DEALING WITH MERITOCRACY IN DEMOCRACY
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becoming more and more like America" and it's a terrible thing, or
"France will never become like America. Thank God." The American
model is always used. I don't think it's exactly the same for the French
model in the United States, but I think it plays a role.
In
the United States,
as in many other countries of the New World, the construction of the
nation was linked from the beginning to initial and recurrent cultural com–
petition between different immigrant groups. This resulted in the
constitution of culturally dominant and culturally dominated minority
groups. To deal with this problem, the United States has successively pro–
moted different models-the "melting pot," "multiculturalism," and
"affirmative action."
In
France the situation is different: a historically
developed "high culture" has exerted a central influence to develop a
national ideology of integration. At first, it served to assimilate social and
regional groups and foreign populations through colonization, and since
the Second World War has been applied to mass integration. This model is
known as the "Republican model" because it was constructed and first
applied during the Third Republic, in 1871.
The Republican model is characterized as a political regime by the
disqualification of social hierarchies based on privileges acquired at birth,
and the emphasis is on social mobility through work and merit. This is not
so different from the American model.
It
also emphasizes the acquisition
by new members of society of the principles and knowledge that are con–
sidered both part of the French national tradition and of the common
heritage of humanity. It's not based on the idea of the construction of a
"common culture" borrowing elements from different social groups.
It
also emphasizes access to universal principles, and is strongly related to the
idea that rationality is important in the construction of citizenship.
Citizenship is not conceived as a right depending on birth or on member–
ship in social, cultural, or geographical entities, but as the result of a
learning process that partly tears the child away from its family and local
environment to embrace the values of the political community to which
it is going to belong. Theoretically, no differences are made between men
and women, between social groups, between French and immigrants. On
the contrary, the French model is characterized by an explicit stance of
indifference to group differences.
Another main characteristic of the Republican model is integration–
central to the state rather than civil society. Schools in particular have been
conceived as the main agents of these state
aims
by means of a national sys–
tem of primary schooling, which enables brilliant lower-class pupils to
pursue secondary schooling. At the turn of the nineteenth century, as in
other European countries, this became the main road for social mobility.
It was also a powerful means for the state to achieve the cultural unification
