Every year at about the same time, all France waits with bated breath for this ´social thriller´ to unfold which the French ´baccalauréat´ exam has become. In these final days before the ´bac´, tension is at its height. In the Education Ministry and schools alike, for both administrative personnel and teachers, stress reaches exceptional levels. Families undergo the same thing. Because to have or not to have the ´Bac´ in French contemporary social mythology, is of the utmost importance. Fail and all seems lost, but succeed and anything is possible. A national monument and memory lane, a pillar of the French Republic as valid as the Civil Law book or the Bastille Day parade, the ´baccalauréat´, at the outset designed to be the ´bourgeois´ qualification of the restricted elite, has since the 1960s, thanks to a more democratic secondary and university system, become the symbolic diploma for all, a parchment for the masses. This evolution, and revolution, these ´thirty glorious years´ for the ´bac´ have pushed it to the brink of implosion…