Tunisian students are currently taking the 2024 baccalaureate exams. While they are greatly focused on this vital milestone that will shape their future, a mathematics teacher in France has taken to TikTok to remark on the Tunisian baccalaureate mathematics exam. His comments, nevertheless, are far from flattering.
“Look at the exam that took place in Tunisia yesterday; it will calm you down a lot,” the professor remarked. These words were directed at French students and, understandably, do not mirror well on their Tunisian counterparts. The scene is set for a controversial comparison that does little to uplift the efforts of Tunisian students striving for success.
The following language might be a bit technical for the uninitiated, but it’s worth delving into to understand the whole reasoning of this French professor. In his video, he delivers a detailed critique of the Tunisian baccalaureate mathematics exam:
“First exercise, complex numbers, with a quadratic equation having complicated coefficients. Find a solution and put it in exponential form. Then there were geometry theorems involving AFIW, showing that points are distinct, and then revealing that trunks are rectangles by calculating lengths. Here we have trigonometric forms, non-complex exponential forms—an extremely strong subject to start with, eh,” he explains.
“Exercise 2 was a geometry exercise. It implicated similarities, a bit of affine geometry, symmetry, and a similarity right there. Yes, the baccalaureate in Tunisia is good in 2024. Oriented angles and rotations too, it relaxes, it relaxes, it really relaxes in fact,” declares the French professor.
His comments underscore the complexity and rigour of the Tunisian baccalaureate mathematics exam, contrasting it with the expectations for French students, and indicating that the challenging nature of the exam might be daunting yet ultimately beneficial.
He continues: “An analysis exercise, first part, a function, well it’s a fairly classic function, we examine the sign, the study of TVI variations and then beautiful integrals, but then integrals, integral chairs, it’s a suite of integral ones with some pretty disgusting stuff all the same, it stinks a bit. Well, it fell in the tank. Look, I’ll let you look, it’s…”. “And finally exercise 4. We are on, arithmetic, with an equation, systems in fact uh, arithmetic systems eh, with modules, congruence system, that’s it. To give you an idea of what occurred at the baccalaureate, thus at the final level, yesterday in Tunisia, in 2024. We see the difference with France“, concluded this maths teacher, with a little smile where The irony pitted him against the militia, with this air of having succeeded in his little coup.
Here, another one who laughs at Tunisia, who is having a good time at the cost of Tunisia, who is boosting the morale of French students at the expense of their Tunisian comrades. It’s well known: when we’re feeling bad we tend to look in other paths to find things worse than ourselves to “calm down,” as this teacher says. The level of French students in science, particularly in math, is often singled out… Moreover, France’s ranking in this area is unworthy of its rank (7th world economic power), which clarifies the reforms undertaken by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal when he was briefly Minister of National Education and when he vowed to finish at Matignon.
We must hope that the deleterious political environment gives him time. Nothing is less sure. In the meantime, this math teacher brings up the Tunisian case to give himself a little comfort. Let’s go cheerfully, it doesn’t eat bread. It will in no way fix France’s sores, but this gratuitous and completely anachronistic tackle can permit this teacher to sleep better. The private channel M6 had also in its way attempted collective therapy for France through the setbacks in Tunisia, the exercise was not a success and that is an understatement… To finish – but the debate is far from over – we will simply state that despite everything this professor says, this will not stop France and others from continuing to arrive in Tunisia to pick the brains produced there. by this same educational system that we make fun of. This will not stop France and others from giving visas to Tunisians, at unprecedented levels, in the name of the needs of their businesses and to compensate for demographic decline. But above all, don’t go telling the far right of Marine Le Pen who could take the reins from July 7, and no longer if you like (presidential election of 2027).
