title: Culture of France

text: France counts many regional languages, some of them being very different from standard French, such as Breton (a Celtic language close to Cornish and Welsh) and Alsatian (an Alemannic dialect of German). Some regional languages are Roman, like French, such as Occitan. The Basque language is completely unrelated to the French language and to any other language in the world; it is spoken in an area that straddles the border between the southwest of France and the north of Spain.


title: Culture of France

text: Many of these languages have enthusiastic advocates; however, the real importance of local languages remains subject to debate. In April 2001, the Minister of Education, Jack Lang, admitted formally that for more than two centuries, the political powers of the French government had repressed regional languages. He announced that bilingual education would, for the first time, be recognised, and bilingual teachers recruited in French public schools to support teaching these other languages.


title: Culture of France

text: In French schools, pupils are expected to learn at least two foreign languages, the first of which is typically German or English.


title: Culture of France

text: A revision of the French constitution creating official recognition of regional languages was implemented by the Parliament in Congress at Versailles in July 2008.


title: Culture of France

text: France is a secular country where freedom of thought and of religion is preserved, by virtue of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The Republic is based on the principle of "laïcité", that is of freedom of religion (including of agnosticism and atheism) enforced by the Jules Ferry laws and the 1905 law on the separation of the State and the Church, enacted at the beginning of the Third Republic (1871–1940). A 2011 European poll found that a third (33%) of the French population "does not believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force. In 2011, in a poll published by Institut français d'opinion publique 65% of the French population describes itself as Christians, and 25% as not adhering any religion.


title: Culture of France

text: According to Eurobarometer poll in 2012, Christianity is the largest religion in France accounting 60% of French citizens. Catholics are the largest Christian group in France, accounting for 50% of French citizens, while Protestants make up 8%, and other Christians make up 2%. Non believer/Agnostic account for 20%, Atheist 13%, and Muslim 7%.


title: Culture of France

text: France guarantees freedom of religion as a constitutional right, and the government generally respects this right in practice. A long history of violent conflict between groups led the state to break its ties to the established Catholic Church early in the last century, which previously had been the state religion. The government adopted a strong commitment to maintaining a totally secular public sector.


title: Culture of France

text: Long the established state religion, the Catholic Church has historically played a significant role in French culture and in French life. Kings were prominent members as well as head of the state and social order. Most French people are Catholics; however, many of them are secular but still place high value on Catholicism.


title: Culture of France

text: The Catholic faith is no longer considered the state religion, as it was before the 1789 Revolution and throughout the various, non-republican regimes of the 19th century (the Restoration, the July Monarchy and the Second Empire). The institutional split of the Catholic Church and French State ("Séparation de l'Eglise et de l'Etat") was imposed by the latter in 1905 and represented the crest of a wave of the laicist and anti-clericalist movement among French Radical Republicans in this period.


title: Culture of France

text: At the beginning of the 20th century, France was a largely rural country with conservative Catholic mores, but in the hundred years since then, the countryside has become depopulated as people have become urbanized. The urban populations have become more secular. A December 2006 poll by Harris Interactive, published in "The Financial Times," found that 32% of the French population described themselves as agnostic, some 32% as atheist, and only 27% believed in any type of God or supreme being. according to the French Market research Ipsos, Catholics today constitute 57.5% of the French population.


title: Culture of France

text: France was touched by the Reformation during the 16th century; some 30% of the population converted to Protestantism and became known as French Huguenots. Some princes joined the reform movement. But the national monarchy felt threatened by people who wanted to leave the established state religion. Protestants were discriminated against and suppressed. On 24 August 1572, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre took place in Paris and the French Wars of Religion are considered to have begun. this French civil war took place between Catholics, led by Henry I, Duke of Guise, and Protestants, led by Henri de Navarre. Henri de Navarre became king after converting to Catholicism in 1589.


title: Culture of France

text: Louis XIII, Henri IV's son, began to suppress Protestants in violent attacks, such as the Siege of La Rochelle. After Louis XIV revoked the Edit de Nantes in 1685, Protestants who did not leave the country were generally suppressed. Thousands of Protestant Huguenots emigrated from France for their safety and to gain religious freedom, generally going to Protestant nations such as the Netherlands, England, South Africa, and the North American colonies. Their exile continued during the 17th century and until 1787, when religious freedom was re-established by Louis XVI.


title: Culture of France

text: The current Jewish community in France numbers around 600,000, according to the World Jewish Congress and 500,000 according to the Appel Unifié Juif de France. It is concentrated in the metropolitan areas of Paris, Marseille and Strasbourg.


