ABSTRACT
France entered the 1980s in a strong position. By comparison with the empire-nations of America and Russia, it was modest in population, at some 50 + millions, but equal to its major European partners, Germany, UK, and Italy, with a faster growth rate. France and England invented the modem nation-state, a political entity that emerged on both sides of the Channel during the late Middle Ages. The French in the 1980s knew they had never had it so good, even if there was a persistent and deep level of anxiety. The French social security system is one of the most generous in the world, but it is by no means untypical. Education served as a kind of fault line for the readjustments of French society in the Mitterrand years, and the fault lines shook, symbolically, in a series of educational crises that reflected the larger social problems of French society.
