Word: bachot
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Dates: during 1949-1949
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...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...
...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...