A Model Class

Laurence’s khâgne (advanced, second-year) class meets on Tuesday morning in a large, bright, slightly shabby-looking room on the first floor of the building. There is a giant map of France near the door; a painting of a bird and a winter landscape hang over the whiteboard. In the back of this room there is a table with a microwave, coffee cups, and a half a bag of chips. No one gets up to eat or drink, however, or to use the bathroom throughout the course of the class.

The twenty-five students are discussing a passage from Jane Eyre, and the class begins with each student reading a few sentences aloud. They read with feeling and fluency. Once the passage, a single-spaced, single page, is completed, Laurence thanks the group and then begins soliciting a narrative context for the excerpt. “Who can tell us what happened right before this passage?” she begins.

Students respond without being called upon. “She was dining with Mr. Rochester and she thought he might have some interest in her. But then she finds out that he is with Miss Ingram.”

“There was a fire, and it was a romantic scene,” volunteers another student.

“There is something between the two of them that is hinted at,” Laurence summarizes. “So when the scene starts, she is in what kind of mood?”

“She swims in happiness.”

“Swims in happiness. Good,” Laurence smiles. “So what happens here; what is the new understanding?” The class responds by teasing out the changes in Jane’s state of mind as she realizes Mr. Rochester is engaged to another woman, Blanche Ingram, who is more wealthy and beautiful than she. At this point, the discussion takes an analytical turn. A girl with a short haircut and high boots lays out the basis for comparing the two characters, Blanche and Jane, noting that Jane’s view of her rival is based on “an exaggerated idealization.”

“Let us try to develop this theme,” Laurence says, “the difference between these two characters.” On the board, she writes: “Blanche is the reverse image of Jane.”

“Blanche is dressed in white; the image of purity; angelic. She’s ‘graceful’ and ‘beautiful.’ What kinds of words are these?” she asks.

“They are subjective,” responds a student. “It is from Mrs. Fairfax’s point of view.”

“Very good. This will become important. There’s a list of physical features. Different parts of the body described in a poetic way. So Blanche’s description is laudatory. And how is Jane described?”

“She’s almost beast-like. She is described in pejorative terms.”

“Can you give us examples?”

“Full of defects, harsh, irregularity, poor and plain, disagreeable, displeasing,” says a student.

“She is disconnected from the group that represents beauty,” says another.

“Notice,” Laurence points out, “the prevalence of the prefixes dis- and irr-. I’d like us to focus on the word ‘disconnected,’” she says. She reads aloud from the text: “‘ … portrait of a governance: disconnected, poor and plain.’ What is the comparison here with Blanche?”

“She’s a poor dreamer, and that is why she is disconnected from the world,” suggests a girl in the back. The discussion continues for several minutes, and then Laurence shifts the focus.

“I’m interested in the phrase ‘portrait of a governess.’ It’s as if she is fictionalizing her life. She has created a fictional Blanche who is perfect, and she has created a fictional self, who is the opposite,” Laurence states, and several hands go up.

“She is socially marginal, as she points out earlier,” someone says. “She is neither servant nor guest. So she is disconnected.” Another student notes that in the passage, each member of the group takes up a different and distinct space in the room.

“Good,” says Laurence. “And what are the characteristics of the social group to which Blanche belongs?”

A student reads aloud, “They ‘sing,’ they ‘wear jewels.’ It’s a ‘spectacle.’”

“So there is this notion of theatricality,” Laurence says. “These social classes go to the balls to be seen.”

Another student extends this idea: “It’s more than opposition of two social worlds; they are associated with gods, dressed in white, singing, the crown, the jewels, the queen.”

“Yes,” says Laurence, “there is a deification of the upper classes. And there is the lexical field of light. Can you pick up some words to show that?”

The close analysis of language continues, as words are chosen and parsed.

“So we have two characters, physically opposed, socially opposed; what conclusions should we draw from this?”

“Jane Eyre has no chance.”

Laurence speaks about “the tragic irony of the dialogue between two selves,” in which Jane Eyre talks herself into “coming back to reality.”

“It’s like a trial,” a student interjects. “She weighs the pros and cons. Her reason stifles her imagination.”