title: Culture of France

text: The history of the Jews in France dates back over 2,000 years. In the early Middle Ages, France was a center of Jewish learning, but persecution increased as the Middle Ages wore on. France was the first country in Europe to emancipate its Jewish population during the French Revolution, but despite legal equality anti-Semitism remained an issue, as illustrated in the Dreyfus affair of the late 19th century. However, through the 1870 "Décret Crémieux", France secured full citizenship for the Jews in then French-ruled Algeria. Despite the death of a quarter of all French Jews during the Holocaust, France currently has the largest Jewish population in Europe.


title: Culture of France

text: In the early 21st century, French Jews are mostly Sephardic and of North African origins. More than a quarter of the historic Ashkenazi Jewish community was destroyed during the Holocaust of World War II after German forces occupied France and established the Vichy Regime. Jewish religious affiliations range from the ultra-Orthodox Haredi communities to the large segment of Jews who are secular and identify culturally as Jews.


title: Culture of France

text: Islam is the third-largest faith in France in the early 21st century. The "Grande Mosquée" was constructed in Paris in 1929 in honour of French colonial troops from North Africa who fought in the First World War. Arabs from North Africa started to settle in France. In the early 21st century, France had the largest Muslim population (in percentage) of any Western European country. This is a result of immigration and permanent family settlement in France, from the 1960s on, of groups from, principally, former French colonies in North Africa (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia), and, to a lesser extent, other areas such as Turkey and West Africa. The government does not collect data on religious beliefs in census records, but estimates and polls place the percentage of Muslims at between 4% and 7%.


title: Culture of France

text: Buddhism is widely reported to be the fifth largest religion in France, after Christianity, atheism, Islam, and Judaism. France has over two hundred Buddhist meditation centers, including about twenty sizable retreat centers in rural areas. The Buddhist population mainly consists of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants, with a substantial minority of native French converts and "sympathizers". The rising popularity of Buddhism in France has been the subject of considerable discussion in the French media and academy in recent years.


title: Culture of France

text: France created in 2006 the first French parliamentary commission on cult activities which led to a report registering a number of cults considered as dangerous. Supporters of such movements have criticized the report on the grounds of the respect of religious freedom. Proponents of the measure contend that only dangerous cults have been listed as such, and state secularism ensures religious freedom in France.


title: Culture of France

text: Modern France is the result of centuries of nation building and the acquisition and incorporation of a number of historical provinces and overseas colonies into its geographical and political structure. These regions all evolved with their own specific cultural and linguistic traditions in fashion, religious observance, regional language and accent, family structure, cuisine, leisure activities, industry, and including the simple way to pour wine, etc.


title: Culture of France

text: The evolution of the French state and culture, from the Renaissance up to this day, has however promoted a centralization of politics, media and cultural production in and around Paris (and, to a lesser extent, around the other major urban centers), and the industrialization of the country in the 20th century has led to a massive move of French people from the countryside to urban areas. At the end of the 19th century, around 50% of the French depended on the land for a living; today French farmers only make up 6–7%, while 73% live in cities. Nineteenth century French literature abounds in scenes of provincial youth "coming up" to Paris to "make it" in the cultural, political or social scene of the capital (this scheme is frequent in the novels of Balzac). Policies enacted by the French Third Republic also encouraged this displacement through mandatory military service, a centralized national educational system, and suppression of regional languages. While government policy and public debate in France in recent years has returned to a valorization of regional differences and a call for decentralization of certain aspects of the public sphere (sometimes with ethnic, racial or reactionary overtones), the history of regional displacement and the nature of the modern urban environment and of mass media and culture have made the preservation of a regional "sense of place or culture" in today's France extremely difficult.


title: Culture of France

text: The names of the historical French provinces – such as Brittany ("Bretagne"), Berry, Orléanais, Normandy ("Normandie"), Languedoc, Lyonnais, Dauphiné, Champagne, Poitou, Guyenne and Gascony ("Gascogne"), Burgundy ("Bourgogne"), Picardy ("Picardie"), Provence, Touraine, Limousin, Auvergne, Béarn, Alsace, Flanders, Lorraine, Corsica ("Corse"), Savoy ("Savoie")... (please see individual articles for specifics about each regional culture) — are still used to designate natural, historical and cultural regions, and many of them appear in modern région or département names. These names are also used by the French in their self-identification of family origin.


