“Passe ton bac d’abord.”
That’s what all French children hear. “Get your diploma first.”
The baccalauréat is the diploma at the end of high school. It’s the same exam with the same questions for every student in a given subject throughout the country, as well as in the outlying islands and nations that are part of France: Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guyana, St. Barthélémy (aka St. Barts) and half the island of St. Martin in the Caribbean; farther north St. Pierre & Miquelon off the coast of Canada; La Réunion and Mayotte in the Indian Ocean; New Caledonia, Tahiti and Wallis & Futuna in Oceania.
Juniors in high school take only one bac exam, and that’s in French (grammar and literature). You could view it, I guess, as a kind of practice exam, like the PSAT that college-bound American students take in their junior year. Except that it isn’t practice. It counts. It counts a lot. All four hours of it. Yes, you heard me right. Four hours! All essays. Which is why American college tests, with their multiple-guess and true-or-false questions, came as such a shock to my daughter when she started college in the States.
The first part of this exam is a commentary of a text - last year a text by Lamartine, Racine, Ionesco or Victor Hugo - and it counts for one-fifth of the final exam grade. A “commentary” is a highly stylized approach to a text, and you better have the formula down pat.
The other part of the exam is a dissertation, which has its own methodology and counts for the other four-fifths of your grade... so it’s really make-it-or-break-it. The topic of the dissertation in 2014 was “Do you expect a novel to transport you into the mind of a character? Base your answer on the texts and works you have read and studied.” Another year it was “Where does the emotion one feels when reading a poem spring from?”
All very philosophical when you’re only 16 or 17.
All subjects besides French are tested in the senior year, which the French call “terminal”. And I’m sure when you’re studying for it, you feel like it may prove terminal. As I said, it’s a huge affair for a student, one that puts your mettle to the test. Not to mention deciding which university will deign to enroll you, and thereby determining - for all intents and purposes - your entire future. Nerves of steel come in handy here, but what teenager has those?
The first senior-year test is always philosophy, and that happened yesterday, June 15. Students have the choice of three questions, it being a free country. Here are a few examples from the past:
- Is moral action possible without an interest in politics?
- Is work compatible with self-awareness?
- Do works of art educate our perceptions?
- Can one be indifferent to truth?
- Is having a choice enough to make you free?
You have four hours. Use them wisely. Few students take less than the full four hours. And God help you if “pencils down” is said before you’ve finished and tied it all together nicely.
Depending on what kind of college studies they’re planning, seniors will be in one filière, one educational lane, or another. For the moment, those lanes are Literature, Economics, Science, Technology or the Arts, although they’ve evolved over the years. The 0-20 grade you get on the philosophy exam will be multiplied by a “coefficient” that varies depending on which lane you’re in: multiplied x7 if you’re in Literature, x4 for economics, x3 for science and art. (Don’t know what it is for technology.) So if you get a 10 on the exam and you’re studying in the Literature lane, you chalk up only 70 points toward the total that will say “Open Sesame” to the School of Your Choice. If you get a 15, you’re up by 35 points to 105 and things are looking rosey.
Are you still with me?
Other subjects also have coefficients - mostly 2, 3 or 4. But philosophy is The King of All Subjects.
There are options you can take to buff up your final bac score. This is where knowing yet another language not on your curriculum can come in handy, including sign language and “regional languages” such as Basque, Corsican or Breton. Also playing an instrument or a sport with proficiency can rack up a few extra points. But you can add on only two such “extras”, so the emphasis is still squarely on the traditional curriculum: math, science, history/geography...
Exams are both written and oral. And scored 0 to 20. If your written score is high enough, you get to go on to the frontal attack of the oral exam, which is another tense moment in and of itself, but most people are happy to have reached that stage
And grading is tough in France. When I arrived at the Sorbonne, with an A- average from University of Michigan, I was shocked at the relative mediocrity of my grades: 10 or 12, which in America would be viewed as average at best. The professor explained that 20 was for God and 19 for the teacher; the most I could ever hope for was 18. All you need to pass the written part of the bac is 10 out of 20. If you get 8, you’re offered a second chance, with different questions of course. As of 12, you get honors. 14 gets you High Honors and 16 will get you whatever comes after High Honors in France.
Passing both written and oral parts is necessary to win the prize. The baccalauréat.
The age of students taking the bac varies, but 17 or 18 is the norm. The questions are the same for all, regardless of age. Last year the youngest candidate was 13; the oldest, 91, a senior citizen who sat down to the exam at the same time as his teen-age grandchild.
Which personally I think merits some kind of celebration, especially if they both pass!
P.S. Given what’s at stake, you can well imagine that knowing what questions are going to be asked would afford you an enormous advantage. And there has been skullduggery in the past. Which explains why the test folders are kept in a safe inside a safe inside a safe, all 60 million copies of them. It also explains why any misprints are not just thrown away but shredded. No dumpster-diving possible.
If you understand French, take a look at this video from TF1: http://lci.tf1.fr/jt-13h/videos/2015/baccalaureat-le-parcours-tres-confidentiel-des-sujets-8620114.html
Added comments 2016:
With the high terrorism alert level this year, the subjects are not the only things being carefully guarded. Thinking that blowing up several hundred high school students might be an easy target for Daesh, this year the students have to be there early (7:20 am for a start at 8 am). They must have valid ID and their bags will be searched, as will those of anyone working in the establishment.
As if those poor students weren’t already stressed out enough!
Subjects for 2016:
Literature
- Are our moral convictions based on experience?
- Is desire unlimited, by definition?
Sciences
- Does working less mean living better?
- Do you have to be able to prove something in order to understand it?
Technology
- To be just (fair), must you obey the law?
- Can we always justify our beliefs?
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