“Yes,” says Laurence, “she pronounces a very hard sentence on herself. Can you find words that bear on this vocabulary of trial?”

Again, the students are fast to respond: “ … my own bar,” “the use of the ‘second person.’”

“She becomes a kind of split personality. The judge and the judged one. The one who has self-esteem and one who seeks to destroy it. Reason and feeling.”

Again, Laurence makes the class look to the text: “What are the stylistic devices that reason uses to win the case?”

“The imperative mood.” “Rhetorical questions.” “Repetition of address: ‘You! You!’”

“What is this called?” Laurence interrupts.

“Anaphora,” says the class, in unison.

“Who is behind that voice? Is it only Jane?”

“The society. The moralizing society. The collective voice of Victorian society,” various students respond.

“And what does this society believe?”

“Separation of the classes.” “Respect for decorum.” “Respect for social conventions.”

“So when Jane says ‘you,’ it is the collective voice of Victorian society,” Laurence concludes. “And who is the other Jane?” Laurence continues. “The books she reads. The human self; the hopeful part of her as a human. Or Jane the rebel, trying to overcome these differences. Almost an instinctive voice that cannot be repressed.”

Next the discussion turns to the question of whether Blanche and Mr. Rochester would be happy together in marriage. A boy notes that they are described as having the same eyes, the same musical talent, and that there is a “metaphorical harmony” in these similarities. When the two sing a duet together, it is “excluding,” like a marriage bond. Another girl questions whether this kind of social and physical harmony necessarily translates into a happy marriage. Laurence points to hints of ill-suitedness, again within the passage itself. “Prolepsis,” she says. The laws of entail will restrict Blanche from inheritance. “Hyperbole,” she says, her beauty is exaggerated; the character has been elevated and mythologized. “Conversely, Jane’s description of herself is based on meiosis,” Laurence concludes, “exaggeration in order to debase the self.”

“If one is a myth and the other is a nobody,” Laurence concludes about Jane and Blanche, “what is the place of women in Victorian society? Women were either angels in the house or nonentities. So, on the one hand, we have mythification; on the other, vilification. In both cases, the portraits are distorted. Let’s try to understand the reasons for this creation and deconstruction of two feminine portraits.” After some discussion about the difficulty of self-representation, Laurence concludes, “Maybe the message is that if it is difficult to see others as they really are, it is just as difficult to see oneself clearly. The author is playing with the notion of realism here – a genre that was in fashion at the time the novel was written. Brontë may be challenging Stendhal’s assertion that ‘the novel is a mirror walking down the road.’

“But we can go one step further. What Jane decides to do at the end of the extract is literally to paint two contrasting portraits, of herself and of Blanche. This is a mise en abyme of the art of self-portrayal: Jane the character literally makes a portrait of herself through painting, just as Jane the narrator draws a portrait of herself through words by writing her (fictional) autobiography, an autobiography entitled Jane Eyre. This extract can be construed as the whole novel in miniature.”

The class ends, and the students stay on, talking between themselves about the passage, about Laurence’s interpretation, and about the difficulties of self-representation.

***

More than anywhere else, France emerged for me as a place where debate, argument, analysis, and disagreement were a kind of pleasurable exercise. It was apparent in informal interactions in the faculty room, in after-school discussions in cafés, in one-on-one joisting with Laurence’s colleagues. Verbal provocation is a kind of flirtation in France, one of many differences between the United States and this language-loving country.

Laurence and I have lunch with two of her colleagues, Claude and Pierre, in the airy teacher’s cafeteria. We move down the cafeteria line with our trays, taking two kinds of salad (bean or hearts of palm) and then a hot course (“No choice,” says Laurence). Today’s lunch is an omelet with squash; then apple tart or yogurt and fruit (today’s fruit is stewed apples). We sit together in a quiet open space and talk about teaching and prestige. Pierre, a philosophy teacher, is highly opinionated, a trait that comes, he says, with being a philosopher.

“Arrogance is a nice way to be frank,” he says to me, “though in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, there is a strong prejudice against arrogance.”

“Pierre loves stichomythia,” Laurence says. “The verbal duel.”

