Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

Will university strikes kill the humanities in France ?

After repeated strikes and blockages from 2005 to 2008, university enrollment declined 14% at Rennes-II and Toulouse Le Mirail, 13.5% at Montpellier-III and 9% at the famous Sorbonne Paris IV, all sites of sustained student agitation.

 

Meanwhile non-striking universities, business schools, IUT, STS and preparatory schools appear to be holding steady or gaining students. According to Le Figaro, humanities are the hardest hit, in part because graduates can’t get a job and in part because of turmoil year after year.

 

Parents and students appear to be turning away from dysfunctional faculties to the extent that they can. What does this augur for the future of the humanities, already hard hit by the perverse practice of selecting elites through mathematics (and dumping the weakest in so-called “literature”)?

 

Bizarrely it is often the same professors who decry the decline of the humanities who support strikes and blockages which make learning impossible.

 

The cynicism of politically motivated university presidents such as Georges Moliniés at the once proud Paris IV is breathtaking. In striving to embarrass the government, they harm, not just the students (who will migrate elsewhere), but the centuries-old tradition of scholarship in the human sciences.

 

If government, student activists, university administrators and professors had deliberately conspired to murder the humanities they could not have done a better job.

 

Donald Morrison’s Time article, The Death of French Culture, provoked intense reaction.

 

And yet, the systematic putting to death of the humanities in the land of Voltaire and Montaigne by its supposed protectors has gone entirely unreported. Why is that?...

 

 

One interesting aspect is how the decision is taken to blockade an institution of higher learning.

 

Who votes? How? Why is there so much violence? Why do student activists reject votes on the internet, which are both anonymous and closely controlled through the use of student IDs and passwords?

 

At Lyon II, students voted 59% to 31% AGAINST the blockage, but student organizations rejected the result, demanding physical presence at a General Assembly. Those who have attended General Assemblies know the kind of pressure and intimidation which reign there (rather like teamsters gatherings).

 

Here are a couple of articles from the excellent rue89 on student “votes”.

 

Les étudiants de Lyon II votent par Internet contre le blocage

 

Affrontements entre police, vigiles et étudiants à Lyon 2

 

Transportation chaos wrecks a year of preparation for exam

Yesterday a two-hour long failure of key suburban train lines around Paris prevented teaching candidates from taking a test they had spent a year or more preparing for.

The prestigious and difficult agrégation d'anglais exam takes place at the Maison des Examens in Arcueil, normally accessible on the RER B line. However this line was closed for two hours Thursday, April 2, 2009.

Candidates must arrive on time to take the written portion of the exam which lasts six to seven hours each day for four days. If they fail to arrive on one of the days, they are automatically eliminated. 

The stakes are high, as the top ten percent who pass will be attributed jobs for life as civil servants in France's National Education system.

Said one candidate trapped by the failure of the RER:  "An entire year at university for nothing."

"Coralie a carrément perdu le bénéfice d'une année universitaire en ratant le passage de l'agrégation à cause du retard du RER B. «Partie en gare de Villiers-le-Bel à 7h25, je suis arrivée Gare du Nord à 8h57 complètement dégoutée, découragée après avoir voyagé "pire que du bétail". Je me rendais à la Maison des Examens à Arcueil pour le concours de l'agrégation. Toute une année universitaire pour rien. J'en ai gros sur le coeur.»

For more reactions to the Le Parisien, click here.

The agrégation is a national exam with the same content and jury for all.  According to French tradition, the Ministry has two options: ignore the problem or oblige all the candidates to retake Thursday's exam (with changed content, of course). A valid case can be made for either approach.

While I have been a frequent critic of  the agrégation d'anglais, all my sympathies are with the candidates who risk being deprived of the chance to pass this exam for which they have spend so much time and effort preparing.

 

Eco light bulbs : why don't they work?

To arms, ecologists!

It's time to denounce the scandal of crappy ecological light bulbs.

Promoted as environment-friendly energy savers, they unfortunately fail to live up to their promise.

They provide poor quality light (so poor, one often has to install a second light nearby).

They take ages to light up (so cannot safely be used for stairwells).

