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idea of the state to the same extent. I think they developed against
the idea of the state.
Bernard Grossman:
I was wondering, also, if you could elaborate on
students in France, as opposed to American students. My contacts
in the universities, with friends who teach, complain of the lack of
intellectual curiosity in the United States. More people are going in–
to politics, and people want to pursue things that are more econom–
ically profitable. They might consider a discussion like this a waste
of time .
Dominique Schnapper:
Am I hearing Allan Bloom now?
Bernard Grossman:
Yes, but my experience is that he is correct.
Dominique Schnapper:
That's a large subject. There is a great dif–
ference between French and American students. French universities
are free . That means that people can stay in universities for many
years, spending very little money and doing very little work. You
can live with your family and go to the university, and the relation–
ship towards the university is very different. There is more of Latin,
Greek, and the classical tradition left in France, I think, than in
America. But it certainly is decreasing, and more and more people
are going into math. It's a tragedy in a bourgeois family if your son
or daughter, more your son, is not gifted in math. The so-called
university world is really divided into two. You have one selective
part of the university: Les Grandes Ecoles, the medical school, and
Ecole Normale Superieur, which you enter through hard competi–
tion. That's very vigorous and job-oriented. This is little or no unem–
ployment in this group because these students are recruited for even–
tualjobs. And you have the mass of 600,000 to 700,000 students who
go from one place to another, work very little at the university,
under very bad conditions, and who are not students in the
American sense . They have a kind of social status between child–
hood and job. So I think that what we call the cultural tradition is a
bit stronger in France, although we are going in the same direction.
But we always have kept a bit more of the humanistic tradition than
the Americans.
Stephen Koch:
Still, during the sixties and after, France adopted an
approach which until then had been pursued principally in the
United States-namely, virtually universal education for the middle
class. My impression is that was quite new in Europe .
Dominique Schnapper:
No, it was not just the United States; we had
had the same idea for some time. There was a very famous book in
