History of the Baccalaureat: A study of the interaction between educational legislation, government policy, and language theory in the national language examination (France)

The Baccalauréat, established in 1808, is the French national examination to complete secondary education and determine admission to higher education. In my dissertation I will discuss the development of the Baccalauréat and use the methodology of “reverse engineering” to analyze how the language portions of the examination reflect changes in language theory and language policy. The Baccalauréat was born from the educational philosophy of the Jesuits, the radical reforms of the French Revolution, and the mania for quantification of the Napoleonic administration. In a historical survey I will describe the changes in the governmental policy and linguistic theory and how these are reflected in the construction of the Baccalauréat. In the second part of my research, I will study the French and English exams since 1852; the year modern languages entered the Baccalauréat. I will reconstruct test specifications, i.e., blueprints of a test, using the technique of reverse engineering. This will reveal the infrastructure of the tests, and establish how they have changed over the years. By matching the historical survey with the analysis of the tests, I will demonstrate how the changes in the examination structure reflect changes in language theory, second language acquisition theory and governmental policy.