2010全球MBA百大排名 [經濟學人]

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這邊是經濟學人在2010.09.17該機構內，所有的資訊做的百大MBA排名公佈。

詳細內容請見原文Which MBA，裡面有各洲的分項排名、評分方法、各校簡介等。報導有說明有些學校沒有排名是因為他們不願意參與或是提供的資訊不完整，較有名的像是英國的Imperial以及美國的UIUC。
 
根據這份排名，前十當中有六名是美國大學，第一名是Uni. of Chicago；其中長春藤名校共有三間，再加上一間加拿大的York Uni.，北美就進榜了七間；另外三間歐洲大學由瑞士、西班牙及法國各搶到一個名次。亞洲方面，前五名由澳洲及香港包辦，其實前十四名也大多是這兩個國 家，另有新加坡兩間，中國、日本、菲律賓各一間。

從報導裡面，有幾個數字可以給想唸MBA的朋友參考，首先是GMAT分數；根據校方自己宣稱的分數，Chicago的平均分數 是717(滿分800)，Stanford則是730；相較歐洲學校稍低，西班牙的IESE 以及瑞士的IMD(International Institute for Management Development，台灣人比較熟的名字是洛桑管理學院，其實只是因為這所學校在洛桑，校名IMD裡面並沒有提到洛桑)分別是683跟671。另外在 幫助校友就業方面(Economist在此項目加權最重，共佔了55%，提供新的就業機會35%以及增加的薪水25%)，Chicago則拿到了最高分， 在有紀錄的11個職業類別中都有校友分布。

在畢業後薪水方面，歐洲幾所名校都有下降的趨勢，其中LBS(London Business School，倫敦商學院，常常有人把這所跟我們學校搞錯。有次去客戶那邊，他問我哪裡畢業，我說LSE但他以為是LBS，我解釋了一番以後，他露出了 「那也不是多厲害的學校嘛」的表情。拜託，LSE也不是什麼鳥毛學校好嗎！)的起薪從09年的美金117,000降到美金100,600，推測是金融危機 的緣故。瑞士的IMD也從美金127,200降到114,415。原本畢業後薪水這項排名，過往都是歐洲學校較高 - 因為學生工作經驗較久也年紀較大的緣故 - 但今年跟美國學校有接近的趨勢，比如說UC Berkeley仍然保持畢業後薪水$108,400，跟去年差不多。

各洲簡單排名如下

北美排名
1 Chicago, University of - Booth School of Business U.S.
2 Dartmouth College - Tuck School of Business U.S.
3 California at Berkeley, University of - Haas School of Busi. U.S.
4 Harvard Business School U.S.
5 Stanford Graduate School of Business U.S.
6 Pennsylvania, University of - Wharton School U.S.
7 York University - Schulich School of Business Canada
8 Virginia, University of - Darden Graduate School of Business U.S.
9 Columbia Business School U.S.
10 Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT Sloan School of Business U.S.
11 New York University - Leonard N Stern School of Business U.S.
12 Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management U.S.
13 Southern California, University of - Marshall School of Business U.S.
14 Carnegie Mellon University - The Tepper School of Business U.S.
15 Yale School of Management U.S.
16 Michigan, University of - Stephen M. Ross School of Business U.S.
17 Hult International Business School U.S.
18 Duke University - Fuqua School of Business U.S.
19 Washington, University of--Foster School of Business U.S.
20 Cornell University - Johnson Graduate School of Management U.S.

歐洲排名
1 IESE Business School - University of Navarra Spain
2 IMD - International Institute for Management Development Switzerland
3 HEC School of Management, Paris France
4 Cranfield School of Management Britain
5 Henley Business School Britain
6 London Business School Britain
7 ESADE Business School Spain
8 IE Business School Spain
9 INSEAD France
10 Mannheim Business School Germany
11 Bath, University of - School of Management Britain
12 Cambridge, University of - Judge Business School Britain
13 University College Dublin - Michael Smurfit Graduate School ... Ireland
14 Warwick Business School Britain
15 EMLYON France
16 Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School Belgium
17 EDHEC Business School France
18 International University of Monaco Monaco
19 City University - Cass Business School Britain
20 Durham Business School Britain

*牛津的Said只排到27，荷蘭名校RSM(鹿特丹管理學院)21

亞洲排名
1 Melbourne Business School - University of Melbourne Australia
2 Hong Kong, University of - Faculty of Business and Economics Hong Kong
3 Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - School of B... Hong Kong
4 Monash University Australia
5 Macquarie Graduate School of Management Australia
6 Nanyang Business School - Nanyang Technological University Singapore
7 Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong
8 Curtin Graduate School of Business Australia
9 Queensland, University of - Business School Australia
10 International University of Japan - Graduate School of Inter... Japan
11 National University of Singapore - The NUS Business School Singapore
12 Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad India
13 China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) China
14 Asian Institute of Management Philippines 
Source

