Word: bac
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Denise Chambon it was a happy day. When the bac jurymen finished tabulating the results, Denise learned she had passed second on a list of twelve with an assez bien after her name. At her home her mother and bus-conductor father received the news proudly...
Eighteen-year-old Denise Chambon was one victim of the annual bac (baccalaureate exam) and trac (student term for butterflies in the stomach) that thousands of French youths (and anxious parents) suffer through each fall. Looming at the end of seven years of intensive secondary schooling, the bac orals are the big hurdle for French schoolgirls and boys. To the 65% who pass, success means a bachot certificate and eligibility for entrance to a university or employment in many civil service and professional jobs effectively closed to non-baccalaureates...
This autumn French newspapers and educators bitterly complained about the bac and the old-fashioned competitive system it stands for. First set up in 1808, the exams have long been attacked by progressives as a "savage rite of French bourgeois snobbism." Philosopher-Scholar Etienne Gilson coupled the bac with alcoholism as the "twin scourges of the French people." Novelist René Barjavel complained in the weekly Carrefour, "[the bachot] is just a slip of paper proving that its owner has a minimum of general knowledge...
Last week when Denise, along with other lucky French youngsters who had passed their bac, went job hunting, they would find the "slip of paper" still rated special consideration...
Like most trainers who win a lot of races, Willie Molter deals mostly in mediocre horses. Last week, two of his clients paid $52,500 for Bric a Bac, five-year-old son of War Admiral. With a bona fide stake horse to work with, Willie is now pointing for the $100,000 handicap at Santa Anita...