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[parispundit]

Most students at public universities could not afford higher tuitions. Many live on social aid already.

Not true, I think. Most French university students come from middle-class or lower middle-class families that COULD, if they chose, afford the tuition, given French incomes and a reported French average savings rate of 15%. Second, tuition cold be combined with a program of either government guaranteed, low or no-interest loans, or direct state loans. American students from families with equally modest incomes manage to go to college at equal rates with French students while paying tuition equal to or higher than 4,000 euros.

[secretweapon]

Most students at public universities could not afford higher tuitions. Many live on social aid already.

Not true, I think. Most French university students come from middle-class or lower middle-class families that COULD, if they chose, afford the tuition, given French incomes and a reported French average savings rate of 15%. Second, tuition cold be combined with a program of either government guaranteed, low or no-interest loans, or direct state loans. American students from families with equally modest incomes manage to go to college at equal rates with French students while paying tuition equal to or higher than 4,000 euros.

Agreed.  French people have very different ideas about what is worth spending money on.  They don't believe in spending money on education, because they believe it should be provided by the state.  They think nothing of spending 70 euro on cheese for Easter lunch, though...  I've had plenty of French people tell me that Americans are rich and life is so hard in France, etc, and I have tried (and usually failed!) to explain that they just choose to spend their money in different ways. 

[frenchdoctor]

I'm using again this thread for iddle chat...

I posted a while ago the "Rap Universitaire" :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e0NVtWTHAU

I'm glad to say that the "Rock Universitaire" exists too :

http://tvbruits.org/spip.php?article1224

It's so good to see academic Revolutionaries use the most beautiful art forms to promote their ideas. The lyrics are, indeed, inspired : "Facs que l'on détraque, on contre-attaque..." Such social awareness ! French academic excellence is here at its best.

[dellaroux]

Quel horreur!

How to bring cultural enlightenment to those who eschew it?

[frenchdoctor]

You can't. It would be considered as cultural oppression. To most French academics, the ideas of Bourdieu -- that culture is an evil instrument used by bourgeois capitalists in order to control the masses -- are still the only truth. That's why the humanities don't formally exist (*) at French public universities. They're only a minor part of social studies.

Mind you, I have nothing against sociology, which is a field like any other. But, in France, social sciences dominate everything, both administratively and intellectually. Politically, as well, since it's incredibly difficult to do anything here when you're not a far-left revolutionary.   

As I already told you, this situation desperates me. I don't care about politics that much ; people have the right to be communists if they want, that doesn't bother me. However, art and literature, as I see them, are mostly beyond social matters. Unfortunately, such conception is rare among French academics. To most people here, the social fonction of art supersedes any other concern. That's why you see scholars, professors, academics marvel at -- and often participate to -- incredibly lame cultural manifestations.

On the other hand, it becomes more and more difficult to study "high" culture (this expression itself would be censored). For example, 17th century studies suffer because it was the monarchy at this time -- meaning such studies are against the People, they are against Freedom. No matter thinking like this is an unbelievably stupid anachronism. Sarkozy himself, during a public address, said how pointless it was to read 17th century novels. Saying so, he was in phase with the dominant left-wing intellectual thought, as pundit Pierre Jourde rightly pointed out (**).

In short, political correctness has now almost entirely replaced good taste.


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(*) And I'm not even talking about religious studies, which are illegal fields in France. Theology is officially forbidden at public institutions -- except at Strabourg because it was German 1905.

(**) http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/blog/pierre-jourde/20090128/10253/manuel-de-destruction-culturelle-2

[daurousseau]

Why not be a far-left revolutionary with good taste? Then you could do something.

[frenchdoctor]

That would solve everything, but I've yet to find one -- at least in French academia. For the time being, I'm afraid we're condemned to crappy rap music.

Right now, I'm listening to Bach concertos. Classical culture is so underground that it feels like breaking a taboo. If someone asks, to avoid the shame, I'll deny and say it's Eminem.

[daurousseau]

Don't find one. Be one. Then the interesting people will find you. (There won't be many, but there you are.)

[frenchdoctor]

But what if I am conservative ? You can't be a revolutionary conservative. Unless you're postmodern, and  therefore think that contradictions in terms are antiquated "bourgeois" concepts. So I could turn myself into a postmodern revolutionary conservative. But can a conservative be postmodern enough to refuse "bourgeois" logic ? Nonewithstanding that, if neo-conservatism is avant-garde, then progressists are necessarily backward -- meaning progressists are conservative as well. So I would have to rethink it all and be a  post-postmodern neo-progressive revolutionary conservative. Or a post-progressive neo-revolutionary modern conservative.

