Peyre, Crozier, Bereday Discuss Crisis of French School System; 3 'Explosions' Change Education

George Bereday, professor of Comparative Education at Columbia University, began last Tuesday's Forum on Modern France by noting the similarity between a bus, a girl and an educational theory: in each case, another will be along shortly.

The same, it seems, might be said of crises in French education. Henri Peyre, professor of French at Yale, noted that he recalled talk of "crises" in the French school system as far back as he could remember--and there was probably such talk before then that I can no longer remember."

Nevertheless, Peyre agreed with Bereday and Michel Crozier, of the Centre de Sociologie Europenne, in Paris, that French education is on the verge of change.

Three explosions have necessitated this change, according to Peyre. In addition to the population explosion, the great explosion of knowledge and the changes wrought on the country by its collapse in 1945 have contributed to the pressures undermining the old system.

The great increase in the amount of knowledge to be learned means that "you have to rush to get a great deal into a very little space," said Peyre (whose own rapid delivery did indeed get a great deal into a very little space). In addition, this explosion requires that everyone obtain more education than in the past--and so within three years, France will raise the school-leaving age to 16.

When the country's entire governmental structure collapsed in 1945, much of the faith in the old social and educational systems fell with it, Peyre maintained.

Crozier, who spoke before Peyre, had stressed this point sharply. "France is changing from a stable social system and stable educational system to an other kind of both."

The present strong centralization and careful organization of the French school system makes it very resistant to change. Crozier said he was "not maintaining the present selective education. To get higher quality, we need more mass education." In ten or fifteen years, he predicted, "we will have high schools for everyone just like in America."

Crozier's praise for American schooling was questioned by both Peyre and Bereday. Bereday pointed that the French concentrated "on the cultivation of the mind, the pursuit of reason" while American education strives primarily to stimulate individual growth. "Americans are less concerned with what the growth should be than that it should at least take place," he said