And now, according to yesterday’s New York Times, we learn that they often are so defective they don’t work at all!

Add to this a price which is calculated for a product that lasts ten years, and you have one of the biggest ecological scams of the decade!

Manufacturers, what’s going on?

Is this just another case of taking advantage of environmentalists? Of cheating people who care about the planet hoping they won’t notice?

We installed compact fluorescent light bulbs all over the house, only to wonder: where had all the light gone? 

 If your experience is anything like ours, contact the manufacturer, consumer associations and ecological organisations as well as your representatives.

We cannot make progress saving energy if corporations are allowed to supply us inferior quality eco-products at inflated prices. Are they doing it on purpose?

Consumer Reports

60 Million de Consommateurs

Site du Ministère de l'Ecologie

Ethical Consumer Org

Links

Energy Saving Trust for the ‘energy saving recommended’ label: www.energysavingtrust.org.uk, 0800 512 012
Greenpeace light bulbs campaign: www.greenpeace.org.uk/climate/light-bulbs, 020 7865 8100
Lighting chapter in “How to live a low-carbon life: the individual’s guide to stopping climate change”, Chris Goodall, ISBN: 978-1-84407-426-6
www.treehugger.com/design_architecture/lighting/ for discussions on low energy lighting

La Grévitude Attitude or Three Strikes and You're Not Out -- You're Just Getting Started !

Spring primroses and daffodils are flowering in Paris, as are the traditional strikes we have learned to treasure.

UMP wags refer to this as the “Grévitude” (strike attitude) as if it were a bad thing.

Union leaders like the CGT’s Beatles-lookalike Bernard Thibault are all fired up, taking inspiration from the long general strike on the French island of Guadaloupe which was settled when the “Métropole” agreed to pay a lot of money to islanders to settle down.

Yet, there may be hope. French bank Société Générale just received an 11 billion USD gift from US taxpayers through the miracle of the AIG bailout. While attractive, it is not clear that this economic model is reproducible.

And, of course,Société Générale had to spoil it. Instead of quietly enjoying its American windfall, it decided yesterday to give its two top executives 220,000 stock options, including 70,000 for CEO Daniel Bouton who courageously managed not to resign when a rogue trader “lost” 5 billion euros at his bank.

How to convince unions there is no money when banks like SocGen and energy companies like Total seem to be rolling in it? How to convince anyone of the benefits of merit pay when financial system destroying bankers award themselves billions in bonuses for failing (admittedly, with flair)?

Someone, clearly must pay. For the Guadaloupeans the solution was the French taxpayer on the mainland. (Or perhaps, more accurately, the French borrower on the mainland). But for the rest? You? Me? Perhaps—and this is clearly a better solution—

someone else.

Sadly, sadly, no one (other than AIG) is volunteering. Not the Germans. Not the Chinese. Not even those avatars of true capitalism, the new Russian billionaires.

The once proud and idealistic Socialist Party, is sitting on the sidewalk cradling its brain under its arm, hoping for the worst.

I personally am a little disheartened. Not so much by the specter of The Second Great Depression (which is real and growing) but by this wonderful country’s paralysis in the face of grave danger. (The situation in education is close to hopeless.)

 

Have we, the French, learned nothing at all in the past century?

News from the English Front: a recap from the past year

As the government struggles to reform education in the face of strikes and demonstrations, one cannot help but wonder whether change is possible at all in this country.

And yet, some things have evolved. Here are some of the changes, for better or for worse, that we've seen in education in the past couple of years, with a focus on English teaching. (see also  News from the English front from the Sorbonne Confidential Blog) .

1) The oral lecture in French (leçon orale) was eliminated from the agrégation d'anglais, thus removing the biggest obstacle to native English speakers and most counter-productive exercise for future teachers. (The 200-year-old French dissertation still remains.)

