The Free School of Political Science, which will become Sciences Po, was born in 1872, a century and a half ago. It has since trained the French elite, preparing them for other Grandes Ecoles, and this school has also changed a great deal. With the sociologist Jean Viard, director of research at the CNRS, we return today to the genesis of the creation of this institution, born to rebuild elites after the defeat of France against Prussia.
franceinfo: This great institution, Sciences Po Paris, what does it represent in France? First in the past. And then today, is it still a beacon here and in the world?
John Viard: It’s a school that was created twice, once after 1870, at the time of the French defeat, because we wanted to rebuild elites. In France, each time we have a defeat, we say: it’s the collapse of the elites. So in 1870, we created the Free School of Political Science at the time of the defeat against Prussia, at the time of Jules Ferry etc. the power of the Republicans, so this is the first period.
The second period is the National Foundation which was created in 1945. There again, it is because the elites were not at the level, they collapsed in 1939, etc., or they collaborated massively, and therefore, we want to renew the French elites. Every time it’s the same thing.
And then, the problem is that it lasted. It’s been going on since 1945, and at some point it’s the grandsons of those 45, that is to say, as it’s been going on for a long time, there are families that develop from father to son or from father to daughter, within a corpus which, basically, reconstitutes a social class. We can almost say it like that.
As a result, Sciences-Po has become the place of an elite which reproduces itself, which closes in on the working class. So for a few years, Sciences Po has opened up, first by going to look for the best suburban high schools, but there, we choose a few elements. It’s not as if we were raising all of France, but it was already a positive gesture, we are 27% scholarship holders.
And above all, now, we have just removed the general contest essay which, basically, is a social class essay. Are you able to write a text that shows that you have the fundamentals, etc.? and we work on file with an oral interview. So I think that’s a real change, let’s say, of social group.
But after, the question of France, it is that we manufacture an elite, after, we go to the ENA, and at this moment, the company does not support it any more. Because, if you have another path, if you have gone to business school, if you have done, I don’t know what training, in fact, you are not going to get high positions and therefore there is no no mixing of cultures, social practices, territories. It’s high-end Parisianism with a few feet in the province of selection. That is the general movement.
That’s why I very often intervened for the abolition of the ENA, because it had become a school of self-segregation, and above all a school that was not a place of research, but a place of learning step by step, which allows you to intervene on agriculture, hunting with hounds, nuclear, HLM. You have your files, I would say, it is an education very largely by file, so unquestionably high level.
And all that means that we are trying to change that, to mix people who will work for the State, to ensure that people who will be in charge of hospitals and work with people who will be police officers, those who will be judges , who will be prefects, those who will be abroad, as diplomats, we are trying to build another way of having, I would say, a more open social group to represent society. But it’s going to take time, and it’s only just begun.
What is interesting is that you are directly associated, when I ask you what Sciences Po represents, with the training of elites?
But it was made for that. And the people who put their children there and the children who choose to go there, that’s it. And if you will, it’s elite training for two reasons. First of all for what they learn, but also for socializing. That is to say that if you are a student at Sciences Po, your colleagues, your friends, your loves, all that, will gradually be part of the same social group. You know, power is a network issue very largely. It matches very well.
But the fundamental question, in France, is the difference between the universities and the grandes écoles. You have big schools – this is also true for Polytechnique – which supposedly produce elites. And then you have the universities, I would say, it’s a bit popular mass. It is this model that must be broken. The question is: how do we put research everywhere, skills everywhere, how do we put the big schools back in order to pull the universities.
There, there is a huge project, which afterwards, is found in our capacities, in science, in research, where young people often go abroad – the good ones – because in France, there there is no respect for the university that you have in the United States or in England. We have a somewhat aristocratic model in education, whereas we are a very republican country. It’s a bit contradictory.