In his general policy speech, the Prime Minister deplored the early requirement for specialization in higher education. He calls for the creation of a transition year.
On the educational aspect that he knows well having taught himself, François Bayrou made an astonishing proposal. He suggested the creation of“a year of articulation between secondary education and higher education, this is what was formerly called propaedeutic”. This proposal arises from an observation: the university system suffers from too early specialization.
This term propaedeutic, which has gradually fallen into disuse, must have taken some French people back to their childhood. The propaedeutic year was a compulsory preparatory course between the baccalaureate and entry to university, between 1950 and 1966. It prepared baccalaureate graduates for higher education. We then used the expression “do your propaedeutic”. According to the dictionary of the French Academy, the term comes from ancient Greek propaideuôwhich means “teach before”.
A disappearance in 1966, during the Fouchet reform
Preparatory higher education certificates or propaedeutics certificates therefore existed for half a century. In mathematics, for example, this consisted of making a transition between the final year program and the more demanding teaching of differential and integral calculus which would occur in the bachelor's degree.
-These certificates disappeared in 1966, after having suffered much criticism. They had become too heavy, containing a program that was often untenable in one year. It was the Fouchet reform which reorganized the system: it made the first university cycle run over two years, which ended with a diploma. In the human sciences, the change is significant: students must choose their specialization (classical or modern literature, history, geography, sociology, etc.) upon entering university and will not be able to change direction along the way.
The debate between proponents of early specialization and proponents of generalist training is therefore not new and has often been the subject of debate in the educational environment. Furthermore, the propaedeutic year still exists in the Catholic Church. It designates the year of spiritual reflection that future seminarians undertake, in order to confirm their vocation to the priesthood.
