Yup, here comes another pseudo-theory about French people. This one was inspired by discussions around Harvard admissions: very few French students are accepted to Harvard, closely related to the education system where a student’s direction in life is decided very early and the lack of an extracurricular culture. For the same reasons, it is difficult for Chinese students to be accepted to Harvard: schools don’t really have extra-curriculars, and students specialize before they take the big college entrance exam. Are they not ready for a liberal arts education at a large research institution? The numbers coming from each country’s local high schools (as opposed to international schools) are in the single digits every year.
Over the course of my last few months here, I’ve also sensed similar attitudes towards religion and aristocracy in France and China, linked to a general rejection of tradition (or at least old tradition). It was in Britain that I really realized how differently France treats its history: in a country that still has a queen and royal army, aristocracy and ties to the Church of England are integral parts of the culture that you can’t miss. On the other hand, France is a country whose current government stems from a revolution where nobles (and many others) were beheaded by mobs, and who is threatened by the public and religiously symbolic nature of head scarves.
A professor even made the comparison that France is to Britain what China is to Japan. (And, really, you should click on those links.) Granted, France and China have very different histories and cultures. For example, the nature of religion in China is influenced by laws that restrict the practice of religion to be very open, even as things are somewhat changing, not the dogma of the Catholic Church over the State. But I do see similarities in the lack of religiosity and suspicion (?) of religion. The Cultural Revolution and the French Revolution have their parallels, not to mention the relationship between socialism and communism. In addition, the modern histories of France and China have created a culture of defeat: Americans love to make jokes about how the French always lose, and the Chinese mentality is also influenced by the memory of series of crushing defeats. For related reasons, you see both countries having a sort of identity crisis, where you have rejected much of old without creating much of the new for yourself, though that’s happening everywhere these days.
I’m afraid I’ve treated a very serious subject very lightly, since this could easily become a thesis, but there you go. Another pseudo-theory, do what you will with it. One of these days I may blog about my actual research topic!
