The above is the provocative sub-heading on a Financial Times Magazine article dated 10 May 2013 by Simon Kuper. The main title of the article was fairly mundane: The French Elite: where it went wrong.
Below are some excerpts:
"The French elite is defined by its brains. It’s largely recruited from just two rigidly selective schools: ENA and the Ecole Polytechnique (known to alumni simply as “X”). “Nowhere else in the world does the question of where you go to school so utterly determine your professional career – and the destiny of an entire nation,” writes Peter Gumbel in his new book France’s Got Talent. That’s why some elite members introduce themselves into old age as, for instance, “former pupil of the Polytechnique”.Only 80 students a year graduate from ENA, and another 400 from the Polytechnique. They then get very demanding jobs. “They work hard. It’s not an elite that is just about relaxing,” emphasises Pierre Forthomme, an executive coach who deals with many elite members.
For decades, the elite delivered. From 1946 through 1973, France experienced its trente glorieuses, (nearly) 30 years of economic success. Even in 1990, the elite could still make great claims. It had built the first proto-internet, Minitel; installed Europe’s fastest trains; co-created the world’s fastest passenger plane, Concorde; pushed Germany into creating the euro (which the French elite then thought was the start of European unity, not the end of it); established its own independent military option that many people still took seriously; and continued to imagine it spoke an international language. Rule by brain-workers seemed to work.Since then, things have gone horribly wrong. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the 1960s began pointing out the elite’s flaw: the ruling class claimed to be a meritocracy open to bright people from anywhere but had, in fact, become a self-reproducing caste.This is the tiniest elite of any large country. It lives in a few select arrondissements in Paris. Its children attend the same local schools, starting at age three. By their early twenties, France’s future leaders know each other. They progress from “classmates” to “caste mates”, explain the sociologists Monique Pinçon-Charlot and her husband Michel Pinçon..."
To read the whole article in the Financial Times go to: The French elite: where it went wrong
Below are some excerpts:
"The French elite is defined by its brains. It’s largely recruited from just two rigidly selective schools: ENA and the Ecole Polytechnique (known to alumni simply as “X”). “Nowhere else in the world does the question of where you go to school so utterly determine your professional career – and the destiny of an entire nation,” writes Peter Gumbel in his new book France’s Got Talent. That’s why some elite members introduce themselves into old age as, for instance, “former pupil of the Polytechnique”.Only 80 students a year graduate from ENA, and another 400 from the Polytechnique. They then get very demanding jobs. “They work hard. It’s not an elite that is just about relaxing,” emphasises Pierre Forthomme, an executive coach who deals with many elite members.
For decades, the elite delivered. From 1946 through 1973, France experienced its trente glorieuses, (nearly) 30 years of economic success. Even in 1990, the elite could still make great claims. It had built the first proto-internet, Minitel; installed Europe’s fastest trains; co-created the world’s fastest passenger plane, Concorde; pushed Germany into creating the euro (which the French elite then thought was the start of European unity, not the end of it); established its own independent military option that many people still took seriously; and continued to imagine it spoke an international language. Rule by brain-workers seemed to work.Since then, things have gone horribly wrong. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the 1960s began pointing out the elite’s flaw: the ruling class claimed to be a meritocracy open to bright people from anywhere but had, in fact, become a self-reproducing caste.This is the tiniest elite of any large country. It lives in a few select arrondissements in Paris. Its children attend the same local schools, starting at age three. By their early twenties, France’s future leaders know each other. They progress from “classmates” to “caste mates”, explain the sociologists Monique Pinçon-Charlot and her husband Michel Pinçon..."
To read the whole article in the Financial Times go to: The French elite: where it went wrong