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in order to become a bureaucrat or to become a teacher,
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in most parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
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you needed to know German.
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And so the argument has been about France, as well.
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The traditional view is that these the schoolteachers
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gradually, while they're sort of forcing the Virgin Mary
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off the walls of public schools,
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replacing her with Marianne, the female image of the Republic,
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are also bringing French to all of the little kids
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and therefore civilizing France
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and turning French peasants into French men and women;
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or so that is a conventional view.