24 Workshop on Republic I for High School Students
24 Workshop on Republic I for High School Students
by Louie Kulber
Foreword
The purpose of this final project is to emphasize a facet of French radical Republican Education, creating a progressive education inspired by the Enlightenment that leans deeply into what the French call “culture générale.” Namely, in French high schools or Lycées, students are required to take classes known as the tronc commun, which are core subject classes like History, Geography, French literature, philosophy etc… Unlike in the U.S., France has a national curriculum which all students must follow. There are few key moments in which you can personalize your course load: 7th grade (5ème) when you choose the foreign language you will learn and when you choose to take latin and/or ancient Greek as an elective, and 11th grade (1ère) when you choose to specialize in either the Sciences, Literature and Philosophy, or Economics and Social Sciences.
I have always thought that this education was inspired by radical Republican leaders seeking to forge a country that would free itself of the shackles of absolute Monarchy towards enlightenment and reason. Indeed, like the liberal arts, its goals are to give an individual the opportunity to make themselves into good citoyens, citizens. To be frank, I think the word citizen does not do justice to its French counterpart. The idea of being a citizen gifted with reason or citoyen doué de raison as opposed to a passive subject of a monarch was one of the many advents of the French Revolution. During la Terreur, a period of many beheadings championed by Robespierre (who ended up under the Guillotine himself), people were actually obligated to call each other citoyen.
Returning to French education, the French love their classics. I think this is reflected in the fact that mostly all French teachers know Latin (and depending if they specialized in modern letters or classical letters, they might also know ancient Greek). Starting to study dead languages like Latin or ancient Greek in 7th grade allows for a special connection and bond that students can build on. Truly by getting grammar out of the way in middle school (collège), students once they start Lycée can jump right into ancient texts and engage with authors like Plato and Seneca in a very personal way which is very much so diluted when read in translation. By putting some work into translating, it makes it all the more rewarding to reap the benefits of the passage’s content. In writing this workshop for 11th and 12th grade students whose shoes I was in just a few years ago, I wanted to take this a step further and make this implicit connection between ancient and contemporary explicit–to inspire them to look beyond just what is being said, but how the content is valuable for contemporary life.
I remember in 11th grade when we were reading the Theaetetus (Théétète in French) in which Socrates’ role in the dialogues is compared to the art of midwifery. A passage that struck me was th