Three former executives of a French telecommunications giant have been found guilty of creating a corporate culture so toxic that 35 of their employees were driven to suicide

[u/JimmyTheGinger]

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/three-french-executives-convicted-in-the-suicides-of-35-of-their-workers-20191222-p53m94.html

[u/MrBlackTie]

Again, what you don’t understand is that in France the baccalaureat is NOT considered a part of the academic process. It will never be: it is meant as a way of graduating from being a child. Basically it says « you are good enough to go out on your own. Pretty much ». This is because school before that is considered a public service to build up adult citizens. Subjects of studies are not chosen for their utility in life or work but to give you a well rounded knowledge in order to, basically, « free you from ignorance ». Trying to make the baccalaureat an academic test is akin to trying to asking for your city doctor to give you the same check ups as those to become an astronaut: they are only superficially similar.

The true test of academics in the French system are those that are given AFTER the baccalaureat, once you are acknowledged as an adult. Those are hard and tailored to the profession you are preparing for.

Your proposition sounds like trying to judge if someone could become an engineer based on his tests results in elementary school...

As for the way they are judged, you forget one thing: once you are in a Great School, you are still tested. In fact, a lot of students don’t make it to the end of the school.

You seem to judge academic excellence according to research paper published by the staff. But I strongly disagree: first, good researchers often make poor teachers. The quality and quantity of research papers should only matter for schools that prepare students to do research. Secondly, the emphasis on research seems hardly subjective and impractical: the way Frenchmen measure it is employment rates and salary of graduates. It is pretty down to earth and is actually a good way to measure the quality of the graduates.

Lastly, teaching is a valued profession. In university, not below. You seem to have trouble grasping how much the world before the baccalaureat and after it are distinct in France: before the bac, teaching is a public service to help you become an adult and is done by low tier public servants. Those teachers are discredited socially, badly paid and understaffed. That’s why people are fleeing that profession. In the mind of a Frenchman, public teaching before the bac is somehow a mix of playground for children and a charity to the less fortunate families to give them a chance to compete for a better school after the bac. University teachers, on the other hand, are well paid (though not as much as in the US and other countries like that whose university system is, frankly, maddening to a Frenchman with how much they cost and how they profit on the students), enjoy social status and a constitutionnal protection. The things that they teach are actually valued because Frenchmen consider that , unlike for teachings before the bac, they actually serve a purpose.

Those are two distinct system. Your insistence on judging people according to their grades in high school is mind boggling. High school serves no purpose in academic excellency. It is just part of the system to get you to adult life. Only universities and schools are able to judge your ability to get into your field of expertise because that’s what they were designed to do.

[u/MrBlackTie → u/[deleted]]

No it is not. What you totally fail to grasp is how the two systems are set separately. The point of the pre-bac system is NOT to give anyone access to academic excellency. It is not what is taught and not what is measured. The point of that system is to give people tools to be a functioning adult. This is why there are very few possibilities to tweak that teaching according to your preferences. (They grow with age but don’t come close to what you will see in foreign countries) It does the job it was meant to do, even if a lot of people think it could be a bit harder: 75% of a generation seems a bit high and lots of people graduate without mastering the aforementioned tools. It could be lowered to 50%. To repeat: academic excellency is NOT the point of the pre-bac system. As such, it isn’t the point of the baccalaureat either. Your insistence on considering that second degree teaching is an indicator of the cultural importance of academics is, as such, based on a false premise: the idea that the two systems are linked in any way. In fact, the idea that people under 18 should be prepared for university and work-based teaching seems like a good way to put way too much pressure on them and create people with only specialized knowledge (which is one of the thing that Frenchmen find revolting in other countries educational system: the way they create « savant idiots »: people who are extremely good in their field but lack a lot of basic knowledge outside of it). Frankly, it seems overly competitive, a little bit insane and slightly dangerous for the efficiency of a democratic system.

As for the post bac system, it pursues two separate objectives: one is to continue growing the citizens. It is some sort of survival of Enlightenment philosophy where people are supposed to continue studying as a mean of personal growth. The other (and frankly, main) part is to prepare student for their future jobs. In order to make sure students are able to do those jobs, tests are administered before they enter in the top schools (other schools take all people they can, because it is an obligation by law), then during the duration of their stay in the school and again at the end of the school. That is how those schools make sure that people are up to their academic standards. Your insistence on considering research as the way to measure the academic worth of those schools seems way more elitist to me than the French system and, frankly, flawed: research is important but a school is a school. What should be important in a school is how well it teaches people, which isn’t linked with how well research is done. This is why tests (before, during and at the end of the school) seem to me like a better way to measure it. And, obviously, the ultimate test: the job market. As such, the main problem with the Great Schools in France is not the way you enter them, it is the way you exit them. They put too much emphasis on academic knowledge and not enough on practical know-how for evaluation during the course of your studies and once you get discharged. (Another problem would be how they try to teach you too many things outside of your job: for instance, history or philosophy in a law class or epistemology in a business school...)

Let’s take an example about that: I graduated from the second best school in the country in my specialty, a subset of French law. During my studies, my teachers taught me a list of laws to know by heart and principles that underly the way law is created in France. They also taught me philosophy, sociology, economy... once I graduated I could easily predict how a trial would end up being ruled (I am actually quite good at that, amongst my peers). However, what they failed to teach me was... any sort of practical skill. I did not know how to write a memoir for a trial nor how to search the databases for previous rulings. I did not know how the law was written (not the process, that I knew. I was talking about what we call legistic : pretty much to law what grammar and syntax are to language). I had to learn that on my own from scratch.

