May 28. 2008 22:10

Nice program! I would sign every single point, except... the education system of France is the last example I would like to think of. Over here in good old Europe people are excited about American Universities, supposedly besides Oxford and Cambridge, your Ivy league schools, and your second league schools are among the best in the world and continuously rank tops. However, the French education system here is regarded as the most elitist in the world. How is this possible? education is generally almost free in most european countries, so how do the French make their education elitist. Not knowing too much about their actual fees, the fact is that almost all top French schools are located in the city of Paris -the most expensive city in greater Europe besides Moscow and London. (to give you an impression a small coke in any basic restaurant will start at 8$) So that means that the education itself, being cheap, turns out to be very very expensive if you take living costs into consideration. But you won't even get there if you're not well-off already since before going to university you go to high school which must be among the well-known high schools from the snobist areas of the capital. then you have to go through a two year preparatory school which is the harddest time of the student's lives. It's such tough competition that most will not make it, some will even go into psychological treatment. Good times if you have a private teacher who helps carry you through it.
Have you passed these two years though, what remains at the "Grande Ecoles" is nothing but a desentisized partying and relaxing experience. Your final report card will not show your GPA, it's pass/fail unless you belong to the top 20 of your class, who get special honors in their diploma. Well then, after you've passed this trial where do you go? Now all doors in life are open, the French elite sticks together so closely that you needn't worry about finding a job, the alumni will find you a spot in the upper management, no matter what kind of a booksmart loser you are. So that's it. By the way, about half of France's prime ministers went to the ENA, the ecole nationale d'administration. They are trying to open up, but it's still a very fine circle of people who gets there, and some say they're there because daddy went there.

Some friends of mine who have taken stays abroad at these grande ecoles told me that academically they were pretty poor, and that French students had a bad working morale in general. And honestly I could sign that veredict for most of the French exchange students from these elite-schools i have met. There's really too much myth about it and too little true value in it for me to call it an example over the US system.

Yes, I am all for more practical education (as an option) but in the end we all know that most of what we do on the job has so little to do with what we've learned. In england for example most investment bankers are hired right from oxford and cambridge where they've studied classics. This means english, history, latin, ancient greek and other dead languages. In my opinion it's more about what we learn about learning and self-organization, about getting more mature than about any of the content that we memorize. For natural sciences, engineering, medical school, and law I'm with you, but for most of us, it's not really so important what we learn but about the experiences we make along the way (and i don't mean the partying).

David H.