Not that many Americans understand basic Economics, either

Danielle Scache tries to avoid using the term "capitalism" in her economics class because it has negative connotations in France.

Instead, she teaches her high school students about the market economy, a slightly less controversial term she started using last year after a two-month internship at the dairy giant Danone. That was an experience that did away with more than one of her own prejudices, she said.

"I was surprised to see that people actually enjoyed working in a company," said Scache, who is 59. "Some of them were more enthusiastic than many teachers I know."

"You know," she confided with a laugh, "in France we often think of companies, especially multinationals, as a place of constant conflict between employees and management."

This view of bosses and workers as engaged in an endless, antagonistic tug-of-war goes some way toward explaining the two-month rebellion against a new labor law.

In this world, beyond the political fault lines of left and right, companies and the market cannot be trusted. Any measure that benefits them necessarily hurts employees. The invisible hand in this world is the state, or the "public powers" to use the French term, whose role is to tame companies, protect workers and hold sway over economic growth with public spending.

It is a world that many people here still prefer to live in. In a 22-country survey published in January, France was the only nation disagreeing with the premise that the best system is "the free-market economy." In the poll, conducted by the University of Maryland, only 36 percent of French respondents agreed, compared with 65 percent in Germany, 66 percent in Britain, 71 percent in the United States and 74 percent in China.

The findings suggest that French reluctance to introduce flexibility into the labor market - the embattled new law makes it easier to fire young workers - goes beyond the reform fatigue and nostalgia for the post-World War II welfare state evident in some other European countries. As Finance Minister Thierry Breton put it last week: "There is a significant lack of economic culture in our country."

A survey commissioned by Breton's ministry last month showed that a large majority of respondents failed to identify key economic concepts, from gross domestic product to public debt.

Jean-Pierre Boisivon, director of the Enterprise Institute, a company-financed institute that sponsors the internship program for economics teachers that Scache took part in, [says,] "In France we are still stuck in 1970s Keynesian-style economics - we live in the world of 30 years ago," he said. "In our schools we fabricate a vision of society that is very different from the one that exists in other countries."

...in high schools, the "economic and social sciences" branch - one of three options that is chosen by about a third of all students - appears to dwell more on the limitations of the market and the state's task of addressing those limitations than on the market itself....

[According to] a senior adviser to Breton, "The very concept of economic policy does not exist in our country. We have a social and political vision of history in which the state is the protagonist."

Like teachers, politicians here have perpetuated economic concepts no longer viewed as valid in most Western countries. From President François Mitterrand, who lowered the retirement age in 1982, to Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who introduced the 35-hour week, Socialist leaders have done much to ingrain the idea that the pool of labor is fixed and needs to be shared out.