FOURTH WORLD
31
system of privilege, the advancement of the rich and well-connected.
It was easy for the students to reply that the present selection operates
in similar fashion, that it favors those born and brought up in a milieu
where culture is respected and cultivated. But the student objection
went further: they had a vision of democracy as a continuing series of
chances and options with reorientations rather than definitive elimina–
tions. The Critical University should train people to regard definitive
solutions with suspicion, to remain psychologically free to revolutionize
their lives.
If
this implies that exams should become as much as possible
simple "controls of knowledge" rather than eliminatory competitions,
and that diplomas should be simple certificates of studies accomplished
rather than abstract decorations of merit, the institution of this phase
of democracy would evidently be more difficult to achieve than those
concerning university administration and teaching programs: it indeed
would depend less on the University than on a future revolution in
secondary and primary education.
In the space of a few weeks, the soviets declared a reform of the
University more radical and positive than anything undertaken since
the original French Revolution. Of course, however, nothing they did
ever had any technical legality: that still belonged to the state, and
to the government as controller of the budget; and for some time it
looked as
if
the governmental response was going to take the exclusive
form of police oppression. Then came Edgar Faure's reform bill, a
remarkably progressive document which, if loyally applied, could prove
strong enough to defuse the protest movement by satisfaction of the
reformists and consequent isolation of the revolutionaries. In broad
outline, the Faure Reform grants autonomy to the universities - which
are to become real universities rather than structures of isolated Facul–
ties - accepts the principle of student participation in their governance
and guarantees the right of political debate and student organization
on campus. All of this is necessary and promising, but it has been
formulated in very vague terms. Autonomy, for instance, could mean
little if the Ministry of Education were to keep tight control over the
budget - and, although Faure pushed through, over the opposition
of Gaullist reactionaries, the stipulation that university budgets would
receive only
,ex post facto
audit by the Ministry, and universities are
now allowed
to
do their own fundraising for special projects, it is
unclear to what extent the universities will
be
able to gain the strength
and financial independence necessary to real autonomy. The modalities
of student participation - and also the participation of junior faculty–
in running the universities must also be clarified. Steps have been taken
