Friday, Jul. 10, 1964

Breaking the Bachot

From the moment a French baby opens his little Gallic eyes, his ruling purpose in life becomes preparing for the bachot, the grueling baccalaureate exam that decides who shall enter universities and the grandes ecoles, and thus automatically become the elite that will some day rule the nation. The exam was over last week, and in Paris and Marseille milling, delirious teenage students overturned cars, pelted passers-by with flour, bombarded police with eggs, set bonfires on the sidewalks. They were celebrating the end of the pretest tension--and a lot of them were celebrating the fact that this year they knew the questions in advance.

Is Perception Proof? The bachot, or "bac," is drawn up by 30 eminent French professors, who submit it to the Education Ministry. Then the exam goes to the National Printing Office, where no printer sets more than a single line of type. The printed copies are kept in safes until three days before exam time, when envelopes containing the dreaded test are distributed to regional centers. At the same hour throughout the country, the seals are broken to start the trial that every French youth has worked toward for 16 to 18 years.

But in Marseille this time, someone --possibly in the city's famed underworld--had cracked the secrecy. For at least a week before the bachot, parents and children happily paid as much as $300 for the three tough questions on the philosophy section of the test, which turned out to be: "Does perception provide proof of the reality of an object? Is it correct to speak of the lessons of the past? Is liberty of judgment compatible with the necessity of truth?" As word spread to 80% of the local students and to Nice, Corsica, Toulon and Paris, the price dropped to $30. Many Frenchmen found the questions more interesting than the scandal, and abstruse discussions could be heard all over town.

Busy Signal. Police got proof of the fraud only on exam day, but bureaucracy made it impossible to switch to a standby bachot. The decision to change, explained an official of the Marseille test center, could be made only by the exam results to be compared with a student's regular work. Those scoring suspiciously well will get an oral grilling. President Charles de Gaulle was so peeved by the inglorious mess that at a Cabinet meeting he asked his Education Minister: "Alors, Fouchet, and about this bac?" Replied Fouchet, with grumpy high-score logic: "The whole thing would never have happened if Marseille weren't in France."

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