英國復蘇前景堪憂 英鎊沖高破敗大幅回落

已公佈的重要經濟數據及事件

市場綜述
周四歐洲時段，英鎊兌美元呈現沖高破敗走勢。歐市早盤，隨著歐洲股市震盪上揚，市場上的風險偏好情緒有所上升，英鎊兌美元突破1.5900的整數關口，觸及1.5921的日內高點。不過，在基本面利空因素眾多的情況下，英鎊兌美元的漲勢未能持續。英國央行貨幣政策委員會(MPC)委員普森周四表示，即便基於預估的最好情況，英國也應採取更多貨幣寬鬆措施。此外，英國全國房產協會(Nationwide Building Society)周四公佈的數據顯示，英國9月季調後Nationwide房價指數月率上升0.1%，年率上升3.1%，年率增幅為2009年11月以來最低。同時，市場研究機構Gfk NOP周四公佈的數據顯示，英國9月Gfk消費者信心指數由8月的-18下降至-20，低於經濟學家預期的-19，這也是該指數7個月中第6次下滑，顯示消費者對經濟及個人財務狀況的預期更為悲觀。歐市午盤，英鎊兌美元自日內高點持續回落，紐市尾盤跌至1.5669的日內低點。歐洲時段，歐元在強勁的德國勞工數據提振下兌美元維持在高位震盪，歐市尾盤觸及1.3683的日內新高。美國隔夜公佈的第2季度GDP終值、上周初請失業救濟金人數和9月芝加哥採購經理人指數均好于預期，一度打壓歐元兌美元回落至1.3574，紐市午盤過後，匯價又震盪回升至1.3620附近。
焦點直擊
今天歐洲時段，瑞士將公佈8月實質零售銷售和9月SVME採購經理人指數，歐元區將公佈8月失業率。其中，瑞士的經濟數據對匯市的影響可能較為有限，投資者可適當關注歐元區的失業率數據。市場預期歐元區8月失業率將連續第5個月維持在10.0%，如果數據顯示歐元區的失業率有所下降，暗示歐元區的就業市場好轉，進而刺激消費者需求復蘇，歐元也將因此而獲得支撐；如果歐元區的失業率上升，則消費者的需求將被抑制，也意味著歐元區的復蘇道路可能艱難而漫長，歐元將在短線上承壓；如果數據符合市場預期，對市場的影響可以忽略。
即將公佈的重要經濟數據及事件

技術分析                                                          
USDCAD

觀察美元兌加元日線圖，匯價呈現區間震盪行情。從技術指標上來看，MACD（12，26，9）中的主線與信號在零軸下方形成金叉，表明價格將有所調整；RSI（14）位於中軸附近，表現較為中性。在操作上，已經買入的投資者可以繼續持有多單，止損設在1.0000下方，目標可以看1.0600。
EURGBP

歐元兌英鎊隔夜收下影線較長的陽線，價格沿BOL（20）上軌上行，保持著良好的上漲趨勢。從技術指標來看，MACD（12，26，9）中的主線和信號線保持在零軸上方保持上行，RSI（14）進入超買區，指標均向多方傾斜。已經買入歐元兌英鎊的投資者可以繼續持有多單，止損可上移至0.8560，目標看0.8910。
EURUSD

歐元兌美元上周強勢突破了8月6日的高點1.3333，後市有望繼續走強。技術指標方面，MACD（12，26，9）中的主線和信號線在零軸上方保持上行，RSI（14）位於超買區，表明多頭力量強勁。已經買入歐元兌美元的投資者可以繼續持有，止損可設在1.3260，目標看1.4000。
Source

英國房價意外上揚 英鎊兌美元一度站上1.59

2010/10/01 08:56  精實新聞 2010-10-01 08:56:00 記者 金正平 報導 

受到經濟數據良好的因素激勵，英鎊匯價一度走揚，惟稍後則出現漲勢不繼並回貶的狀況。根據嘉實XQ全球贏家系統資料顯示，紐約匯市30日尾盤時，英鎊兌美元貶值0.42%，報1.5716；當日最高升至1.5923，創下8月9日以來新高。 

英國房屋抵押貸款業者Nationwide Building Society 30日公佈，經過季節性因素修正後，英國9月住宅平均價格月增0.1%至166,757英鎊，扭轉前月下滑0.8%的局面；年增率達3.1%，低於前月的3.9%。根據Thomson Reuters調查，經濟學家平均預估9月房價將月減0.3%，年增率減至2.5%。 

以3個月為期而言，9月房價自前月的持平轉為下跌0.9%，為2009年5月以來首度呈負值。英國房價自2007年開始下挫，結束一連多年的大幅攀升局面，2008年則受到經濟衰退以及金融危機的襲擊而進一步走低，2009年3月起逐步反彈。
Source

Britain Is Cautious About Cutting Benefits

Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Lucy Elkin with her children Elsa, age 3, and Oscar, 1.

