DEALING WITH MERITOCRACY IN DEMOCRACY
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current immigrant population is much more diverse and from different
countries. However, the proportion of the immigrant population has not
increased significandy because, as historians and sociologists have shown,
France has always been an immigrant country that refused to acknowledge
that it was.
Another central aspect of the debate-and this all tends to relativize
the idea that it is only the Republican model that furthered integration–
maintains that the model worked well in an expanding economy and that
economic recession and growing unemployment are destroying the basis
of the system, especially for immigrants. The form of integration promot–
ed by the Republican model was said to work because immigrants were
immediately integrated into the economy, even socially and poli tically,
through participation in workers' unions and social movements, even
though they held lower-status jobs.
Another important transformation concerns segregation in housing. For
a long time the Republican model of integration as it worked through
institutions implied that there was a dispersal of foreigners, so that France
had no ghettos as such. But now market principles are at work and the mid–
dle classes have left social housing. In the urban periphery there is a lot of
social stigmatization and a political discourse by the ultra-nationalist move–
ment against immigrants. All these are threats to the Republican model.
How then is the model working in the schools? It is a complex pic–
ture. One can defend the point of view that the model is still working, as
well as that it is no longer does. In fact, it is working on some levels and
not working on others. If we look at today's curricula, we note litde
change. In fact, the curricula of primary and secondary schools have
remained centered on French and European culture. They avoid any kind
of religious teaching, including any kind of formal knowledge about the
main religions in the world. There are few local variations, because there
is a national curriculum, both for primary and secondary schools. There is
a general consensus among politicians and intellectuals-from the Left and
the Right-and from teachers, that it should remain as is, because adapting
the curriculum would create more inequalities. Still, more and more peo–
ple are aware that problems stem also from failing to adapt this curriculum
to different types of populations that are now in secondary schools.
When we ask teachers about how they work in a classroom they tell
us that the principle of "indifference to group difference" is still very
important, and that they refuse to make explici t references to cul tural
dif–
ferences between pupils. In some sense this has a beneficial effect. If we
compare, for instance, success and failure at school, immigrant populations
are faring worse than French ones. If we compare French pupils and immi–
grant pupils from the same social group-such as working-class French
