Early this morning, all over France, students congregated in front of their high schools to find out the results of last month's bac exams. The schools post the names of the students who succeeded on a big board inside the school. I found this a bit odd. If the student's name is on the board, he/she passed. If it is not, then the student failed. This means that everyone knows who passed and who didn't. Failure is public.
I passed by my Frenchling's school around 11:00 and all I will say is that most appeared both relieved and happy. It's over and they passed and life can move forward. Not everyone was so lucky. I talked to a neighbor and some of her students did not and will have to go to remedial classes.
My daughter went out to celebrate with friends and she reports that some of the results were strange. For example, one of her classmates was the star of the philosophy program at her school and not only got the top grades but was sent to the national competitive philosophy exam. He barely passed the philosophy portion of the Bac. Hard to know exactly what happened but there were several cases like that that had my daughter shaking her head in disbelief.
If I may, for a brief moment, be the proud mother? My daughter passed and did quite well - a good score and a "Mention Bien." I won't embarrass her here by disclosing her grades in each subject but I will say that she got the maximum score on the oral English exam which had me grinning all day long.
In another two years we will have to go through this again with the younger Frenchling. I'm not sure I'll survive it a second time. :-)
1 comment:
It just occurred to me that some of the readers of the blog might not be familiar with the French Bac: what it means, the format and so on. For those of you who are curious here is a link to the Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccalaur%C3%A9at
I briefly glanced at the contents and it seems right but be careful. There are a lot of education reforms in France and information changes often. This article however should be enough to give you the gist.
Bonne lecture!
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