PARIS — The French flag will be hoisted at every school in France and the national anthem sung by students at least once a year as part of government efforts to instill in citizens a sense of pride in being French, Prime Minister Francois Fillon announced Monday.
Language training and instruction on gender equality are foreseen for newly arrived immigrants, while new citizens will attend a solemn ceremony and sign a pact listing the duties that go with being French once a law is adjusted to make that possible.
Many of the measures are more symbolic than concrete, but all are the fruit of an often noisy government-sponsored nationwide debate on the French identity that on occasion plunged into racial slurs, often directed at France’s estimated 5 million Muslims.
The debates in 350 locations around the country have been aimed at bolstering France’s national identity in a globalized world and in an increasingly diverse nation that is proud by nature but afraid of losing its bearings.
Critics contend the debate was a political ploy to lure the extreme right into the camp of governing conservatives before elections in March.
Fillon announced that it would not only continue through the remainder of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s five-year term, which ends in 2012, but that new measures to shore up the French identity would be put in place along the way.