By LANDON THOMAS Jr.

LONDON — Every week without fail Lucy Elkin, a comfortably middle-class mother of two small children, receives a £33.20 child benefit payment, or about $52, from the debt-plagued British government.

Multimedia

Graphic

British Belt-Tightening

Interactive Feature

The Austerity Zone: Life in the New Europe

“It’s useful and it helps pay the bills, but it is not as if we are struggling to put food on the table,” Ms. Elkin said as she led her children from the park to their house on the leafy fringe of Hampstead Heath, one of London’s most desirable neighborhoods. 

Ms. Elkin, 40, is a freelance writer. Her husband is a computer programmer. Along with more than three million middle- to upper-income British families, they are among the recipients of £11 billion ($17.2 billion) a year paid to mothers with children here. It is a universal benefit that not only costs taxpayers about twice as much as the total for unemployment payments but also represents the largest chunk of the estimated £30 billion ($47 billion) the government pays each year to Britons with above-average incomes. 

“It is one of those things that is quite hard to justify,” Ms. Elkin said.

She is not alone in thinking that Britain can no longer afford such generosities. But even as civil servants and ministers are preparing to drastically cut most categories of government spending to help close Britain’s budget deficit, the government is so worried about alienating middle-class voters that it is proceeding very cautiously in limiting the subsidy for having children. 

“There is a long history of universal welfare schemes here,” said Patrick Nolan, an economist for Reform, a free-market-oriented research organization that has issued a report claiming that as much as 16 percent of total welfare benefits go to those who do not need them. “But it has become a very expensive luxury when hundreds of thousands are losing their jobs.” 

The debate in Britain highlights an issue that other advanced industrial countries are also beginning to grapple with: Who should bear the burden of the coming wave of austerity?

Unless politicians are prepared to dig into the pockets of middle- and upper-income families, experts say, the demands from bond market investors to get government finances under control can be satisfied only by cutting back even further on benefits for the poor and needy. But any serious effort to curb long-established middle-class entitlements risks setting off a public reaction that few political leaders are eager to face. 

In Britain, the quandary is particularly stark. The social safety net that has been an essential feature of British life since World War II ended has been built largely on providing similar benefits to all, like health care and home heating allowances for the elderly, regardless of income. 

Those earning up to £37,400 a year pay income tax of 20 percent per year.

All told, about a third of Britain’s 61 million people claim either a child subsidy or winter heating allowance. Together they represent a formidable political bloc of families and senior citizens that Prime Minister David Cameron was loath to alienate during last spring’s election. 

That helps explain why Mr. Cameron promised not to “means test” the child benefit by limiting it to the poor. He said that payments to the elderly to subsidize television license fees, along with bus fare and heating allowances, would not be touched, either.

Lately, though, the government has begun to signal a harder line. 

At the Liberal Democrat’s party conference in September, Mr. Cameron’s coalition partner, Nick Clegg, made the strongest call yet for cutting middle-class benefits, telling delegates that he would be willing to give up the £2,450 ($3,850) in annual child benefits that he and his wife, who is a corporate lawyer, receive for their three children. 

It remains unclear whether the government will follow through on that suggestion. But there is little question that social protection, as it is labeled in government accounts, has been the locomotive behind the 53 percent increase in overall outlays, adjusted for inflation, over the last eight years. 

This spending spike was driven by previous Labour governments supplying the extra padding to make the British welfare state one of the most accommodating in Europe.

Cuts for the middle class are now on the table throughout Europe, as governments struggle to close budget deficits and reduce debt levels that now average 84 percent of gross domestic product. In France, the government is planning to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62; in Greece, public-sector pensions have been sharply cut, and in Ireland government wages have been reduced by more than 10 percent. 

British politicians are moving very cautiously in limiting benefits like child subsidies or a winter heating allowance.

