A chara, – In response to Michael Cassidy (July 4th), I’m afraid I must disagree with my fellow countryman’s praise of French state schooling. I too live in France, “the curious, eager and well trained minds, ready to play an active civic role” are not that obvious. Mr Cassidy’s letter provoked great amounts of chuckling from my French friends, they have firsthand experience of state schools happily encouraging pupils to go on strike and take to the streets.
Other outpourings of “active civil roles” include large-scale rioting, car-burning (a new national sport) violence against teachers and fellow pupils (last week a 14-year-old boy punched a 13-year-old girl to death with his bare hands).
French state schools are to a very great extent in the hands of ageing hippies from 1968; political ideology, historical and cultural revisionism play a huge part. Terrified parents, when they can, send their children to private schools, these schools are for the most part faith-based, are on the increase and have by far the better results in the French schooling system. – Is mise,