title: Culture of France

text: Regional identification is most pronounced today in cultures linked to regional languages and non-French-speaking traditions – French language itself being only a dialect of Langue d'oïl, the mother language of many of the languages to-be-mentioned, which became a national vehicular language, like (in alphabetical order): Alsatian, Arpitan, Basque, Brezhoneg (Breton), Burgundian, Corsu (Corsican), Català (Catalan), Francique, Gallo, Lorrain, Norman, Occitan, Picard, Poitevin, Saintongeais, etc., and some of these regions have promoted movements calling for some degree of regional autonomy, and, occasionally, national independence (see, for example, Breton nationalism, Corsica and Occitania).


title: Culture of France

text: There are huge differences in life style, socioeconomic status and world view between Paris and the provinces. The French often use the expression "la France profonde" ("Deep France", similar to "heartland") to designate the profoundly "French" aspects of provincial towns, village life and rural agricultural culture, which escape the hegemony of Paris. The expression can however have a pejorative meaning, similar to the expression "le désert français" ("the French desert") used to describe a lack of acculturation of the provinces. Another expression, "terroir" is a French term originally used for wine and coffee to denote the special characteristics that geography bestowed upon these products. It can be very loosely translated as "a sense of place" which is embodied in certain qualities, and the sum of the effects that the local environment (especially the "soil") has had on the growth of the product. The use of the term has since been generalized to talk about many cultural products.


title: Culture of France

text: In addition to its metropolitan territory, France also consists of overseas departments made up of its former colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana in the Caribbean, and Mayotte and Réunion in the Indian Ocean. (There also exists a number of "overseas collectivities" and "overseas territories". For a full discussion, see administrative divisions of France. Since 1982, following the French government's policy of decentralisation, overseas departments have elected regional councils with powers similar to those of the regions of metropolitan France. As a result of a constitutional revision which occurred in 2003, these regions are now to be called overseas regions.) These overseas departments have the same political status as metropolitan departments and are integral parts of France, (similar to the way in which Hawaii is a state and an integral part of the United States), yet they also have specific cultural and linguistic traditions which set them apart. Certain elements of overseas culture have also been introduced to metropolitan culture (as, for example, the musical form the biguine).


title: Culture of France

text: Industrialization, immigration and urbanization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have also created new socioeconomic regional communities in France, both urban (like Paris, Lyon, Villeurbanne, Lille, Marseille, etc.) and the suburban and working class hinterlands (like Seine-Saint-Denis) of urban agglomerations (called variously "banlieues" ("suburbs", sometimes qualified as "chic" or "pauvres" or "les cités" "housing projects")) which have developed their own "sense of place" and local culture (much like the various boroughs of New York City or suburbs of Los Angeles), as well as cultural identity.


title: Culture of France

text: Paris has traditionally been associated with alternative, artistic or intellectual subcultures, many of which involved foreigners. Such subcultures include the "Bohemians" of the mid-nineteenth century, the Impressionists, artistic circles of the Belle époque (around such artists as Picasso and Alfred Jarry), the Dadaists, Surrealists, the "Lost Generation" (Hemingway, Gertrude Stein) and the post-war "intellectuals" associated with Montparnasse (Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir).


title: Culture of France

text: France has an estimated 280,000–340,000 Roma, generally known as "Gitans", "Tsiganes", "Romanichels" (slightly pejorative), "Bohémiens", or "Gens du voyage" ("travellers").


title: Culture of France

text: There are gay and lesbian communities in the cities, particularly in the Paris metropolitan area (such as in Le Marais district of the capital). Although homosexuality is perhaps not as well tolerated in France as in Spain, Scandinavia, and the Benelux nations, surveys of the French public reveal a considerable shift in attitudes comparable to other Western European nations. , 55% of the French consider homosexuality "an acceptable lifestyle." The past mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, is gay.


title: Culture of France

text: In 2006, an Ipsos survey shows that 62% support same-sex marriage, while 37% were opposed. 55% believed gay and lesbian couples should not have parenting rights, while 44% believe same-sex couples should be able to adopt.


title: Culture of France

text: Growing out of the values of the Catholic Church and rural communities, the basic unit of French society was traditionally held to be the family. Over the twentieth century, the "traditional" family structure in France has evolved from various regional models (including extended families and nuclear families) to, after World War II, nuclear families. Since the 1960s, marriages have decreased and divorces have increased in France, and divorce law and legal family status have evolved to reflect these social changes.