好萊塢電影常用的一百句英語

1. Stop complaining! 別發牢騷！
2. You make me sick! 你真讓我惡心！
3. What’s wrong with you? 你怎麼回事？
4. You shouldn’t have done that! 你真不應該那樣做!
5. You’re a jerk! 你是個廢物/混球！
6. Don’t talk to me like that! 別那樣和我說話!
7. Who do you think you are? 你以為你是誰？
8. What’s your problem? 你怎麼回事啊？
9. I hate you! 我討厭你！
10. I don’t want to see your face! 我不願再見到你！
11. You’re crazy! 你瘋了!
12. Are you insane/crazy/out of your mind? 你瘋了嗎？（美國人絕對常用！）
13. Don’t bother me. 別煩我。
14. Knock it off. 少來這一套。
15. Get out of my face. 從我面前消失！
16. Leave me alone. 走開。
17. Get lost.滾開！
18. Take a hike! 哪兒涼快哪兒歇著去吧。
19. You piss me off. 你氣死我了。
20. It’s none of your business. 關你屁事！
21. What’s the meaning of this? 這是什麼意思？
22. How dare you! 你敢！
23. Cut it out. 省省吧。
24. You stupid jerk! 你這蠢豬！
25. You have a lot of nerve. 臉皮真厚。
26. I’m fed up. 我厭倦了。
27. I can’t take it anymore. 我受不了了！
28. I’ve had enough of your garbage. 我聽膩了你的廢話。
29. Shut up! 閉嘴！
30. What do you want? 你想怎麼樣？
31. Do you know what time it is? 你知道現在都幾點嗎？
32. What were you thinking? 你腦子進水啊？
33. How can you say that? 你怎麼可以這樣說？
34. Who says? 誰說的？
35. That’s what you think! 那才是你腦子裏想的！
36. Don’t look at me like that. 別那樣看著我。
37. What did you say? 你說什麼？
38. You are out of your mind. 你腦子有毛病！
39. You make me so mad.你氣死我了啦。
40. Drop dead. 去死吧！
41. Get out of here! 滾蛋!
42. Don’t give me your shit. 別跟我胡扯。
43. Don’t give me your excuses/ No more excuses. 別找藉口。
44. You’re a pain in the ass. 你這討厭鬼。
45. You’re an asshole. 你這缺德鬼。
46. You bastard! 你這雜種！
47. Get over yourself. 別自以為是。
48. You’re nothing to me. 你對我什麼都不是。
49. It’s not my fault. 不是我的錯。
50. You look guilty. 你看上去心虛。
51. I can’t help it. 我沒辦法。
52. That’s your problem. 那是你的問題。
53. I don’t want to hear it. 我不想聽！
54. Get off my back. 少跟我羅嗦。
55. Give me a break. 饒了我吧。
56. Who do you think you’re talking to? 你以為你在跟誰說話？
57. Look at this mess! 看看這爛攤子！
58. You’re so careless. 你真粗心。
59. Why on earth didn’t you tell me the truth? 你到底為什麼不跟我說實話？
60. I’m about to explode! 我肺都快要氣炸了！
61. What a stupid idiot! 真是白癡一個！
62. I’m not going to put up with this! 我再也受不了啦！
63. I never want to see your face again! 我再也不要見到你！
64. That’s terrible. 真糟糕！
65. Just look at what you’ve done! 看看你都做了些什麼！
66. I wish I had never met you. 我真後悔這輩子遇到你！
67. You’re a disgrace. 你真丟人！
68. I’ll never forgive you! 我永遠都不會饒恕你！
69. Don’t nag me! 別在我面前嘮叨！
70. I’m sick of it. 我都膩了。
71. You’re such a bitch! 你這個婊子!
72. Stop screwing/ fooling/ messing around! 別鬼混了！
73. Mind your own business! 管好你自己的事！
74. You’re just a good for nothing bum! 你真是一個廢物！/ 你一無是處！
75. You’ve gone too far! 你太過分了！
76. I loathe you! 我討厭你！
77. I detest you! 我恨你！
78. Get the hell out of here! 滾開!
79. Don’t be that way! 別那樣！
80. Can’t you do anything right? 成事不足，敗事有餘。
81. You’re impossible. 你真不可救葯。
82. Don’t touch me! 別碰我！
83. Get away from me! 離我遠一點兒！
84. Get out of my life. 我不願再見到你。/ 從我的生活中消失吧。
85. You’re a joke! 你真是一個小丑！
86. Don’t give me your attitude. 別跟我擺架子。
87. You’ll be sorry. 你會後悔的。
88. We’re through. 我們完了！
89. Look at the mess you’ve made! 你搞得一團糟！
90. You’ve ruined everything. 全都讓你搞砸了。
91. I can’t believe your never. 你好大的膽子！
92. You’re away too far. 你太過分了。
93. I can’t take you any more! 我再也受不了你啦！
94. I’m telling you for the last time! 我最後再告訴你一次！
95. I could kill you! 我宰了你！
96. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! 那是我聽到的最愚蠢的事！(比爾﹒蓋茨常用)
97. I can’t believe a word you say. 我才不信你呢!
98. You never tell the truth！ 你從來就不說實話！
99. Don’t push me ! 別逼我！
100. Enough is enough! 夠了夠了！

