The New York Times | Study Finds Senior Exams Are Too Basic

"A study of high school graduation exams, rites of passage for more than half the nation's secondary school students, shows that they largely test material taught in the 9th and 10th grades. Such material, the study said, is often taught at the middle school level in other industrialized countries.

The study found that the tests measured very basic material and skills, insufficient for success in university courses or in jobs paying salaries higher than the poverty level, currently about $18,000 for a family of four."

At the moment in France, the seniors are doing their "bac philo" or their philosphy exams for the baccalaureat. It's a big deal, pretty tough, and has just about no analog in the states, where philosophy is a college option and far from common.

Here are some of the questions from the French 2000 philosophy exam:

Time allowed : 4 hours

The candidate will address one of the following subjects:

1st subject : Does art change our relation with reality?

2nd subject : Do the social sciences consider humans as predictable beings.

3rd subject : Using an orderly study, extract the philosophical interest from the following text:

The penchant of instinct is indeterminate. One sex is attracted to the other, thus this is the movement of nature. Choices, preferences, personal attachments are the outcome of enlightenment, prejudices, habit; it requires time and knowledge for us to be capable of love, we only love after having judged, we only prefer after having compared. These judgements are made without our awareness, but they are no less real. Real love, regardless of what is said, will always be honored by man: because, even though love's actions make us stray from our paths, even though love doesn't exclude ...

I stop here because it's getting difficult to translate. Anyway, you get the picture. 4 hours for a philosophy final. How does that stack up against senior exams in the US?