This Wednesday, June 15, the final year students take their philosophy test. This year, in the oppressive heat, they will have to discuss important current topics. A possibility for them, if they lend themselves to the game, to make the voice of youth heard other than by pushing the song for a NUPES bulletin.
“Is it up to the state to decide what is right?”
On the program: the decision-making power of the State and the insubordination (or submission) of fellow citizens. And for those who don’t want to risk themselves on these controversial subjects, the subject of artistic practices stands like a hair in the soup. As a reminder, students must choose a subject from the three offered to them (two essays and a text commentary). Here are the titles:
For general baccalaureates:
– “Do artistic practices transform the world?”
– “Is it up to the state to decide what is right?”
– Cournot’s text commentary, taken fromEssay on the foundations of our knowledge and on the characteristics of philosophical criticism.
For technological baccalaureates:
– “Does freedom consist in obeying no one?”
– “Is it right to defend one’s rights by all means?”
– Text commentary by Diderot from theEncyclopedia.
After two years spent under the yoke of the health crisis, having to adapt to the sometimes contradictory and liberticidal decisions of the executive, those who have not revised will at least have something to spread out without Plato or Socrates. But is it a good idea?
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“Before writing…”
“… learn to think. Depending on whether our idea is more or less obscure, the expression follows it, or less clear, or purer. What we conceive well is clearly stated, and the words to say it come easily.”wrote Nicolas Boileau in poetic art.
If this health crisis could have, if indeed it is really possible, we “learn to think”, some consider on the contrary that education has (further) deteriorated. Ivan Rioufol, from a more global point of view, even speaks of a “serious crisis of intelligence”.
While Ukrainian refugees show a better level in mathematics than young French people, while Bescherelle is gradually being pushed aside, and France is plummeting in the international rankings, certain teachers and other intellectuals are fighting for the quality of education once again becomes a priority.
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In the meantime, if it is difficult to bet on a clear success of future graduates in this mysterious test that is philosophy, let us recall the words of Rémi Tell about this crisis: “The fight against covidism gives the opportunity to youth to beautify the world”. So, what can be written (without risk) on a copy of philosophy? Given the ambient censorship and the many divisions that have suddenly emerged in our society over the past two years, perhaps it is more prudent not to talk about it.