When I ask him how he thinks his students perceive him, Pierre says, “To students, teachers are eunuchs. And their parents see us as losers. Lazy people. To the upper classes, teachers are the types who eat in the street,” he says. Pierre himself has a PhD; he worked in the television industry, was a speechwriter for the mayor of Paris, and then decided he didn’t want to be around people who constantly told him what to do. Teaching gave him autonomy and a stage of his own, and he’s been teaching for twenty years. Perhaps because of his own illustrious pedigree (he is a graduate of the prestigious École Normale Supérieure), Pierre seems particularly prickled by issues of status. He has contempt for the teachers at the so-called high-class schools, the ones that “produce the politicians,” he says; places such as Henri IV, the most prestigious public school in France, situated right next to the Sorbonne and to the École Normale Supérieure. “It’s is filled with snobs,” he says.

Claude comes across as a very different personality. While Pierre is dressed in jeans and a worn wool sweater, Claude wears a pinstriped suit, and speaks slowly and seriously. For him, Claude says, teaching was something he wanted to do since he was a little boy. There was never any question about what he would become.

“My parents were teachers,” he says. “As a kid, I loved books, I loved studying and talking about ideas.”

He is now a history teacher with a particular interest in the history of the discovery of evolution. He has written a book on the subject. He is not interested in issues of status or prestige. We spend the rest of the lunch hour talking about the American controversy over the teaching of evolution and his own research on the subject. Pierre listens distractedly, as if waiting for an opportunity to contradict or disagree.

“I love teaching,” Claude says.

“I’m glad for you,” says Pierre.

Laïcité and the Problem of Diversity

Even given the ethnic mix of Jean Jaurès, I saw no tension among students, nor did any of the teachers speak about challenges in working with students from such diverse backgrounds. This was a happy surprise and contrary to what I suspected I would find at the school. Shortly after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, colleagues in the United States had circulated an article, written by a lycée teacher in a predominately Muslim school in France who had been effectively driven from his job after publishing a piece calling for a return to “the true values of Islam,” and criticizing the extremist response to injustice. Students and colleagues had called the teacher a traitor to the religion for expressing these moderate views and had made vicious threats against him. When I showed the article to Laurence, she reminded me that the school in question was a lycée privé sous contrat (a private high school under contract with the state), exempt from some of the mandates common in public high schools. “I’m not really surprised to read this,” Laurence says. “The Ministry of Education should inspect these kinds of places, and dismiss their fishy supervisors. But they don’t do that as often as they should. The ministry just operates under the assumption that this kind of thing does not happen.”

The failure of the government to intercede in such cases raises questions about how effectively the core mission of French schooling is being regulated. Public education in France is framed by the principle of laïcité, the French term for secularity, and by the 1989 Law on Orientation in Education, which affirms the individual right to freedom of conscience. In practice, these two principles have come into conflict, particularly with regard to students belonging to religious minorities such as Islam: even as they endorse freedom of belief, French schools are bound by the fundamental mission of teaching “Frenchness” and of separating church and state. The controversial episode a decade ago, when French schools banned the kippa and hijab, illustrates the complexity of the issue. After the banning of the hijab, French Muslims created their own Islamic schools throughout the country. Critics of laïcité argue that it is a disguised form of and an infringement on the individual right to religious expression; that, instead of promoting freedom of thought and freedom of religion, it prevents the believer from observing his or her religion. This is a problem – both practical and philosophical – that the country has yet to resolve. There is clearly a tension between core values and political realities, a tension that is worsening as the population of the country becomes more diverse. While Jean Jaurès has so far managed to remain unscathed by protest or ethnic tension, the shadow of what is happening elsewhere hangs overhead.

On Tuesday morning, Laurence meets with her section of the hypokhâgne, the first-year class of the classes préparatoires program. This is a small group, composed of students who are taking English as a second foreign language (German or Arabic being their first) and so are less intensely focused on literary study. Laurence is working with them on nonfiction essays, focusing on grammar, content, and interpretation. At the start of class, we talk informally about schools, teachers, and the teaching profession. Thillali, an Algerian student who has just recently come to France, is first to say she is not interested in becoming a teacher; then she backtracks and states that she would consider the work as a fall-back if nothing else comes through. Her lack of interest in the field is partly explained, she says, by the indifferent education she received growing up. Education in Algeria, she says, was a mixed bag, at best. There was little interest in investing in the schools.