2) As of this year, primary school children no longer attend school on Saturday

3) Both Nicolas Sarkozy and Xavier Darcos publicly stated that French children must learn to speak English

4) Xavier Darcos launched free tutoring and extra classes for children during school vacations, including in English

5) Primary school teachers need no qualification whatsoever to teach English as of this year. (Xavier Darcos is pinning his hopes on video conference technology to make up for the lack of competent language teachers in primary school)

6) President Sarkozy, Education Minister Darcos and Higher Education Minister Pécresse have all publicly recognized the urgent need to change the system for recruiting teachers and managing their careers

7) The government granted university presidents  limited autonomy

8) The government challenged the role of the IUFM in preparing teachers

9) The government attempted to change the status of university teachers-researchers, which since the 1984 law passed by Mitterrand, have been considered to be civil servants like any other

10) Massive strikes and demonstrations have followed and are ongoing.

"Autonomy is the solution to save the universities", an insightful Le Monde article by Mathias Fink

A lot of nonsense has been written about the university reform, so it's refreshing to read a straightforward analysis. This is from a Le Monde interview with Mathias Fink, the physicist who holds the Technological Innovation Chair at the Collège de France.

 

Fink explains that research is regularly evaluated in other countries and that this is normal and desirable. Likewise research hours should be adapted and researchers should teach since "teaching helps the researcher to synthesize his knowledge and to attract young people to the field."

 

Here is the interview with Mathias Fink:

Vous associez-vous aux protestations des enseignants-chercheurs contre la réforme de leur statut ?

Non. Je trouve normal qu'un enseignant-chercheur soit examiné tous les quatre ans. Je suis fréquemment sollicité, par des universités étrangères, pour donner mon avis sur des candidats. En France, il faudrait aussi que les enseignants-chercheurs soient examinés par un comité scientifique, placé sous l'autorité du président de l'université, et comprenant des experts internationaux. Le chercheur à vie est une particularité française, si ce n'est qu'il y en avait aussi à l'Académie des sciences soviétique. Je suis aussi favorable à la modulation de service. Aux Etats-Unis, tous les chercheurs enseignent. L'enseignement aide le chercheur à synthétiser ses connaissances, et permet d'attirer des jeunes.

Mais si j'avais été enseignant à plein temps, je n'aurais pas pu mener mes recherches. Il faut pouvoir faire plus de recherche à certaines périodes de sa vie, plus d'enseignement à d'autres. Certains présidents d'université cèdent actuellement (aux protestations), car ils sont soumis à des pressions terribles et parce que le discours du président de la République, mettant en cause la qualité des chercheurs français, était trop brutal. La science française en mathématique et physique est très bonne. Le problème, c'est l'innovation.

Êtes-vous aussi favorable à l'autonomie des universités ?

C'est la solution pour les sauver, pour que certaines universités deviennent des établissements d'élite, compétitifs. Il faudra au moins dix ans pour y arriver. Mais d'ici là, il ne faut surtout pas détruire le CNRS. Sa nouvelle organisation autour de dix instituts est bonne si son comité de pilotage est ouvert sur l'international.

Quelles autres réformes vous paraissent nécessaires ?

Il faut faciliter la création d'unités pluridisciplinaires. Ce que le CNRS ou l'université ne permettent quasiment pas actuellement. Heureusement, mon labo dépend aussi de l'ESPCI, lieu de recherche et d'enseignement pluridisciplinaire unique. Nous y faisons de la physique, de la médecine, de la biologie. De la recherche fondamentale, et appliquée. La direction trouve ça très bien. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (prix Nobel de physique et ancien directeur de l'école) l'a voulu ainsi. Les sociétés que j'ai créées rapporteront à mon labo le quart de son financement en 2009, en contrats de collaboration et revenus des licences. Ce système est très vertueux.

Et pour stimuler l'innovation ?

Confier l'innovation aux grands groupes est une erreur, car ils ont peur des innovations de rupture. Celles-ci viennent des académiques. Il faudrait un plan français ou européen pour aider les start-up à croître. Sinon, elles sont rachetées par des entreprises, souvent étrangères, et ne restent pas en France

Despite university strikes and demonstrations, Valérie Pécresse presses on with reforms

More demonstrations by university teachers are planned for February 19. Their demand: withdraw the reforms!

Protests focus on greater powers accorded to university presidents, especially concerning the allocation of hours between research and teaching.

(See this morning’s Liberation.)

Why does this worry them? The reason given is that university presidents will reward their friends with light teaching loads, while saddling enemies and trouble makers with more hours.

