France: The Hope of Reform

The rebel students of Paris are threatening to take to the barricades again when their classes reconvene in November. Nonetheless, there is rising hope throughout France that relative peace may prevail in its chaotic university system. The optimism rests mainly on the promises and proficiency of Charles de Gaulle's agile new Minister of Education, Edgar Faure.

Faure has opened a frank, sympathetic dialogue with student and faculty dissidents. One of his most effective arguments in their view is that he is "presiding over the disappearance in its present state" of the Education Ministry itself. A prime--and wholly legitimate--target of the uprising was the ministry's total dominance of all public education. Some 2,000 functionaries, operating out of a musty building on Paris' Left Bank, control all decisions on curriculum, examinations, admissions and facilities.

Installed in the Bastille. "In the future," pledges Faure, the ministry "will serve as an interlocutor between the universities and the government--but never again as a dictator." As proof of his intentions, he brought in as his top adviser one of the ministry's chief antagonists: Gerald Antoine, rector of Orleans-Tours University. Says Antoine: "A good way to take over the Bastille is to be installed within it."

Faure's open approval of many rebel goals has shocked some Gaullist legislators, as well as traditionalist bureaucrats and scholars. "The Napoleonic conception of the centralized, authoritarian university is outdated," he told the National Assembly last month. "The little empires, the little feudalisms in certain sectors of higher education and research have shown their senility." Faure concedes the validity of student complaints that the examination system is obsolete and arbitrary and that the facilities are inadequate and overcrowded. He is pushing for exams that would be more frequent but more fair, based on testing working knowledge of a subject rather than on rote memorization. He also has promised to provide space for 20,000 new students in Paris this fall.

With the help of manifestos issued by student revolutionary groups, Faure has set aides to work on a "master" education law that will be proposed to the Assembly next month. He plans to recommend the creation of smaller universities (10,000 to 12,000 students each) with American-style academic departments and a de-emphasis of lectures in favor of more "research, discussion, dialogue." He also hopes to prepare more students for these universities by accenting modern science and living languages, rather than classics and Latin, in the lycees (secondary schools).

Little Popes. Such reforms, Faure admits, probably would not have been initiated without last spring's student revolt. He thinks that the only opposition to his reforms will come from "some professors who have become sort of little popes." His biggest worry is that anarchist and Trotskyite students bent on revolutionizing all of French society will incite new violence, no matter what educational reforms are achieved. Even the more moderate rebels are a bit wary of Faure's promises. Bernard Herszberg, leader of SNESUP, a militant teachers' group, deplores the government's policy of "repression on one side and seduction on the other." But he came away from a recent meeting with Faure convinced that he is "the right man for the right job, a man who does not lack imagination."

For a 60-year-old official to earn such praise from a rebel leader is a rarity. But Faure has long drawn admiration for a kind of wily brilliance that proves effective in explosive situations. A feisty, self-confident law professor, he served as a cabinet minister 18 times and Premier of France twice in the revolving-door days of the Fourth Republic, and under Charles de Gaulle. Faure was De Gaulle's chief troubleshooter in handling the colonial clashes with Morocco and Tunisia. He helped forge new French ties with Red China, fought stubbornly to protect the interests of French farmers in negotiating the full integration of agriculture into the Common Market. If he succeeds in reforming French education without another revolt, it might well be his most significant triumph.

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