“When the education is bad, it is good for the government,” she says, an interesting idea that opens the way to a lively discussion in English about the relationship of free thought to democracy. Once you educate the poor, someone says, they start to question the system; they start to agitate for change.

Martin, a young man in a T-shirt emblazoned with the English words “Give a Shit,” turns the discussion to social class. “The best teachers want to teach in schools where the students are smartest; it creates inequalities in the system,” he says.

We talk about Montreuil and the fact that Fox News classified the neighborhood as a “No-Go Zone” for American tourists, claiming that the district is controlled by Arabs. The mayor of Paris sued Fox for libel and won.

“Language influences the way people think,” another student, Alban, says. “You make a statement like that – that Montreuil is a dangerous or unsavory place – and then it is impossible to change people’s minds.”

Laurence joins the discussion, saying that one fundamental difference between France and America is embedded in the language: “French is a language of nouns, of concepts. English is a language of verbs, of action and doing.” American history is about cowboys; French history is about philosophers.

The class turns to the text they have been assigned for the day, an article describing an exhibition dealing with the history of human liberties that is currently at a city museum. Laurence begins, as I have watched her do before, anchoring the discussion in facts: “Who is the author? How might her status influence her perspective? Who are the various people highlighted in the exhibition and what did they do?”

With these points established, Laurence moves to analysis and critique. “This is an exhibition dealing with the past, the present and future. What is the author suggesting to us about the present and the future?”

Thillali speaks first: “She is trying to give a sense of guilt.”

“Guilt? Interesting. How do you see that she creates that feeling?” Laurence presses.

“She talks about rights and says our time is dangerous for rights, because many governments in the Western countries want to cut liberties because of terrorism and we do not react.”

“Okay,” says Laurence, “One rhetorical strategy is to compare the way people behave now with how they behaved in the past. What other rhetorical devices does she use to make her point?”

“She refers to the various historical documents like the Magna Carta, using hyperbolic language,” says Alban.

“Good. So you’re saying that the importance of the Magna Carta is illustrated in the laudatory phrases the journalist uses to refer to it?” They look together at various nouns and adjectives in the text.

“‘Treasure trove,’” reads a student. “It’s a word that connotes material value; but here, the wealth it brings is not material.

Thillali points to the admonishing tone of the language: “‘this exhibition should serve … ’ When we say ‘should,’ we want to warn, to alert; so if she is teaching us a lesson, then her aim is didactic. The tone is didactic. ‘Should’ is a ‘moralizing’ word.”

“So understanding this strategy leads us to focus on the main question this text raises,” says Laurence. “Are these rights threatened because of terrorism or because of indifference?”

Thillali brings up the example of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand before World War I and the way Europe responded by demonizing innocent civilians. The conversation turns to 9/11 and the Patriot Act, and the similarities and differences in national response.

The class goes on to discuss the role of government in the lives of individuals, drawing on another assigned article the group has read the night before that deals with habeas corpus, the 2005 London terrorist attack, and the fact that terror suspects in England can now be detained for twenty-eight days without evidence. This then leads to a discussion of security cameras and the pros and cons of urban surveillance.

“Would more cameras have helped catch the Charlie Hebdo attackers more quickly?” Laurence asks.

Thillali says the problem is not yet big enough to justify the loss of civil liberties.

Alban disagrees: “Cameras influence the way people act,” he says, “so they also serve as a kind of prevention for crime.”

Two hours pass easily in serious debate. Throughout the discussion, everyone speaks, pushing through their grammatical limitations. The ideas are sophisticated, and each listens to the others with interest and sympathy. It is another impressive class.

“Next time,” Laurence says, “we’ll try to articulate the middle ground between pros and cons.” The period ends with her distributing a mock exam in preparation for the real one the following week. The students have brought their lunches to class, and they will work through lunch to answer the sample essay prompt. An hour later, Laurence will return, collect the exams, and then review them with the students.

