SAPERE AUDE! 321 Sapere Aude! MIREILLE RODDIER University of Michigan 1.0 INTRODUCTION establishment of public instruction was an inher- ently political act, accentuating the “politicization The majority of North American architecture of architectural education” as doubly pleonastic. In schools exist within colleges or departments of effect, far more energy has been spent over the public universities. Most of the rest belong to pri- past forty years on the de-politicization of educa- vate universities. Very few exist as independent tion, architectural education and the consequent professional programs. In light of the historical dif- architecture profession than was ever spent on the ferences between professional schools and public polemical designs that, in the 70’s, tried to shake universities, is it relevant for today’s programs to the profession out of its blissful compliance. hold onto the history of their ideological difference? Phrased differently: is there a greater imperative 2.0 EDUCATING FRANCE for programs subsidized by the state to contribute back to the common interest of the public? From “This supreme ruse of the system, that of the simu- yet another perspective: considering the allegedly lacrum of its death, through which it maintains us in influential events of May 1968 on the educational life by having liquidated through absorption all pos- landscape of North American architecture schools, sible negativity, only a superior ruse can stop”. 1 Thus should the historical if vain struggle of French ar- spoke Jean Baudrillard of the spiraling cadaver of the chitecture students to be annexed to the university French University in the aftermath of May 68. Such serve to remind us of the advantages made avail- unequivocal and defeatist prognostic annihilated the able by Academia’s acceptance of architecture as possibility of resistance: since restoration to a previ- one of its disciplines? This paper aims to locate in ous state was inconceivable, the only tenable pro- a historical lineage some of the paradoxes found gram called for a public display of the rotting process. in North American education today, specifically the While seemingly vindictive, accelerating the decay confusion between means and ends that derived of the university’s remains could have fertilized the from the welding of French literary theory to the ground for a fresh start. Instead, the French educa- vestiges of a bastardized Beaux-Arts model. In or- tional system suffered through three more decades der to do so, it traces the separation back to 18th of successive reforms, increasingly frequent and in- century France, where the fundamentally different consequent, maintaining on life support the specter ends between the technical training of professionals of an educational system that would, by comparison, and the liberal education of citizens were explicitly portray Baudrillard’s cadaver as youthful and vigor- formulated. By reiterating the purpose of education ous. The 1970’s saw the emergence of a systematic as defined by the thinkers of the Enlightenment, “fuite des cerveaux” (brain drain) pattern, deplet- the following pages aim to caution against reduc- ing the French university of its intellectual elite to ing the distance between the ends of architectural the benefit of foreign institutions, particularly North education and what should only be the means of American ones. But the focus of this paper is not on getting there. They also serve to remind us that the the current sad state of the French university. What 322 WHERE DO YOU STAND is being emphasized here is the fact that, despite its versity’s Faculty of Letters, the government never relatively disastrous state, the French university has granted architecture students their wish to, as Ro- concurrently been on the receiving end of a domes- land Castro phrased it, “become intellectuals”. 3 As tic “fuite des cerveaux”, one deserting the profes- emblematic as it is of the intrinsic political nature sional schools of architecture in favor of academic of architecture and of the anxiety that its influence posts, for those qualified as researchers, leaving the enables, it is also telling of a cultural incompat- instruction of future architects almost exclusively in ibility between scholarly education and professional the hands of professionals.2 The two-fold observation formation that finds its origins in antiquity. this reveals will necessitate some historical scrutiny. First, the exclusion of professional schools from the From the early days of the Greco-Roman empire university is indicative of a still prevailing reality: no- until the middle ages, higher education schooled where is the separation of theory and practice more the aristocratic elite primarily in the subjects of the deeply engrained than in the French education sys- Trivium—rhetoric, grammar and dialectic, inculcat- tem. Second, the privileged cultural status accorded ing the future politicians and leaders with the abil- to thinking over making is as much a product of the ity to reason and debate, and only subsidiarily, of education system as that system was once the prod- the Quadrivium—arithmetics, geometry, music and uct of deliberately instituted priorities. To recall the astronomy. Together, they formed the seven liberal source of its intentions is to question the prevalence arts. Socially, philosophical knowledge was consid- of these values today. ered superior to applied sciences: general culture aimed to liberate mankind while technical knowl- 2.1 On Mechanical Arts vs. Liberal Arts edge confined one to the practice of a limited craft. Until the Revolution, the only professional schools Aside from a decade —ending in 1892—during having access to higher academic education were which professional schools were under the double those which directly served the political and social tutelage of the Ministry of Public Instruction and organization of the empire: law schools, which pro- that of Commerce, the Ministry of National Educa- vided the society with experts in the art of argu- tion, which oversees higher education, has never mentation, medical and theology schools. administered the schools of architecture. Indexing the fluctuations of the architects’ social standing From the Middle Ages until the Revolution, all between artist and engineer, the education of ar- professional formation occurred directly within chitects over the last century has been placed al- the realm of professional guilds, which benefited ternatively under the responsibility of the Ministry from legal protection and complete control over of Culture or under that of the Ministry of Equip- the transmission of knowledge. Because of finite ment and Transportation, systematically exclud- work opportunities, each professional ‘master’ ing architecture students from the college student would only be allowed to train one apprentice in population under the umbrella of the Ministry of addition to his biological descendents, enabling a Education. Since 1995, the Ministry of Culture and semblance of opportunity for vertical social mobil- Communication has inherited the pedagogical di- ity. However, the highly competitive nature of these rection of architectural education while the Minis- long and strenuous apprenticeships often limited try of Equipment has been renamed the Ministry candidates to those whose family could remunerate of Ecology, Energy and Sustainable Development the ‘masters’. In contrast to the parallel mission of and oversees a significant portion of the profes- the University to grant everyone access to higher sional order of architects. Students of architecture, knowledge and to create an environment in which however, whether of Beaux-Arts or Polytechnic both students and faculty collectively benefited heritage, have systematically decried their exclu- from the highest flow of knowledge transmission, sion from the universities, centers for liberal arts the free market logic of professional apprentice- and science education. While the issue may have ship often hindered ‘masters’ from divulging all of been publically on the table around the events of their “secrets” to apprentices who, on the long run, 68, at the request of the comité de grève de l’école would become competitors to their direct progeny.4 des Beaux-Arts in Paris and officially petitioned in January of 1969 in Nantes where the students This attitude is still significantly observed today, abandoned the local Beaux-Arts to occupy the uni- due to the ever-decreasing opportunities for com- SAPERE AUDE! 323 missions and the unrestricted licensing of profes- and enabled the subservience to industry demands sional architects. With the only scholars among to which these schools are subjected today. The the faculty members leaving architecture schools mandatory —and generally unpaid— yearly intern- for teaching jobs at the university, architecture ships required to receive the governmentally ac- schools are overwhelmingly staffed with practic- credited architecture diploma exemplifies the in- ing architects who are offered little compensation creasing necessity of an employable workforce over other than a cultivated sense of social prestige that the production of a liberally educated middle class. directly benefits their practice. Students can never fully suppress an identity as future competitors. The resistance movement of 1968 was a joined The form and content of teaching diverges from a movement between the working class, the very mutually enriching transmission of knowledge into