Reforms and Restraints in Modern French Education

Book excerpt: Originally published in 1971. This book looks at the French educational services. which had been being reformed over the 1960s. The dynamic for change stemmed from population pressures, higher aspirations and students’ dissatisfaction. The author shows how attempts to reform have been limited by administrative, political and cultural restraints. He also explores the whole complex of inter-related professional problems which face the reformers, including the need to revise and modernize the syllabus of work in many subjects, relationships between students and their teachers, and changes in the professional education of teachers. The book will interest all those interested in the working of an educational system and its relationship to the society around it.