***

On Wednesday, I accompany Laurence to a different school, the Lycée Horticole de Montreuil, where she teaches an extra section of the classe prépa. The Lycée Horticole is about a fifteen-minute walk from Jean Jaurès, up a long hill lined with small shops and a giant cemetery. Laurence has elected to teach here – as a paid overload – in part because it represents such a contrast to the world of Jean Jaurès; this school is focused specifically on students who are interested in going into landscape design and architecture, and the building and its occupants reflect those interests and concerns. Unlike the massive institutional buildings of traditional suburban high schools, the Lycée Horticole is a pleasing series of wood, slatted structures, sauna-like, flanked by attractive plantings already in bloom in March: cherry blossoms, gladiola, forsythia. Each classroom is entered from the outside with its own door, and desks are arranged in a large, inward-facing rectangle. Because these are art and architecture students, Laurence says, their English is, for the most part, not as strong as the students’ English in Jean Jaurès, and the test she is preparing them to take puts less emphasis on literature. “Their passions lie elsewhere.” Students at Lycée Horticole are hoping for entrance into particular Grands Écoles that specialize in their areas of interest, such as the National School of Landscape Architecture of Versailles and the National School of Landscape Architecture of Blois. Like the classe prépa students in Jean Jaurès, these students can still enter the regular university with two years’ worth of post-secondary credit, if they fail to pass the qualifying exam.

Physically, I can see immediately that this is a different kind of youth: artsy, dressed in black Converse sneakers, vintage dresses, and black-framed glasses. The desks are covered with drawings, pencil cases, and large sketch pads; the walls, with students’ completed art assignments, some quite accomplished. It is the day before the final exam, and again, Laurence has warned me that very few students might actually show up, since they have the option to work on their assignment – corrections to an essay – at home. Still, twelve students out of twenty-four are present when we arrive.

As Laurence sorts through her papers at the start of class, the previous hour’s teacher comes in to wish the group good luck on their exams. “Bonne chance,” she says. “Stay calm and focused, and you will do well.” The students laugh ruefully at this. “No chance of that!” a boy says to his friend beside him.

Because of the close proximity of the exam, the class will spend the day reviewing grammar. Generally, grammar is studied in context, not through worksheets or discrete lessons. But the students are worried about the coming test and have asked for a review session. They take out a worksheet they have completed for homework, covering the subtle distinctions between the “simple” and “habitual” present tense, and move through the exercises, taking turns responding to each prompt, correcting the mistakes of their peers, and listening to Laurence’s explanations when those corrections fall short. The complexity of the grammar rules, the investment of the students in understanding them, and the general goodwill with which all this activity is taking place underscore the special nature of the classes préparatoires. These students know why they are there, how high the stakes are, and how valuable their teacher’s input will be in helping them achieve their ambitions.

At the end of the class, the students stay seated, turning to converse quietly with one another or pulling out a newspaper to read privately. A student opens the classroom door to let in the cool, spring-scented air.

Unions, Standards, and a Changing System

One afternoon, I sit in the faculty room with Alain, the head of the teacher’s union, talking about the different role of unions in France and the United States. I begin by speaking about the growing insecurity of American teachers with regard to the solvency of their pensions. Alain explains that French teachers have the same concerns: “In France, we have a deferred system, which means each generation pays for the people who are retired. The government says the system is not sustainable because the population is getting older and older.” Alain explains that the government’s pension reform proposal is a choice among three unappealing options: first, to raise the age of retirement; second, to reduce pensions; or third, to change the system at the margins so that everyone is saving up and contributing to their own retirements. French unions, he explains, have lost a good deal of their power in the past thirty years, as conservative politics and recessions have eroded teacher support and confidence in the union. Alain is a member of one of the more militant education unions, the Force Ouvrière, and his perspective reminds me of the views of older lefties I know in the United States. He is articulate and full of integrity, but his manner is resigned and a bit tired. “When I defend the interests of education workers,” he says, “I’m fighting for the population as a whole – and families especially. But my union is not the majority union.” Indeed, only 12 percent of teachers vote in professional elections for candidates in the Force Ouvrière; most teachers now belong to a secondary school association called the Syndicat National des Enseignements de Second Degré (SNES), the equivalent to the state associations that drew American teachers away from the American Federation of Teachers in the 1960s and 1970s. Division within the Force Ouvrière (also known as the Confédération Générale du Travail) is partly to blame for the dissipation of interest in the union. Ideological conflicts within the union undercut its potency. In 1948, Force Ouvrière split into two parts, one linked with the Communist party and one linked with the AFL-CIO (amid rumors that the CIA was funding the split). The mess turned many teachers to seek a new independent forum, one they found in the SNES. Union membership among teachers is now down below 50 percent.²