This may not be entirely false, given the lack of accountability and poor governance which poisons the system. However; it is not the only and probably not even the real reason.

 

The fact is that not all enseignant-chercheurs publish much or anything at all, although all benefit from non-teaching hours allocated to research.

 

 See the taboo-breaking article in Le Figaro entitled Un quart des enseignants-chercheurs ne publient pas. That is, one fourth of the academics who benefit from research hours have not published anything in the past four years.  

 

Actually, the situation is even worse in provincial universities:

 

"La répartition des publiants et des non-publiants varie d'une matière à l'autre : si seuls 19 % des enseignants-chercheurs des sciences dures (mathématiques, physique, chimie, etc.) ne publient pas, ils sont 20 % dans les sciences de la vie (biologie, médecine, écologie) et 28,5 % en sciences humaines et sociales. Des chiffres que Jean-Robert Pitte, ancien président de l'université Paris-IV, considère encore comme trop optimistes. Il estime à 40 % le nombre d'enseignants du supérieur qui ne publient pas. «C'est l'omerta, car personne ne veut l'avouer !», fulmine-t-il. «Aucune sanction n'est possible. Personne ne peut les obliger à faire de la recherche et certains s'en donnent à cœur joie : ils se sont contentés de rédiger leur thèse.» Un enseignant dans une petite université du sud de la France avance même le chiffre de 52 % de non-publiants. Dans celle de Grenoble-II, ils sont 40 %."

 

In this context, the attack against the power of the university president looks somewhat less than totally honest. More like a diversion or an excuse.

Why shouldn't academics who publish their research benefit from more hours for research than those who do not?

 

Is this really a valid reason to block university faculties and threaten to withhold grades from students?

 

 

Next topic

Publish and Perish, the French exception: or are academics really, as Mitterand decided, fonctionnaires like any other?

 

 

« Je valide l’inscription de ce blog au service Paperblog sous le pseudo sorbonne09 ».

University strikes in France: why are CNRS and enseignants chercheurs protesting and what do they want?

Valérie Pécresse's university reforms have provoked a hostile reaction from university presidents, teachers, researchers, and students. Why?

The reforms aim to address several problems, including :

    • very low international ranking of French universities

    • extremely high drop-out rate of students

    * mediocre installations and maintenance of physical plant

    • serious management and governance issues, including a lack of accountability and autonomy in hiring, firing and promoting talent

    * financing difficulties

    * confusion between research and teaching leading to poor results in both

    * talent flight abroad to better run and financed universities

Are the disagreements with the objectives or with specific measures introduced to meet them?

 

Who is protesting and why?

What reasons do protesters give? Are these the real reasons? Or, as often the case here, are certain subjects so taboo that they cannot be dealt with directly?

This is the first in a multi-part series that looks at the crisis in the universities.

For background, see previous article http://www.laurelzuckerman.com/2009/02/sorbonne-paris-iv-votes-unlimited-strike-in-protest-of-reforms-to-teacher-training-and-competitive-e.html and News from the English front.

Rwandan genocide claims two more victims: Kouchner and Péan

Many of Pierre Péan's books have aroused controversy, but the publication of Le Monde selon K appears to be the first time the journalist has set out to destroy his subject, the popular Bernard Kouchner.

Kouchner has been in the public eye since he co-founded Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde in the 1970s. He has served in government since the 1990s and was appointed by the United Nations to administer Kosovo after the war in ex-Yugoslavia. Long a man of the left, he agreed to become President Sarkozy’s foreign minister in 2007, to which the socialists responded by excluding him from the party. Until the publication of Péan’s book he enjoyed an excellent reputation and was much admired.

The reaction and counter-reaction to Péan’s attack on Kouchner’s reputation has been intense.  Many commentators have claimed that Péan’s real argument with Kouchner concerns Rwanda. For a foreign reader this requires some explanation as it goes to the heart of something so strange and powerful in French politics that it is hard to describe without coming across as a nut.

At heart, commentators have pointed out, Péan accuses Kouchner of being “anti-French”.  The reason : Kouchner denounced the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus.

