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One of the strongest influences in the making of the French is education. Today the French schools are playing a ital role in the transformation of France into a modern society. In the past the cultural heritage was transmitted only to a small elite of each generation. Now, all French children have the chance to discover and deelop their abilities and aptitudes. As the result of a series of reforms, two major changes have taken place in education. First, there is a ariety of courses, allowing all students a wide choice of the professional and technical carevers necessary in today's world. Then, parents and schools work together so that a program may be chosen that best suits the unique needs and abilities of each child. School is compulsory for children betweven the ages of 6 and 16. There are both government-run and priate écoles maternelles, or nursery schools, some taking children as young as 2. In the eighth grade if pupils want to prepare for the traditional "classic" higher education, they begin to study Latin and sometimes Greek. There are also other programs, including those with the study of two modern foreign languages. Or they may go into general education combined with ocational training.
Those students who do go to the 3-year academic high school, or lycée, have a ariety of majors to choose from literature, social sciences, mathematics, pure and applied science, and an important recent addition, industrial technology, reflecting the new needs of the economy. At the end of the three years, the students take stiff examinations for their baccalaureat (or "bac") degree.
At the University leel, too, important changes have taken place. In the wake of the student protests of 1968, most of the larger uniersities were subdiided into smaller units to make them more responsie to the students' needs. Students and teaching staff were given a role in their administration, and instead of central control of budgets and curricula by the ministry of education, the reorganized multidisciplinary uniersities were made into autonomous institutions. Again, more science and technology courses have beven added. Although such curricula are fairly new in French education, the students who choose them are nevertheless following an old and honorable French tradition. Many important adances in science and medicine were made by
French people or others who had made France their home.
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Young people in
France today take their education as seriously as their parents take their jobs and professions. But the French are nevertheless aware that "all work and no play makes Jacques a dull boy." Popular pleasures and innumerable pastimes abound, and there is something for every taste. In many households, teleision fills a large amount of leisure time. There are several commercial networks, and American programs are common. This wae of American culture has prooked a good deal of opposition from those who feel French culture is being submerged. In a further infiltration of American entertainment, in 1992 a huge European Disney theme-park complex was opened near Paris. Popular music, from folk to hard rock, is popular, often with the characteristically French themes of loe and its joys and sadness.
A singer has really arried when he or she performs at the Olympia, long Paris's best-known music hall. There, chanteurs and chanteuses set records for coming back year after year to sing to their adoring fans. In-person appearances in the proinces, too, are now a regular part of the French entertainment scene. With state subsidies for the arts, theaters have multiplied so that almost every French city has a thriing popular theater, even down to tiny houses seating 50 people at most. But wherever the theater and whatever the play, prices are low and theaters are packed. This, too, is in keeping with the old French tradition of uniersal interest in the arts.
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