France Scores An F in Education

By PETER GUMBEL / Paris Monday, Oct. 04, 2010

French lessons Originally 
designed to level out class differences, France's education 
system instead perpetuates them 

CLAUDINE DOURY / AGENCE VU / AURORA PHOTOS

Every June, toward the end of the school year, a ritual takes place in France that speaks volumes about a nation that is both passionately proud of its education system and, at the same time, deeply worried about why it has gone so awry. It is the publication, in most national newspapers and on dozens of websites, of the questions posed in the philosophy paper that, by tradition, kicks off the baccalauréat school-leaving exams. 


In most countries, philosophy isn't a subject taught in secondary school at all, and even where it is, it tends to be taught as a history of thought, rather than as a discipline to be practiced and perfected. But in France, the land of Pascal, Voltaire and Descartes, philosophy is an integral part of the national school curriculum, and a compulsory subject for the 650,000 students ages 17 and 18 who every year sit the bac. The paper they must take is no SAT-like multiple-choice exercise: the students are required to write well-structured, clearly argued essays that refer to the ideas of past thinkers to bolster their own case. This year's questions included, "Is it the role of historians to judge?" "Should one forget the past in order to construct a future?" and "Can art dispense with rules?" (See the 25 best back-to-school gadgets.)


At a time when nations including the U.S. and Britain have made a priority of fixing their school systems, this French way of doing things could, in an ideal world, be a model. Anchored at the heart of French education are two notions that have become the mainstay demands of reformers elsewhere: the importance of setting high educational standards through a national curriculum and the enforcement of those standards through rigorous testing. Indeed, as part of his Race to the Top campaign to fix failing schools, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has already persuaded more than two dozen U.S. states to back a national curriculum for subjects including English and math. 


But if France, with its high national standards, is a model at all, it turns out to be a severely dysfunctional one — and nobody is more worried about that than the French themselves, who until recently used to boast about having the best educational system in the world. One of France's great strengths is that, unlike the U.S. or Britain, the best schools are public rather than private. That has spawned a tradition of meritocracy under which, in theory, any child from any background, rich or poor, can propel themselves into the elite of society by sheer intellectual prowess. (See pictures inside a public boarding school.)


But while they have been good at producing a relatively small number of extremely bright students who go on to run the country — a vestige of the system's elitism that dates back to Napoleon — French schools are increasingly failing to cater to the much larger number of students who have less stellar abilities. A big surge over the past two decades in the number of adolescents staying on until the end of secondary school has made those failings increasingly apparent, as a slew of official reports has recently highlighted. 


Among the findings: one-fifth of 11-year-olds finishing primary school still have serious difficulty with reading and writing. By the age of 16, almost as many — about 18% — leave school with no formal qualifications whatsoever. In international comparative tests of 15-year-olds, France's overall scores are at best mediocre and have been dropping abruptly in the past decade. Even at the top end, the proportion of brightest kids is lower than it is in many other countries, especially Finland. Most shocking of all, for a nation reared on the concept of égalité, is that school in France isn't the great leveler it was supposed to be, but actually perpetuates social differences. Increasingly it is a place where children from poor backgrounds do far worse than kids from better-off backgrounds. An analysis by McKinsey & Co. shows that the performance of French schoolkids can vary widely depending on their socioeconomic background: especially in math, race and class affect scores even more markedly than they do in the U.S., where the gulf between white, black and Hispanic students has been widely documented.(See pictures of schoolchildren in Detroit.)


In a scathing report earlier this year, the Cour des Comptes, the French equivalent of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, noted that the annual budget for education makes it the single largest area of government spending, ahead even of defense. Yet, said the report, the system is failing many of the 10 million children in its care: "The large number of young people with major problems at school shows that the educational system as it's constituted today isn't capable of responding to their needs." 


Even that much-vaunted philosophy paper has its dark side. An official analysis of the results over the past few years shows that it's the exam for which French students get by far the worst marks, with the average being a failing grade. That in turn has led to a backlash. Student magazine L'Etudiant this summer published a revealing test: it asked 10 philosophy professors to mark the same essay. The wide range of marks that came back, from convincing pass to dismal failure, sparked a storm of controversy, prompting L'Etudiant to call the exam a "lottery," a description quickly picked up by national media.