“Many people mistrust the union,” Alain says. “This is because, for many years, trade union power was associated with political power. So you don’t defend the teachers, you defend the political party. But it is also because of fatalism. The idea that we can’t do anything to change things. It’s all about politics.”

Even changes that work to his benefit as a union leader also send a bad message: “Now, when you make a voluntary contribution to the union,” he explains, “60 percent of that is tax deductible. I don’t think that is healthy.”

One of the current battles being fought by the union reflects directly on the status of teachers in France. Since the early 1950s, teachers had been hired to teach courses only in the subjects in which they were educated. “Now,” Alain explains, “the government is asking teachers to teach students outside their area of expertise.” I suggest that the shift toward multidisciplinary teaching might be seen as a positive, albeit challenging new way of thinking about subject matter and curriculum. “Among people of good faith,” says Alain, “that may well be true.” But this is not about inventive curriculum and interdisciplinary instruction, he says. The motivation is simply about saving money, “with getting the most out of a ‘multi-functionary’ teacher. So the qualification is devalued and we’re not doing the students any favors.” Many French families, however, see this cross-disciplinary teaching as money-saving and harmless, and this complicates the moral imperative for the unions that, theoretically at least, are championing the needs of working people: “What’s very difficult at the moment for the trade unions is that the wishes of the families are different from the wishes of the unions.” The government, according to Alain, plays on this divide; French teachers have prided themselves, for example, on maintaining clear standards for passing a class. The government contends that repeating a year in school is a waste of time, and parents tend to side with the government.

Evidence of the falling prestige of teaching can be found in the shrinking numbers of students taking the CAPES exam, the exams leading to teacher licensure, especially in the sciences. “Now,” Alain says, “some schools must go outside the system to find teachers.” In general, teaching is losing ground for three reasons. The first is pay and working conditions; these are deteriorating as funding is rerouted elsewhere. Second is the fact that values have changed among ordinary French people; they are less cultured than in the past, and they see education – especially rigorous education– as a lower priority. Finally, he says, French people see their society in crisis, and education and culture are not perceived as a defense. This attitude, he says, is class based – a fact that is particularly insidious. “Bourgeois lycées still seek out high quality teachers, while the poor and working-class are less and less interested. In Montreuil and in rural areas, they say: ‘Oh, Greek and Latin aren’t necessary for the poor; the caviar isn’t necessary for the poor.’ And the people say, ‘No Greek? Okay, no Greek.’ The essential skills set is only important.” Even the trade unions have sided with this “practical” perspective, a decision that Alain himself opposes: “Ultimately,” he says, “this will simply reinforce class division.”

At lunch, Laurence has arranged for all the English teachers in the lycée to meet in the faculty room for a discussion about the differences between teaching in America and in France. Antoine, Sandrine, Maryse, Isabelle, Jean-Marc, and Pauline are all veteran teachers, ranging in age from their mid-thirties to their late fifties. Isabelle has brought a large plastic container of rice with vegetables and ham, and we serve ourselves on paper plates and sit down around a large wooden table.

What, I ask, are the key issues and concerns you have as teachers in the French system? Several teachers respond at once, citing the workload, the burgeoning class sizes, the gradual whittling away of teacher discretion and authority. Maryse addresses the first of the complaints. “Class size,” she explains in perfect English, “is something that inhibits our ability to teach well. The law states that we should have no more than twenty-four in a class, but most of us usually have more.”

“The workload is truly difficult,” Sandrine adds. “We have six or seven classes a week, each of which meets 2½, 3, or 4 hours a week. Some days are lighter than others in terms of actual teaching, but when we are not in front of the classroom, we are meeting with students, grading papers, developing lessons. Even on lighter teaching days, it’s a long, hard day.”