Oh no. I'm starting to write like Jean-Paul Sartre.

To give an idea of the revolutionaries who talk about the revolution during the many, many, many revolutionary meetings that occur at French universities :

http://tvbruits.org/spip.php?article1247

It's one meeting (*) here, at Toulouse, but they are all the same. If you ask me, before thinking about changing the world, they should learn proper syntax and grammar. And the fact that scholars, teachers and academics join in that kind of childish rigmarole befuddles me.

I'm sick of it. I want to be a stylite.


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(*) more precisely, in French,  "une AG" (Assemblée Générale). The "AG" is some sort of collective ceremony during which people worship the revolution. What kind of revolution exactly is an irrelevant question. And yes, they are dead serious. 

[dellaroux]

But what if I am conservative ? You can't be a revolutionary conservative. Unless you're postmodern, and  therefore think that contradictions in terms are antiquated "bourgeois" concepts. So I could turn myself into a postmodern revolutionary conservative. But can a conservative be postmodern enough to refuse "bourgeois" logic ?

So, I have to remember not to read the Forum while in libraries.

This made me laugh out loud--and I know you are completely serious on the one hand, but the concatenation of apt words was just too much.

Trouble is, the wifi spill I've been using at home has dried up and gone away, so I'm mostly going to be online at libraries until I figure out what to do about it.

Guess I'll have to find a carrel when I want to read the Forum...and where in Toulouse? (I didn't get to stay there long at all last month, but do hope to go back in January...would be interesting to see the places you're talking about...)

[frenchdoctor]

Université Toulouse le Mirail. But all departments of social sciences at all french universities are more or less the same. That doesn't mean all students and teachers are left-wing propagandists, only a minority of them. But they are very well organized and know all the ropes.

My plagiarism, unfortunately, is only slightly exaggerated. In France, when things come to politics, we tend to overthink everything. We barely care about issues, but we theorize some sort of pompous socio-philosophico-political gibberish (*) that allows endless variations and arpeggios on the same theme : the Americans did it all, with the help of the Vatican. Wether the Americans obey the Vatican or the Vatican is under the control of Wall Street is another source of heated theorical debates.  The whole thing is even funnier when, like in the link I've provided, novice theoricists can barely speak or write a correct French.

Well, it is not that funny, since such madness paralyzes French academia -- especially the humanities, for the reasons I've mentioned above. You can't imagine the difficulties you have to do anything here when the purpose of your work is a-social and a-political. I've been called a social traitor more than once but, everytime, the same feeling of absurdity strikes me, given the nature of my work. The idea that you can put aside political and social concerns is almost entirely unthinkable in French academia.


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(*) Alain Badiou, professor emeritus at the ENS, is grandmaster of that kind of rigmarole, but you find enthousiastic junior theoricists everywhere.

[daurousseau]

Well, if you don't like blather, the university is not the place to be.

[dellaroux]

Daurousseau, I know you like to be provocative, but have you actually visited or worked in an European setting?

It's not clear to me if you have a basis for understanding what Frenchdoctor is saying...there's blather, and then there's beaucoup de blather....

[ideagirl]

Université Toulouse le Mirail.

Wait, did I already know you were at UTM?! I myself was a student at UTM, back in the 1990s. Wow. Do you guys have toilet paper in the public bathrooms yet? When I was there, the toilet-paper dispensers dispensed individual sheets of some sort of wax paper-like material with approximately no absorbtive characteristics whatsoever.

It's sort of sad that that's the first thing that comes to mind when I think of UTM. Well, that and--on a totally different note--what a good teacher Jean Clottes was. He was teaching prehistoric art.

Toilet paper and famed paleoarcheologist Jean Clottes. This may be the first time in recorded history that both topics have been discussed in the same paragraph. What a postmodern juxtaposition, no?

[ideagirl]

Daurousseau, I know you like to be provocative, but have you actually visited or worked in an European setting?

It's not clear to me if you have a basis for understanding what Frenchdoctor is saying...there's blather, and then there's beaucoup de blather....

Or "un discours blatherissime" (which would be "blatherissimo" in Italian).