title: Culture of France

text: According to INSEE figures, household and family composition in metropolitan France continues to evolve. Most significantly, from 1982 to 1999, single parent families have increased from 3.6% to 7.4%; there have also been increases in the number of unmarried couples, childless couples, and single men (from 8.5% to 12.5) and women (from 16.0% to 18.5%). Their analysis indicates that "one in three dwellings are occupied by a person living alone; one in four dwellings are occupied by a childless couple.."


title: Culture of France

text: Voted by the French Parliament in November 1999 following some controversy, the "pacte civil de solidarité" ("civil pact of solidarity") commonly known as a "PACS", is a form of civil union between two adults (same-sex or opposite-sex) for organizing their joint life. It brings rights and responsibilities, but less so than marriage. From a legal standpoint, a PACS is a "contract" drawn up between the two individuals, which is stamped and registered by the clerk of the court. Individuals who have registered a PACS are still considered "single" with regard to family status for some purposes, while they are increasingly considered in the same way as married couples are for other purposes. While it was pushed by the government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 1998, it was also opposed, mostly by people on the right-wing who support traditionalist family values and who argued that PACS and the recognition of homosexual unions would be disastrous for French society.


title: Culture of France

text: , same-sex marriage is legally recognized in France. Same-sex marriage was an important factor in the presidential election of 2012 between François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy, who represents the right-wing UMP party, opposed gay marriage, while François Hollande, of the left wing socialist party, supported it. Hollande was elected in May 2012 and his government proposed the law known as "Mariage pour tous" ("marriage for all") to the parliament in November 2012. The law was passed in April 2013 and validated by the Conseil constitutionnel (the constitutional council, tasked with insuring that the new laws passed do not contradict the French constitution) in May 2013. The first French same-sex marriage took place on 29 May 2013 in Montpellier.


title: Culture of France

text: The French state has traditionally played an important role in promoting and supporting culture through the educational, linguistic, cultural and economic policies of the government and through its promotion of national identity. Because of the closeness of this relationship, cultural changes in France are often linked to, or produce, political crisis.


title: Culture of France

text: The relationship between the French state and culture is an old one. Under Louis XIII's minister Richelieu, the independent Académie française came under state supervision and became an official organ of control over the French language and seventeenth-century literature. During Louis XIV's reign, his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert brought French luxury industries, like textile and porcelain, under royal control and the architecture, furniture, fashion and etiquette of the royal court (particularly at the Château de Versailles) became the preeminent model of noble culture in France (and, to a great degree, throughout Europe) during the latter half of the seventeenth century.


title: Culture of France

text: At times, French state policies have sought to unify the country around certain cultural norms, while at other times they have promoted regional differences within a heterogeneous French identity. The unifying effect was particularly true of the "radical period"" of the French Third Republic which fought regionalisms (including regional languages), supported anti-clericalism and a strict separation of church from state (including education) and actively promoted national identity, thus converting (as the historian Eugen Weber has put it) a "country of peasants into a nation of Frenchmen". The Vichy Regime, on the other hand, promoted regional "folk" traditions.


title: Culture of France

text: The cultural policies of the (current) French Fifth Republic have been varied, but a consensus seems to exist around the need for preservation of French regionalisms (such as food and language) as long as these don't undermine national identity. Meanwhile, the French state remains ambivalent over the integration into "French" culture of cultural traditions from recent immigrant groups and from foreign cultures, particularly American culture (movies, music, fashion, fast food, language, etc.). There also exists a certain fear over the perceived loss of French identity and culture in the European system and under American "cultural hegemony".


title: Culture of France

text: The French educational system is highly centralized. It is divided into three different stages: primary education, or "enseignement primaire, "corresponding to grade school in the United States; secondary education, or "collège" and "lycée, "corresponding to middle and high school in the United States; and higher education (l'université or "les Grandes écoles").


title: Culture of France

text: Primary and secondary education is predominantly public (private schools also exist, in particular a strong nationwide network of primary and secondary Catholic education), while higher education has both public and private elements. At the end of secondary education, students take the baccalauréat exam, which allows them to pursue higher education. The baccalauréat pass rate in 2012 was 84.5%.


title: Culture of France

text: France's performance in math and science at the middle school level was ranked 23 in the 1995 Trends in International Math and Science Study. France was ranked 22 in 2019.


title: Culture of France

text: Since the Jules Ferry laws of 1881–2, named after the then Minister of Public Instruction, all state-funded schools, including universities, are independent from the (Roman Catholic) Church. Education in these institutions is free. Non-secular institutions are allowed to organize education as well. The French educational system differs strongly from Northern-European and American systems in that it stresses the importance of partaking in a society as opposed to being responsibly independent.


