This week, high school students in France are on strike. As you are no doubt aware, they are protesting their learning conditions: overcrowded classrooms, no air conditioning, aging facilities, absent teachers who are either poorly replaced or not replaced at all, interminable school days, and uncertain prospects for higher education because of Parcoursup, the platform used to apply to universities and colleges, which has never really managed to win people over, leaving too many students with the impression—rightly or wrongly—that the doors to their future are already closed.
I’m certainly not going to weigh in on whether the protests in French schools are justified, but I did want to mention this student movement. It hits home because my nephew will be sitting the high school exams—le bac—in Lyon at the end of the school year, and because, I have to admit, it reminds me of my own youth and the strikes during which we, too, demanded a better future. Not to downplay the seriousness of these expressions of civic engagement and protest, but they are, in a way, part of a French education. They are a natural consequence of our fondness for the critical thinking skills we learn in school. I obviously hope that violence does not gain the upper hand and that all the young people involved will remain safe.
I had actually planned on addressing a very different—much lighter—subject in this letter, just before we head off on October break. At The École, we’re right in the middle of admissions season. Between attending school fairs to spread the word about The École, organizing Open Houses, conducting private tours, going back and forth between our two buildings, and guiding families through the application process, Mireille is the busiest person on our team, right now. As we do every year (and earlier and earlier each year, it seems), we’re starting to receive the first applications, and one trend is becoming increasingly clear: The École is particularly popular with girls!
This year, our student body numbers 214 girls and 171 boys—the mathematically inclined among you will already have worked out that this represents a 55% to 45% split. We’re not aiming for perfect gender parity as an end in itself, although certain studies do suggest that a relatively even balance in a coeducational setting can benefit learning. Numbers can be misleading, of course, and a 55/45 split across the school can conceal much greater disparities in individual grades. So we naturally keep an eye on it, and it can sometimes influence our admissions decisions.
Beyond the impact on admissions, I find myself asking: why does The École attract more girls than boys? Well, a few weeks ago, I came across a review of Lois Roman’s book An Inconvenient Widow, about Mary Todd Lincoln (before moving to the States, I had no idea just how vilified she was!) I learned that Mrs. Lincoln spoke French—but that this was not remarkable because, at the time, “French instruction was a normal part of the education of elite women”. Could this image of a prestigious French education for girls have somehow endured, passed down through generations and remained part of the collective imagination?
From student strikes to Mary Lincoln, two very different faces of French education emerge: rebellious and elitist, prestigious yet neglected, and, above all, an education we remain deeply attached to.