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All Work and No Play
What's gone wrong? It's a question the French themselves are agonizing over. Typically, much of the debate is theoretical, and there's no sign of a national consensus emerging. France is broadly divided into two camps: traditionalists who blame the troubles on a drop in standards and want to reinforce academic discipline, and reformers who believe that the standard setters and teachers themselves must take children's needs more clearly into account. Neither side has much love for the huge national bureaucracy that maintains oversight over schools, a monolith employing more than 1 million people, of which 200,000 are not teachers, and micromanages to an astonishing degree what's taught — and how — in every classroom in the country. For example, all French 13-year-olds this month are learning how to multiply and divide relative numbers, like (-7) x (-25) divided by (+5), and to identify, in grammar, circumstantial participles functioning as temporal clauses. (Don't ask.)
There have been numerous attempts to slim down and streamline this apparatus, but none has been able to bring about more than cosmetic change. The biggest recent showdown came in the late 1990s, when then Education Minister Claude Allègre, a socialist, branded the educational establishment "a mammoth" and vowed to cut it back. After mass street protests against his plans brought the country to a halt, Allègre got the chop. Since then his successors have been far more cautious in their reform efforts. President Nicolas Sarkozy has stayed clear of substantive educational reform since being elected in 2007. (See pictures of Sarkozy's visit to the U.S.)


One issue that's rarely addressed in the national debate about education is a factor that is immediately apparent to any foreigner coming into contact with the French school system: the unforgiving classroom culture that continues to hold sway in most schools. The emphasis is so heavily placed on the transmission of knowledge that basic pedagogical notions like motivating students to perform well are given short shrift. 


The marking system is by tradition skewed so that it's all but impossible to get top marks, 19 or 20 out of 20, especially for a liberal-arts subject. (12 is a "good" mark for a philosophy paper.) And traditional practices that are on the wane elsewhere still hold strong in France. One is grade repetition: according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), requiring students to repeat a year is a rarity in Asia, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, and it's no longer all that widespread in the U.S. or Britain. Numerous studies from around the world demonstrate that grade repetition doesn't usually help students perform better and often has the opposite effect, demoralizing and stigmatizing them as failures. Overall, the OECD estimates that about 13% of students in its 30 member countries repeat a class. In France, more than 38% of students repeat a grade, three times that average, the OECD says, and some French studies put the number even higher.(Read how German homeschoolers won asylum in the U.S.)


The impact of this forbidding classroom culture is manifested in international surveys of how schoolchildren feel and behave. Compared with their peers elsewhere, French adolescents tend to have relatively low self-confidence and are particularly nervous about making mistakes. One study, by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, tested the reading abilities of 10-year-olds from 45 countries and then asked the children how well they thought they read. The French kids performed reasonably well in the test, reading about as fluently as most of their peers in Europe. But when asked to judge their own ability, they put themselves near the bottom of the pile, only just above children from Indonesia and South Africa, where illiteracy remains widespread. 


International education experts throw up their hands at all this. Andreas Schleicher, head of the OECD's educational division, says France still uses "19th century industrial methods" in the classroom, by which he means teachers are reduced to factory-line workers who must carry out orders rather than be trusted to use their intelligence and training. Hans Henrik Knoop, a Danish psychologist at the University of Aarhus who specializes in education, concurs. He says French teaching methods are "an extreme example" of lingering 19th century practices and calls them "pedagogically catastrophic."(See pictures of a Mandarin school in Minneapolis.)


What's sorely missing is any sense of fun. Unlike in the U.S., school in France provides almost no nonacademic activities to compensate for brainy classroom work. Sports, music and art are afterthoughts, with little or no time devoted to them in the national curriculum; if you want to play soccer or the violin, the thinking goes, you can do that on your own time. But without sports teams or school orchestras, there's little that binds adolescents to their schools. That's clear from the way schools are depicted in popular culture. In France, there's nothing remotely comparable to upbeat movies like High School Musical. One of the few successful recent films about school in France, Skirt Day, stars Isabelle Adjani as a stressed-out teacher who finds a pistol in a student's backpack and uses it to take her unruly class hostage. Only through armed intimidation can she get the class's attention for her lesson on Molière. 


Hard Lesson to Learn
Given the poor and worsening results of the education system, pressure is inevitably building for change. It's coming from above, from policymakers and other authorities, including the Cour des Comptes. So far, it hasn't been a top priority for Sarkozy, who is all too aware of the dangers of attacking the conservative school establishment; over the past 15 years, reform attempt after reform attempt has failed, after provoking the ire of teacher unions and pupils alike. Still, Luc Chatel, the current Minister of Education — the 29th in 52 years — has been cautiously trying to peel back the layers of bureaucracy and, in a series of pilot projects, give schools a touch more autonomy to manage their affairs. It's too early to say what the results will be. So far, the political backlash has been contained.(See pictures inside a school for autistic children.)


