The International Baccalaureate: a Study of the Evolution of International Education in France Since 1976.

Abstract

This dissertation deals with international education through a study of the International Baccalaureate. We ask whether the International Baccalaureate can accommodate national educational requirements, and how conflict is resolved whenever it happens to arise. We therefore analyze pressures exercised on the International Baccalaureate and the ways it has responded to these. The pressures identified in this work act at three levels upon the International Baccalaureate: the international, the national, and the local. The first concerns the influence of criticisms leveled against the International Baccalaureate by Third World Governments. The second concerns the development of the International Baccalaureate in France viewed in the framework of the successive educational reforms of the French system, in particular the hostile attitude of the French government toward the International Baccalaureate since the coming to power of the Socialists in 1981. At the third and local level, the implementation of the International Baccalaureate in three Paris area secondary schools of differing types is studied: one public, one semi-private and one private. The Schools' rationale for instituting the program and policies affecting the functioning of it are compared, as are the responses to the disengagement of France from the International Baccalaureate. Interviews with students bear on course profiles, perceived strengths and weaknesses of the International Baccalaureate and responses to Third World criticisms, all of which are analyzed for evidence of institutional influences. We conclude that the International Baccalaureate is required to accommodate national goals, that such accommodation can lead to a strengthening of it, as the impact of Third World countries on the program demonstrates. However, as the case of France shows, the International Baccalaureate cannot thrive in a system which rigidly controls the means of socialization and the way it forms its elite. Nevertheless, within the French system, a sub-culture exists, the American one, for which the International Baccalaureate plays a positive role.