csocial justice\u201d asks: \u201cDo high revenues threaten fairness?\u201d, and illustrates it with a 19th-century engraving of a bourgeois couple and a photo of a modern-day French demonstrator with a placard reading \u201cTax the rich\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Little wonder, perhaps, that the French are consistently both champion pessimists and hostile to free markets. In 2012, according to a Globescan poll, only 4% of the French agreed that free-market capitalism works well, next to 27% of Americans and 22% of the Chinese.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hostility to free markets starts at school Jul 6th 2013\u00a0|\u00a0PARIS\u00a0|From the print edition BOTH relief and tears will greet the results of France\u2019s school-leaving\u00a0baccalaur\u00e9at\u00a0exam on July 5th. With breathtaking efficiency, the entire country\u2019s exam papers are corrected and marked within just two weeks. Founded in 1808 by Napoleon, the\u00a0bac\u00a0is an entry ticket to university as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[22,23],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}