Strike...

Almost the entire country is on strike and demonstration today (and I really do mean transport and some teachers included), in order to protest against the upcoming pension reform that the French government needs to implement in order to curb the widening budget deficit.

On a more cheerful perspective, my 'Cours de methodologie' was concluded on last Saturday. It was extremely important to follow this course because the working methods of Sciences Po are vastly different from those of our university. With any social science or even economics, in which there are no clear answers most of them time, the French follow the method of Descartes; that is to say, they attempt to answer a question with a question and so on. Hence in Science Po we work with three methods which embrace the Cartesian philosophy;

Expose

An 'Expose' is an oral dissertation which lasts 10 minutes and is generally centered on a given subject. It needs to be presented in a typical French these anti-these fashion. The structure is as follows:

1. Introduction of the subject and the motion that you would like to address.

2. Thesis - Why this motion should stand?

3. Anti-thesis - Why this motion should NOT stand?

4. Conclusion - Open another possible motion for discussion as a result of your expose.

Fiche de Lecture

This is written assignment that should contain no more than two pages revolving around one or more texts which the professor will assign for reading. It contains:

1. A short introduction.

2. Summary of the key points in the text(s).

3. Your point of view; critique.

4. Conclusion; a possible

All of which should never be written from a personal perspective; ie the use of 'je' or 'nous' is forbidden.

Fiche technique

This is also a written assignment that should also not go beyond the 2 page limit. The 'Fiche technique' is a research assignment with no fixed structure. It requires the students to read widely, but only present the main points of a certain book/paper on the assignment; summarise the book or paper in 3 lines for example (Mission Impossible, I know!). In addition, a critique is also required of the information accquired from the research material.

All of the above are given as weekly assignments; the students will be assessed continously, which is a sharp departure from Universiteit van Tilburg. All of these weekly assignments carry a heavy weightage on the final grade whereas in Tilburg the heaviest bearing on your grade is the final exam. In addition, Tilburg requires its students to conduct extensive research to present a paper for a semester whereas in Sciences Po, the school requires constant extensive research!

It all makes sense considering the library of Sciences Po is the largest in Europe for economics, social sciences and international affairs; we need to maximise the usage of this rich collection! To

round off, here are some pictures of the neighbourhood of the school.