But criticism also comes from below, from teachers and parents. One of the nation's top colleges, Paris' Sciences Po, is in the vanguard of change: a few years ago, it changed its entry procedures to allow in bright kids from troubled inner-city schools who don't have great grades at school but are judged as having great potential. That policy, spearheaded by Sciences Po's director Richard Descoings, remains highly controversial. And, as Paul Robert discovered to his cost a year ago, further down in the trenches of the school system, the battles can be just as rude. 


The director of a middle school near Nîmes, Robert tried to bring about a cultural revolution there, including refusing to force students to repeat grades. It backfired: he set off a full-blown teacher revolt and was quickly shifted to another establishment. France is a nation with a storied tradition of thinkers about education, he reflects bitterly, but one that "hasn't succeeded in irrigating the country" when it comes to changing current practices. 


He's right: philosophy can be dazzling, but even in France it isn't nearly enough to guarantee good schooling — and that should give educational reformers in the rest of the world pause for thought.


Gumbel's book on French schools, On Achève Bien les Ecoliers, published by Grasset, is out now

Read more

印度洋上六星級飯店的法式餐廳主廚。他沒有上過一堂法文課，但他的履歷全是用法文寫成。

江振誠只有高中畢業，但他是印度洋上六星級飯店的主廚。他沒有上過一堂法文課，但他的履歷全是用法文寫成。料理沒有國界，只有詮釋方式的不同。
江 振誠，如何以一個台灣人的身分，做出全世界都感動的法國料理？ 印度洋上的六星級飯店Maia，是個私人小島的渡假村。客人多是歐洲皇室或富豪，到渡假村要先坐私人飛機到小島，再轉搭直昇機到渡假村。島上只有30個房 間，最多不超過60個客人，每晚住房新台幣15萬元起跳。

鏡頭繞到廚房裡，穿著白挺的廚師服忙來忙去的，多是金髮白膚的西方人，當中有個唯一留著黑髮小平頭的高大亞洲人，他是Maia的主廚，Andre Chiang。 Andre Chiang，20歲就是間五星級法國餐廳的主廚，曾經2次被《時代》雜誌報導為「印度洋最偉大的料理」，Discovery頻道「2006亞洲十大最佳 青年主廚」、頂級餐廳指南《Relais and Chateaux》「2006全球最佳一50位主廚之一」。

Andre Chiang有個中文名字，叫江振誠，今年31歲，是在台北士林長大的台灣人。

面對理想：同學去玩，他去上班

這 不是一個天才廚師的故事。小時候，江振誠並不是生長在一個富裕的家庭。但是曾經在日本的中國餐廳工作10年的江媽媽，燒得一手好菜。 江振誠在學校裡，便當永遠是最大、最豐富的。江媽媽絕對不蒸便當，都是吃飯前30分鐘，她在家裡馬上炒，騎摩托車送到校門口。每天吃飯的時間，就是江振誠 最滿足的時候，「料理是一個東西Complete your day，讓你覺得今天是很完整的，是一個最原始的感動，這是讓我想當廚師的原動力，」他說。 江振誠，從13歲就在各大飯店打工。高中時，江振誠念的是餐飲管理，每天下午四點下課，他跟同學坐同一輛公車到台北北門。

但江振誠總是先下車，因為他是要到希爾頓上班，同學是要去西門町玩。前後在希爾頓、亞都麗緻工作的歷練，江振誠20歲當上西華法國餐廳的主廚，是有史以來台灣最年輕的法國餐廳主廚。

「他對自己的專業，有著無比的熱情，極富創意和品味，」西華飯店總經理夏基恩(Achim V. Hake)對江振誠印象深刻。 命運在他歲那年來扣門。

當時，西華每年有一次到二次，會請法國有名的廚師來做示範。

江 振誠想盡辦法，邀請當時南法最偉大的廚師Jacques & Laurent Pourcel兄弟來台灣，Pourcel兄弟過來之後，江振誠跟他們共事10天。10天過後，Jacques & Laurent Pourcel就問江振誠，「你要到法國嗎？」江振誠也什麼都不怕地就說，「好啊！」當時，江振誠一句法文也不懂，Jacques & Laurent Pourcel一句英文也不會講，都是靠翻譯溝通。但是江振誠覺得自己可以勝任，沒有什麼事情做不到。「在台灣人家說你很棒、你做得很好，你習慣了這種掌 聲，」江振誠說。 江振誠不知道接下來還要做什麼，要往上爬到哪裡？「在台灣，如果我20歲是這樣，那我30歲要做什麼？接下來是很有限，沒有太多往上再突破的機會，」他思 索著。江振誠把摩托車賣掉，所有的積蓄15萬帶在身邊，重新開始。

