Priesthood of the Intellect

Obsessed with cold reason, nimble wit and ferocious examinations, French education is a series of sieves that let pass an ever smaller number of ever brighter students. The final screening is France's finest filter: the apex academies called the grandes ecoles.

Their graduates virtually run France. In fields from art to war, these schools provide the professional training that certifies a Frenchman for the upper ranks of science, industry and the grand corps of key officials who have quietly governed France amid the constant crash of cabinets. Without such training, it is hard to rise--a French Henry Ford is almost inconceivable. France has more than a dozen grandes ecoles, but the most famous and the most important are the Ecole Normale Superieure, tops for teachers; the Ecole Polytechnique, tops for engineers; and the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, tops for civil servants.

Literate Civil Service. All in Paris and all state-run, the three schools last year admitted a mere 458 students. Getting in requires far more than passing bachot exams for university entrance. From the 50% of candidates who pass those stiff exams, a handful of the very brightest stay on at a lycee (secondary school) for two more years of study before tackling the even stiffer exams for grandes ecoles.

Of the three main schools, the one that gave the prewar grand corps its literary flavor is the two-year Ecole Normale Superieure. A stone's throw from the Pantheon, it was created by the French Revolution in 1794 to "teach morals and shape the hearts of young republicans for the practice of private and public virtue." Each year the school accepts about 80 men out of more than 600 candidates. The goal of normaliens, who study either science or literature, is not only a university degree but also the diploma called I'agregation, passport to France's top teaching jobs. In return for a free education, normaliens teach in a university for at least five years.

Famed normaliens include Henri Bergson, Louis Pasteur, Jules Romains and Jean-Paul Sartre. Before World War II, the school also bred Socialist politicians from Jaures to Blum. Even now, De Gaulle's Premier is Normalien Georges Pompidou, a banker-professor who writes books on French writers from Racine to Malraux. Yet he is not typical: in the Fifth Republic, normaliens have lost political influence.

Science & Glory. More important than ever are alumni of the Ecole Polytechnique, another creation of the Revolution near the Pantheon, which maintains the military air given it by Napoleon (motto: "For fatherland, science and glory."). Commanded by a general, and obliged to serve for six years in the armed forces, the school's 600 students observe strict military discipline, wear cocked hats and swords on parade. A.W.O.L. students get a highly deterrent punishment--loss of the right to take an exam.

To be a polytechnicien is to follow such men as Mathematician Henri Poincare, Philosopher Auguste Comte and two French Presidents (Carnot, Lebrun). In a recent year, 1,866 candidates applied; 312 made it. The intensive two-year course focuses on science and math, but also teaches literature, philosophy, English and German. Specialists go on to other fields from ballistics to nuclear physics. Though students get in some judo and swimming, brain stuffing never stops--a graduate's class rank determines his later career. Marshal Petain once remarked of a polytechnicien: "That man knows everything, but he knows nothing else."

In World War I, the Ecole Polytechnique produced four marshals of France, including Foch and Joffre. Today, 52 polytechniciens are generals, but far more are serving in science and industry. Business scouts them as the Guide Michelin does restaurants, and France relies on them to run nationalized industries from autos to aircraft to radio and TV. On one list of "100 men who run France," 19 were polytechniciens--men such as Jacques Rueff, France's top economic planner.

Purebred Watchdogs. But even polytechniciens cannot match the soaring status of the young Ecole Nationale d'Administration, founded by De Gaulle in 1945 to broaden the government by infusing it not only with normaliens and polytechniciens but also with bankers, lawyers, economists and political scientists. In 1961 this blue-chip school, in a handsome provincial building near Saint-Germain-des-Pres, accepted only 60 students, many of them graduates of other grandes ecoles (and all under 26). Yet the government spends three times as much on the school as on the fivefold-bigger EcolePolytechnique. The emphasis is on experience--much of it the gift of 97 skilled professors, including Journalist Raymond Aron and former Minister of Finance Wilfrid Baumgartner. Students spend eleven months in administrative jobs at home and abroad, write detailed reports. They spend another 17 months in Paris at lectures and seminars, in mulling prickly problems and suggesting solutions. Graduates get jobs according to class rank--the best become inspecteurs de finance, the purebred watchdogs of French banking and business.

Of 1,000 E.N.A. graduates, 900 are in key jobs. They range from one 40-year-old full ambassador to Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville. They advise De Gaulle, run Renault, oversee the development of atomic energy, Sahara oil and the Common Market. In 1957 Jean Saint-Geours, then 32, ignored scoffers to push through financing for the Caravelle jet passenger plane, is now No. 2 man at the Treasury. In 1959 Valery Giscard d'Estaing (a product of both the Ecole Polytechnique and E.N.A) became France's youngest finance minister in a century. A 36-year-old aristocrat who writes novels as well as he plays polo, d'Estaing last year got France's U.S. debts paid off in advance.

Excessively Exclusive. The defect of the grandes ecoles is the defect of all French higher education: the number of graduates is far too small for the needs of a rising industrial nation. Only 3% of French students enter universities; only a handful of those reach the grandes ecoles; the bright children of workingmen and peasants rarely get through the sieve.

But if exclusivity is a drag on upper-level French education, at least the graduates enjoy it. "The romance of Stendahl and the realism of Balzac temper our imaginations," says one grand corps veteran, in boasting of the untrammeled power he felt in his job. "A profound knowledge of certain biographies serves as the scheme of our ambitions. Professionally competent, judicially protected, technically irreplaceable, we are the last free men of the contemporary world."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.