Word: bachots
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France's grueling baccalaureate exam, the pre-university hurdle founded by Napoleon 151 years ago, has been a nightmare for secondary-school students ever since. The "bachot"' is a double headache: up to three days of stiff written exams, one appalling day of ten successive 10-minute oral exams by ten gimlet-eyed professors. Those who fail in June (65%) get another chance in September; those who fail then (80%) stay at school another year. Notable first-round failures: Anatole France, Alphonse Daudet, Andre Gide, Franchise Sagan. Though some brave bachot bumblers repeat the year as many...
...South Viet Nam a student who passes an exam is a dau; a flunkster is called a rot. A schoolchild clever enough to remain a dau through 13 years of classes and pass his bachot (baccalaureate exam) becomes a tri thuc (intellectual), and has few further worries. The young nation has a shortage of scholars and a Confucian reverence for learning, and young male tri thucs get autos, villas and high-paying jobs from rich parents of marriageable daughters...
...since the days of Napoleon has France changed its fundamental educational goals. The secondary schools are still so rigidly academic that only about one in every four children gets into them. Those who do must face the dreaded baccalauréat (bachot) exam to graduate. Many must memorize stacks of Greek and Latin verbs, know how to translate Seneca and Tacitus, analyze (in English) the works of De Quincey, Ruskin and George Eliot, be familiar with everything from the Pensées of Pascal to the characters of Corneille...
Looking Backward. Last week Minister Berthoin not only proposed that the secondary schools completely revamp their programs to take care of all French school children up to the age of 16, he also suggested that all current examinations, including the bachot, be abolished. With that, the Paris press erupted. Former Education Minister André Marie declared that despite its "injustices," the bachot should stay. Onetime Boxing Champion Georges Carpentier bluntly announced: "I am against the baccalauréat." Actor Jean-Louis Barrault said, "I adore it," but Actor Sacha Guitry, who spent six terms in one form, snorted: "Tellme, what...
...begun to regard this curriculum as lopsided-a holdover from the days when most students were of the wealthy and professional classes. In stuffy, stagnant classrooms, teachers have paid little attention to the individual student, treating them all as so many minds to be crammed for the dreaded "bachot." And each year, as many as 60% of their pupils have flunked the exam...