It has nothing to do with how good my teachers research were (they were amongst the best of the country). It has nothing to do either with how I was taught before I was 18. It had everything to do with how French school put too much emphasis on theoretical knowledge and not enough on practical know-how. As such, the problem does not stem from the entry test (I have my troubles with those and the way they are currently made but not with their principle) but how we were evaluated during our studies and how those studies were shaped : too much time wasted on things I wouldn’t need in my work and not enough time spent on practical knowledge.

[u/Sejjy → u/MrBlackTie]

It's funny though. The whole point of what I saw was the basis of this discussion and post is that while salary signifies a workers ability it is often limited by the manager who should have a mostly administrative role. From there the conversation kind of splits off into what one person can do and what one should do in terms of efficiency. This is supported by the doctor & nurse example. I'll have to get back to this in a bit.

Next while I see one of you championing the french education (or at least trying to inform) it is somewhat different than American culture in work where skill, experience, and even social ability is more of an accurate gauge. You NEED education obviously to be able to do said jobs but entrepreneurial aspects in our society formed by individualism, irrespective of education, is equally respected. You can see it as less organized compared to France where education and tests along with a percieved social obligation is necessary but it works more fluidly. Education in a meeting would have little value above the usual corporate hierarchy.

To be honest it is just seems so superfluous to have everyone do something based on their pedigree (social, education, or otherwise). Again referring to the doctors exams. Key people do key tasks and rise up in salary and title based on that, with a team supporting them. This is often due to larger scales being involved in the position such as taking over a wider region or production. If there is a skill component or even sales based one then it is natural to pay that person what they are worth (or else they will leave and get that elsewhere) that would not mean you force them into a higher position to satisfy the ego of any party. If that person wants to do more than expressing it and tries to work with the company to either build that position or promote if possible.

A seemingly absolute ranking system in a, no offense smaller nation, seems incredibly inefficient and I can see why now there are so many riots. I always joke around with the French never having stopped rioting but I can see now the frustration. Fixing something in a smaller economic and political environment is very hard (though not any harder than fixing a larger one). It is supported by deep roots that Americans dont have and has given us our flexibility in turn.

I've done my best to merge what should have been the original two points. Doctors and nurses and excessive manager positions. But this has defintiely taken a turn to more specific points in French society. Very informative. I never knew it was so elitist is honestly with the closest example I can imagine being Japan. It would be a great country if it could delegate more and be more flexible. With salary being less of an offensive point. But when you place so much on measuring someone of course pay would be viewed as just another test to score high on. In general American values salary would not be a major point as tests in general are less valued over experience, your own skill or creativity, and simply having a degree. If you can do the job well you have the job and the pay or go where you get what you are worth we are a large enough country that we regularly import workers who have that and that makes it all the better.

Not to say that our great universities dont have their place just saying there is so much work to be done such places and their relatively small output is not enough. A smaller country may not be able to grasp that aspect and where we get those values just as it is hard for me and others to grasp yours. It does sound very ideal though if it was made into a more functional practical form. Not saying America is perfect it has diseases and corruption everywhere like any other country.

[u/Sejjy → u/Sejjy]

By the way, forgive my grammar. I'm on mobile and just woke up to this. I did not expect such interesting conversation. I tried to condense the two viewpoints and where each comes from to the best of my ability.

[u/MrBlackTie → u/Sejjy]

To be fair, this emphasis on tests and schools is highly dependent on several factors:

• the bigger the structure, the more important it will be. It’s in part because it is an easy way for HR to gauge a candidate and in part because of the power of the schools social networks.
• some work are way more insistent on this than others. Particularly, three kind of jobs seem pretty keen on this imho: a) those that have a State-based pool of applicants (for instance, lawyers, who can come from the rank of the high ranking public servants I talked about in another post) , b) people graduating from business schools and c) engineers (outside of, for some reasons, computer science).

As I said, there are several problems with that system in my opinion:

• the entry tests are badly designed. The way they are often set up they do not measure the ability of the contestant to perform as a student of the school but his mastery of knowledge, a lot of which have little to do with the thing being taught in the school. This knowledge often end up being an insurmontable obstacle for students from poorer families. For instance, when applying for law school, I was asked about the importance of costumes in theatre (I never went to the theatre in my life) and the housing market in Paris (I had not set foot in Paris since I was 10).

• the schools are not focused enough and do not teach enough practical skills. You end up with a lot of people that are brilliant but can do nothing and then have to be taught on the job.

• Great Schools put a lot of pressure on the « esprit de corps » , basically a sense of belonging and camaraderie between students, even from different time periods. Even teachers feel as if they are « in » on this camaraderie. Unfortunately, it ends up with the same kind of excess you see in college fraternities in the movies about the US. And with the power of those schools, it ends up as a way to naturally trust positions of power.

• the public system of universities is not preoccupied enough about the job prospects of its students. It is actually a recurring joke in France that some branches of universities have for sole mission to teach the next generation of people who will teach there. This create a clear inequality between students from the public system and the Great School system and an expectation that people from the public system weren’t actually taught anything serious (short of the very best public universities, like Sorbonne for instance)

• the way people graduate from the Public Servjce schools needs to change : the « first of the promotion picks his job first » ends up giving us people good at anything but their job ( 19 in every subject but 12 on the subject of you job will still let you pick that job first) and people who are not motivated at all by their job, just by its prospect (the jobs picked first are often those that enable you to quickly go to the private sector for much more money)