Engineering Cultures

Each summer in Paris, an enormous military parade commemorates Bastille Day, July 14 1789, when commoners stormed the royal fortress and wrested power from the King, formally initiating what later became known as the French Revolution. The parade is led each year by 2 year students from the École Polytechnique, the top engineering school in France. At the key moment on the key day when the entire nation is focused on itself and its accomplishments under the leadership of a republican government, France makes its elite engineers visible to an extent found nowhere else in the world. Those engineering graduates who make it into the state administration in fact constitute the highest-ranked occupation in the country. Importantly both those engineers and the majority of engineers employed in lower-status locations in provincial governments or the private sector demonstrate through their work and careers that advanced mathematical knowledge is valued above all else in French engineering training and practice.