Now That's Entertainment. Depending On How We Define Entertainment

So a French friend and I indulged in a typically French annual ritualistic passtime recently: looking up the questions that were on that year's bac (national exam to leave high school) and trying to answer them. I'm not kidding, the French love to do this and discuss these topics for fun and then look at the Official Answer (because there is, of course, one right answer). Every year, at least 1 French person has done this with me around national exam time and the questions are published in the newspaper. If I remember right, one year the philisophy exam question (this is generally regarded as the most intellectual question that requires the most cleverness to answer) was "why do people work?" This one made even more headlines than the bac philo question usually does.

The questions were (to me, anyway) typically French: abstract, general and philosophical. This gives you a little insight into how the French are taught to think in school, which is endlessly fascinating because it's really different from how Brits and Americans are taught to think. The French academic goal is analysis for analysis' sake: to demonstrate capacity for analysis by giving reasons in favor and in opposition to the question and maybe at the end suggest a possible compromise (general structure: "yes, no, maybe"). The anglophone academic goal is to persuade: choose a position, develop an argument and provide concrete examples supporting your position (for example, "yes, for these three reasons").

To be anglophone and example-driven, here are some concrete examples from this year's exam so you can see just how general, abstract and philisophical they are:

Can a theory be proven?
Does liberty threaten equality?

I think this explains a lot about why anglophone and francophone logic is so different. Put a question about that on next year's bac!