 

« C’est à propos du Rwanda et de la nouvelle politique qu’il mène à l’égard de ce pays depuis son arrivée au quai d’Orsay que je me suis intéressé à ce personnage », explique Pierre Péan dans son livre.

 

 

It so happens that Hutus are francophone and the Tutsis are Anglophone. A normal person might think that this should be irrelevant in the case of genocide, but, bizarrely, is not. See : Le Rwanda et l'avenir de la francophonie, 

 

Why is it anti-French to denounce the perpetrators of genocide?

 

What possible impact could the language of the belligerents play in this tragedy?

 

Please find below links to two kinds of articles.

 

The first include news and commentary which shed light on the situation.

The second are examples of some of the strange attitudes involved (see Strange Attitudes and Bitter Fruit: statements by Jacques Myard)

 

(I will complete both as time and ressources allow.)

 

News and commentary about the Kouchner-Péan "affaire":

 

Kouchner contre-attaque from Libération

 

Péan, le chasseur solitaire from Le Parisien

French foreign minister 'took cash from African dictators' from The Independant

Le rapprochement avec Kigali est la cause de sa charge anti-Kouchner from Libération

Rwanda: la France sommée d'enquêter sur le génocide from rue89

Le Rwanda accuse François Mitterrand et Edouard Balladur d’implication dans le génocide de 1994  from Afrik.com

Download Chronique_Dominique_Franche  Very interesting article by Dominique Franche.

"Etes-vous anti-français? La mission parlementaire censée enquêter sur le rôle joué par la France au Rwanda, Entre 1990 et 1994, a surtout eu pour but de limiter l'information des citoyens et de leurs élus. Voire de les manipuler en les désinformant."

 

Dominique Franche wrote a book on Rwanda called Généalogie du génocide Rwandais

 

Here is the official report:

RAPPORT D'INFORMATION DÉPOSÉ en application de l'article 145 du Règlement PAR LA MISSION D'INFORMATION(1) DE LA COMMISSION DE LA DÉFENSE NATIONALE ET DES FORCES ARMÉES ET DE LA COMMISSION DES AFFAIRES ETRANGÈRES, sur les opérations militaires menées par la France, d'autres pays et l'ONU au Rwanda entre 1990 et 1994

Can French justice reform itself? a look at Outreau two years ago invites pessimism

As French judges continue their strike of indignation, it is perhaps instructive to look back on the Outreau Affair.

In this terrible judicial scandal a young judge name Fabrice Burgaud jailed innocents for years on charges of pedophelia with no evidence whatsoever.

On the basis of false accusations and fabulations and with no investigation or confrontation of witnesses, Burgaud  placed 17 people  in jail, separating parents from their own children for years and wrecking their lives, until 13 of them were finally acquitted.

The worst miscarriage of justice in decades has thus created a precedent, but perhaps not the one reformers were hoping for. The gravest incompetence and abuse of power will receive only the lightest of sanctions.

President Sarkozy's oft criticized demand to eliminate the  juge d'instruction  was in part motivated by the magistrature's failure to enact any meaningful reform or sanction in the wake of the Outreau judicial disaster.

From Le Monde

 Pendant une semaine, Fabrice Burgaud et ses avocats ont réussi à transformer son audience disciplinaire devant le Conseil supérieur de la magistrature (CSM) en procès en réhabilitation. De nombreux magistrats sont venus témoigner en sa faveur.

La note du 20 janvier de la chancellerie, durcissant les griefs à l'encontre du juge, en en faisant le seul responsable du fiasco judiciaire d'Outreau - où treize personnes sur dix-sept ont été acquittées -, a renforcé la solidarité à l'égard de ce magistrat, qui suscitait une certaine gêne, y compris parmi ses pairs. L'annonce de la suppression du juge d'instruction par le président de la République a ajouté au contexte politique du procès.

Curieux renversement. Dominique Lottin, en charge de l'accusation, a laissé les avocats dérouler leur liste de vingt témoins, intervenant de moins en moins dans les débats. En prenant la parole pour son réquisitoire, elle a parlé de Fabrice Burgaud comme d'un "magistrat de qualité", reprenant l'expression du procureur de Paris, Jean-Claude Marin.