Most of the teachers I speak to work from 8:30 to 6:00 p.m. in the school itself; then go home to work well into the night. A regular, full-time load is fifteen to eighteen hours of instruction time per week, Laurence reminds me, but most teachers take on more classes as an overload, for which they are paid additional salary. Under the Sarkozy administration, these extra courses were tax exempt. Now, however, they are taxed, making the additional work less lucrative. The group begins to calculate together the sweet spot where extra work is actually a winning proposition, salary-wise.

For teachers, the tax exemption for extra work was, evidently, the only good thing about the Sarkozy administration. In general, the teachers said, the period under Sarkozy was devastating for the schools. Budgets were dramatically cut. Student assistants, previously hired to help students with after-school work, were terminated. In the old days, teachers taught fewer students and fewer classes. Now, everyone is stretched thin and exhausted. At the same time, the expectations only increase: expectations about pass rates for the exams, expectations about technology and accountability. The upshot of all this austerity, say the teachers, is that no one wants to go into teaching anymore. In the past, the profession was highly competitive and prestigious. In a country that valued ideas, culture, and debate, the work of teaching was the highest art. In the past twenty years, things have changed dramatically. Now, notes one of the teachers, you have to put ads in the paper to recruit teachers.

“My granddad was a teacher,” says one of the group. “The priest, the mayor, the teacher – these were the most important people in the village.”

Standards have also fallen. In recent years, the success rate at the baccalaureate has been about 80 percent (with top lycées achieving 100 percent). The test, which was once a measure of real knowledge, has been dumbed down. Poor performing students are passing the “bac” and then failing in university. Maryse, a woman in her mid-forties, described how, in high school, she went to Marin County, California, for an exchange year. An indifferent student in her own country, she found that she was the best student in that California school. The experience showed her how much more rigorous and demanding the French schools were, and how intellectually sophisticated the teachers were in comparison to those in the United States. That was in the old days. “Now, the profession is simply not glamorous enough,” someone says, “to attract the kinds of teachers it once did. Money has become the criterion for choosing a career. Parental complaints and demands for grade equity have made teachers lose discretion over their classes. For so many reasons, teachers have to compromise their standards.”

“The focus has moved from teaching to social work,” someone else volunteers.

Changes in benefits have also begun to erode the appeal of the profession. The requirements for receiving full pension benefits keep inching up. One veteran described how she had signed on decades ago with the promise of full benefits after 37½ years of service. Then it was changed to 41, then 42, then 44. The unions have not succeeded in stopping the momentum.

All of this started under the Sarkozy administration, and the outcome has been “catastrophic” for the schools, they say. “No one is going to want to do this work of teaching over the course of career. If you create a profession where it takes forty-four years to get a pension, you are essentially asking for a temporary work force.”

***

Laurence has nothing but goodwill for her colleagues and feels especially close to those who are teaching in the classes préparatoires. “The way we work is very interesting, because we are all very much connected,” she tells me. “Each time there is a student who is not doing well, we work together to find ways to help him. Each time one of the colleagues does not feel well, then there is always someone trying to help, to fill in. It’s quite precious to me that the group is so supportive.” Laurence says that in other schools, especially the elite schools in central Paris, this kind of camaraderie does not exist. “In Paris, the most prestigious classes préparatoires are generally known for having a rather difficult atmosphere, because there is competition between teachers and between students. Who is the smartest, the cleverest, the most intellectually impressive; it is from these traits that prestige is derived. That mindset is not something that exists here,” says Laurence, “maybe because we’re not in central Paris, but also, I don’t know, because Montreuil is a bit special, a bit independent. There is this relationship to authority which is looser.” The newness of the program itself, the community’s communist history, and the diversity of the student body all contribute to a more affable environment. “In the center of Paris, if you’re close to the Sorbonne, they compete for the best students and the best teachers, and it affects the feeling of the school.”

