Gaspard Monge (1746–1818), a brilliant mathematician but the son of a travelling merchant, was hired as a draughtsman at the Mézières military school in 1765. Despite his universally acknowledged talent, he could not become an officer in the military engineering corps because he was not of noble birth.
End-of-year prize-giving ceremonies were festive occasions, redolent of Sunday best, mothers in veiled hats, long and numerous republican speeches, encouragement to read, and the vindication of prizewinning students who had overcome inequalities of wealth and social rank. Today, they are a relic swept away in the whirlwind of May 1968. Yet even before then, some ministers had challenged them, condemning their excessive individualism: the Concours général was abolished in 1904 (then reinstated in 1921) on the grounds that systematically preparing the students most likely to win prizes was detrimental to the others.
The annual prize-giving ritual will not return: today, it seems impossible to imagine that winning a prize might inspire students to surpass themselves academically. But the disappearance of the ceremony raises the question of what we mean by elitism.
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Equality does not mean levelling down
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