到了法國，江振誠每天工作16到18個小時，只睡3到4 小時。第一年一毛錢都沒有，只有個睡覺的地方，沒有冷氣，沒有暖氣。江振誠一年365天都上班，因為一休假吃東西就要靠自己。工作上辛苦之外，壓力最大的 是在Jacques & Laurent Pourcel旁邊，有太多的精英。

能進到這間米其林三顆星餐廳工作的人，都是千挑萬選 精英中的精英，「我根本連洗菜都洗不過人家，」江振誠說。 江振誠，是唯一的亞洲人，其它全部是法國人。所有的人都在看，為什麼這個黃皮膚的人，可以在這裡工作？他有什麼能力在法國工作？ 上班的時候，主廚已經罵到臉紅脖子粗，但是江振誠一句話也聽不懂，主廚已經捶桌子了，但他還是聽不懂。「你很急，你就快崩潰了，但是你還是聽不懂，他要什 麼你不知道，我覺得那是最可怕的，」江振誠說。那一年，江振誠瘦16公斤 ，他吃得很多，但是精神的壓力，讓人瘦得很快。

面對成就：成功很難，不斷成功更難 當所有法國人都用異樣的眼光在看江振誠時，Jacques & Laurent Pourcel的感受比江振誠更大，但他們從來沒有說過要江振誠走路。

「他 都沒有放棄了，為什麼我先放棄。他都沒有說話了，我怎麼可以說，我不想做了，」江振誠說。 從法國人身上，江振誠學到一件事。Jacques & Laurent Pourcel在南法一個小鎮長大，15歲學做菜，23歲開這個餐廳，10年後他們是南法最偉大的廚師，《米其林指南》有史以來最年輕的三顆星法國餐廳主 廚，這是全歐洲廚師的最高榮譽。

但到現在為止，Jacques & Laurent Pourcel也是一天16小時待在廚房中，做他們10年前在做的同一個動作，「成功很難，不斷成功更難，你可以看到他們引以為傲的堅持，」江振誠說。

5 年的磨練過後，26歲的江振誠晉升主廚，代表Jacques & Laurent Pourcel到東京、曼谷、新加坡、上海開系列法國餐廳，負責籌備、訓練人員。 帶領一群比他年紀大、資歷比他久的世界廚師做法國菜，江振誠除了能說四國語言(中文、日文、英文、法文)，更重要的是廚房沒有太多其它的情緒，只有「專 業」二個字。

「今天這個菜好不好吃，是騙不了人的。不管你有5年、10年、20年經驗，東西一炒出來，馬上就知道，」江振誠說。 面對挫折：只要是對的，就跟牛一樣一直做 可以說江振誠很幸運，躍上國際舞台，似乎就是機緣巧合。

21 歲的他，一句法文都不會，就被Jacques & Laurent Pourcel欽點到法國工作。但在這之前，江振誠已經有近10年的廚房經驗，他每天打二份全職的、8小時的工。 Jacques & Laurent Pourcel來台灣時，要江振誠早上五點來，他就五點到，工作到隔天早上，沒有一句怨言。
「我一直不覺得我是個天才型的 人，我很努力，非常努力，」江振誠形容自己，「我是金牛座的人，很固執，自己認為是對的，就一直做，跟牛一樣。」 機會來時，江振誠不會先想這個工作是不是很辛苦，能帶來什麼回報，只要他覺得這件事是對的，他就做。「不能通過挫折考驗的熱情，沒有價值，」這是江振誠最 喜歡的一句話，「每個人都有想做的事情，都有自己的理想，但不是每個人都能通過挫折的考驗。」 現在，江振誠每一、兩年才回台灣一次，每次回來只待一個禮拜。但台灣對他而言，是永遠的家，就像回到小時候，喜歡吃的東西還是蚵仔煎、甜不辣，「那些感動 是不會變的，讓我充滿電，然後再出國，」江振誠說。 料理沒有國界之分。

料理在不同國家，是當地生活的一部份，是在地的歷史、文化、態度跟溝通語言，「好吃的料理是沒有界限的，只是用不同的語言來解釋同一個字，」江振誠認為。

下一步，江振誠希望回掌歐洲市場，在法國料理的家鄉，做出連法國人都拍手叫好的料理。

 [作者： 陳名君　出處：天下雜誌 375期 2007/07]