The irony of this snobbery is that the French system is consciously built on egalitarianism. The university is free or very inexpensive, and the system of “school mapping” for elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools is designed to promote social diversity by obliging pupils living in one district to attend their neighborhood schools. Yet in practice, Laurence says, school mapping is not adhered to by those with cultural capital: in problem areas, people who want to avoid the nearby school either change their home addresses or send their children to private schools.

In the context of the larger culture, Laurence feels that, as a teacher, she is often on the defensive. Even though she is teaching university-level classes in the classes préparatoires, the assumption is that she is not working hard and that the work requires little intellectual effort. “Whatever you teach, people think the same thing: teachers have too many holidays, they strike too often, they do little work or preparation, they do the same thing every year. When I ask them, ‘Would you like to become a teacher? Would you like to come and take my place?’ they say, ‘No,’ because they don’t want to do that disciplining, they don’t want to face disrespect, low salary. People assume the job is more about disciplin[ary problems] than knowledge. This is why it is difficult, both for the teachers, I think, and for the students.”

This kind of attitude did not always exist in France. Indeed, the country was long held as a model for championing the intellectual and cultural values that eluded the United States. Alan Bloom, the scholar and cultural critic, noted in his widely discussed book, The Closing of the American Mind (1982), that French culture has long been a culture of the book. Certain literary and philosophical texts – Voltaire, Montaigne–were so profoundly embedded in French consciousness, Bloom wrote in celebratory terms, that they formed a kind of shared second language or a second religion of cultural literacy.³ Teachers, as the purveyors of that culture, carried special clout in the society. Laurence dates the beginnings of cultural change in attitude toward education to the revolution of 1968, and the reforms that were implemented in middle and high schools in the decade that followed. Starting in the late 1970s, under the administration of Giscard d’Estaing, the French government moved to transform the traditional system with the establishment of a single middle school education for all pupils ages eleven to fifteen, and a new goal of having 80 percent of all students pass the baccalaureate exam, a goal that necessarily changed the rigor of the exam itself. The mission was to encourage more students to remain in school for the full range of free public education. Laurence calls this “the massification of education,” and though the new policy did encourage more participation, it also “dumbed down” a system long known for high standards and intellectual rigor. “I would say that, from that moment on, and later under François Mitterrand, the level of education became lower, the prestige attached to teachers also became lower, because people considered that it was less demanding, less intellectually challenging to be a teacher if the level was then lower.”

These changes that began decades ago have also impacted the material rewards associated with the profession. In France, high school teachers still earn more than elementary school teachers. Though all salaries have been falling off against inflation, salaries in the lowest grades are especially meager: Laurence says her cousin is a primary school teacher in Paris earning approximately 1,800 euros a month, or $2,000. She is looking for an apartment, and, given the law that renters must earn three times their monthly rent, she is hard pressed to find decent housing. “The best you can get for 600 euros,” Laurence says, “is a ten-square-meter flat. In other words, you get nothing for this amount of money.” To make matters worse, French teachers have not received a raise in six years. Under the Eurozone austerity measures, government salaries have been frozen. “This is why there are so many strikes,” Laurence says. “Salaries have not gone up, but the cost of living keeps rising.”

As a classes prépas teacher, Laurence earns the same as her colleagues teaching in the regular high school, approximately 3,000 euros a month. Laurence is lucky in that her base income can be supplemented by additional funds available only to classes prépas teachers: “For example,” Laurence explains, “the khôlles [the mock oral examinations that Laurence administers to her students] are paid separately, and this adds to my salary. If I was doing only the ordinary job, without the khôlles, my salary would be exactly the same as regular high school teachers in the school, around 2,500 to 3,000 euros a month.” With the khôlles, which are paid by the session, she earns what is essentially a bonus.

***

On the last day we are together, I ask Laurence to speak generally about the things she loves and doesn’t love about being a teacher in France. She answers the second part of my question first, because it is the easier one to articulate. The downside, she says, is in the demanding nature of the work: “The amount of time I spend grading and preparing. I think it has an impact on my social life and on my emotional life. [The challenge of] trying to find a better balance between the public sphere and the private sphere is difficult for me.”

As for the pleasures of teaching, Laurence summarizes her work in what seems to me to be a tribute to the special nature of teaching in France’s classes préparatoires: