A student union marked on the right was recently moved by the fact that an exam subject written in inclusive writing was offered to law students in Lyon. If nothing prohibits its use at university, it is nevertheless prohibited in secondary education.
“Propaganda”, “invented words”an exam “illegible” : it is an understatement to say that the subject of the exam, given Wednesday, May 10 to law students at the University of Lyon-2, provoked epidermal reactions among those allergic to inclusive writing. At the heart of this emotion, a practical case to solve, which focused on the situation of non-binary people (those who represent gender identities other than the exclusive male-female binary), written entirely in inclusive writing. With, for example, “they” replaced by “als”or professionals by “professionals”.
“Exam papers should not be the place for woke propaganda!“, is indignant on Twitter in the wake of the National Inter-University Union (UNI), a student association classified on the right, while Internet users call to sanction the author of the exam subject, others stressing the supposedly illegal nature of the process, and fearing that the subjects of the baccalaureate, too, will soon be written in inclusive writing.
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The University of Lyon-2 opposed them in a press release published four days later on the educational freedom of teacher-researchers, who are “completely free as to the subjects of examinations and their formulation”. “If the wording of the subject may surprise at first glance, it also invites, in the context of teaching about the family, to reflect on linguistic norms and the way in which they shape the social representations of ties of alliance and kinship.thus indicates Lyon-2.
That closes the debate, at least for higher education. But for secondary education? Will we see, for the 2023 baccalaureate exams, exam subjects written, all or in part, with certain markers of inclusive writing? With, for example, the use of the midpoint, a standardized punctuation mark which allows a large number of words to be matched in gender and number in the French language. Nothing is, in the state, less certain.
The Blanquer circular prohibits inclusive writing in secondary education
In May 2021, the Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer had banned the use of inclusive writing via a circular, explaining that his “complexity” and his “instability” constituted “barriers to language acquisition and reading”. And as the baccalaureate exams are prepared by the ministry, and a new circular has not come since to contradict it, it is unlikely that the ministry’s services will risk it this year.
Some will oppose that a circular is not a law, that its provisions are not immutable. Thus, on March 14, 2023, the administrative justice rejected the appeal of an association which demanded the removal of two commemorative plaques from the Hôtel de ville de Paris, engraved in inclusive writing. “Inclusive writing does not disregard the law of August 4, 1994 relating to the use of the French language” neither “no other text or principle”estimated the administrative court of Paris, arguing that the “circumstances” in which the Blanquer circular, invoked by the association at the origin of the appeal, had been taken, like the letter at the same time from the French Academy also opposing the use of inclusive writing, were “without affecting the legality of the contested decision of the City of Paris”.
Case law on the subject is not yet abundant. And the question, for the future, is not yet decided: in a decision handed down on Thursday May 11, the administrative court of Grenoble decided to cancel the statutes of the language service of the University of Grenoble-Alpes (UGA), on the grounds that they were written in inclusive writing. In its decision, the Administrative Court of Grenoble explains that “in accordance with the observation made by the French Academy (…), the use of such an editorial mode has the effect of making the reading of these statutes difficult even though there is no need in relation to the subject of this text, which imposes, on the contrary, its immediate comprehensibility, does not justify its use”.