For would-be gendarmes, knowing one end of a truncheon from the other was never enough to get the job. To join the ranks of France’s finest, one needed a solid grasp of the imperfect subjunctive.

In a sign that French intellectual rigour is not what is was, however, the general knowledge test set for all members of the French civil service is to be made easier and given less weight in the application process. From next year secretaries will no longer be examined on their grasp of 17th-century literature, nor park wardens on the dates of the Jurassic Period.

President Sarkozy has decreed that the tests discriminated in favour of white young men with traditional French educations. “What is the point of a history examination for firemen or police constables with university degrees?” asked André Santini, the Civil Service Minister, who signed a new charter against discrimination this week.

The competitive quiz has long been a rite of passage into the haven of a lifetime job in the police, government ministries, the post office and other branches of la fonction publique, which employs more than 20 per cent of all French workers. Last year 65,000 people, many with degrees, sat the test for a thousand posts as junior clerks.

President Sarkozy’s secretary failed to win an internal contest for a promotion because she did not know the author of La Princesse de Clèves, a 17th-century novel with a long disputed origin, the newspaper Le Figaro reported.

Mr Santini, a Paris politician, said that the general knowledge tests were “being used as a form of invisible discrimination”. The new guidelines are part of a campaign by Mr Sarkozy to dismantle barriers that keep applicants from immigrant backgrounds and poor families out of the state apparatus. Mr Sarkozy has also ended the guaranteed access to plum state jobs for graduates of the elite École Nationale d’Administration.

Ivan Rioufol, the news editor at Le Figaro, said that a basic knowledge of history and culture was vital for civil servants. France was already illiterate enough, he wrote.

—Charles Baudelaire wrote Les Fleurs du Mal, a collection of poems. La Princesse de Clèves was published anonymously in 1678. The author was later disclosed to be Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette.

Testing Times

Example questions for the national Culture Générale test for Gardien de la Paix (police constable). Recruits must hold a Baccalauréat school-leaver’s exam or equivalent:

Into which sea does the Danube flow? Aral, Azov, Caspian or Black (Black)

Who sculpted the Statue of Liberty? Maillol, Buren, Rodin, Bartholdi (Bartholdi)

Which country does not have a frontier with Iraq? Syria, Turkey, Iran, Egypt (Egypt)

In which year was Israel founded? 1940, 48, 58, 61 (48)

Harpagon is a character from a play by which playwright: Corneille, Racine, Molière, Beaumarchais? (Molière)

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