title: Culture of France

text: Secular educational policy has become critical in recent issues of French multiculturalism, as in the "affair of the Islamic headscarf".


title: Culture of France

text: The Minister of Culture is in the Government of France, the cabinet member in charge of national museums and monuments; promoting and protecting the arts (visual, plastic, theatrical, musical, dance, architectural, literary, televisual and cinematographic) in France and abroad; and managing the national archives and regional "maisons de culture" (culture centres). The Ministry of Culture is located on the Palais Royal in Paris.


title: Culture of France

text: The modern post of Minister of Culture was created by Charles de Gaulle in 1959 and the first Minister was the writer André Malraux. Malraux was responsible for realizing the goals of the "droit à la culture" ("the right to culture") – an idea which had been incorporated in the French constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) – by democratizing access to culture, while also achieving the Gaullist aim of elevating the "grandeur" ("greatness") of post-war France. To this end, he created numerous regional cultural centres throughout France and actively sponsored the arts. Malraux's artistic tastes included the modern arts and the avant-garde, but on the whole he remained conservative.


title: Culture of France

text: The Ministry of Jacques Toubon was notable for a number of laws (the "Toubon Laws") enacted for the preservation of the French language, both in advertisements (all ads must include a French translation of foreign words) and on the radio (40% of songs on French radio stations must be in French), ostensibly in reaction to the presence of English.


title: Culture of France

text: The Académie Française (English: French Academy) is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution, it was restored in 1803 by Napoleon Bonaparte (the Académie considers itself having been suspended, not suppressed, during the revolution). It is the oldest of the five "académies" of the Institut de France.


title: Culture of France

text: The Académie consists of forty members, known as "immortels" (immortals). New members are elected by the members of the Académie itself. Académicians hold office for life, but they may be removed for misconduct. The body has the task of acting as an official authority on the language; it is charged with publishing an official dictionary of the language. Its rulings, however, are only advisory; not binding on either the public or the government.


title: Culture of France

text: Until 1996, France had compulsory military service of young men. This has been credited by historians for further promoting a unified national identity and by breaking down regional isolationism.


title: Culture of France

text: In France, the first labour laws were Waldeck Rousseau's laws passed in 1884. Between 1936 and 1938 the Popular Front enacted a law mandating 12 days (2 weeks) each year of paid vacation for workers, and a law limiting the work week to 40 hours, excluding overtime. The negotiated on 25 and 26 May in the middle of the May 1968 crisis, reduced the working week to 44 hours and created trade union sections in each enterprise. The minimum wage was also increased by 25%. In 2000 Lionel Jospin's government then enacted the 35-hour workweek, down from 39 hours. Five years later, conservative prime minister Dominique de Villepin enacted the New Employment Contract (CNE). Addressing the demands of employers asking for more flexibility in French labour laws, the CNE sparked criticism from trade unions and opponents claiming it was lending favour to contingent work. In 2006 he then attempted to pass the First Employment Contract (CPE) through a vote by emergency procedure, but that it was met by students and unions' protests. President Jacques Chirac finally had no choice but to repeal it.


title: Culture of France

text: The French are profoundly committed to the public healthcare system (called "sécurité sociale") and to their "pay-as-you-go" social welfare system.


title: Culture of France

text: In 1998, 75% of health payments in France were paid through the public healthcare system. Since 27 July 1999, France has a universal medical coverage for permanent residents in France (stable residence for more than three months). Using five performance indicators to measure health systems in 191 member states, it finds that France provides the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan (The World Health Report).


title: Culture of France

text: Traditional French culture places a high priority on the enjoyment of food. French cuisine was codified in the 20th century by Georges Auguste Escoffier to become the modern version of "haute cuisine". Escoffier's major work, however, left out much of the regional character to be found in the provinces of France. Gastro-tourism and the "Guide Michelin" helped to bring people to the countryside during the 20th century and beyond, to sample this rich "bourgeois" and peasant cuisine of France. Basque cuisine has also been a great influence over the cuisine in the southwest of France.


title: Culture of France

text: Ingredients and dishes vary by region (see: Regional cuisine). There are many significant regional dishes that have become both national and regional. Many dishes that were once regional, however, have proliferated in different variations across the country in the present day. Cheese (see: List of French cheeses) and wine (see: French wine) are also a major part of the cuisine, playing different roles both regionally and nationally with their many variations and "Appellation d'origine contrôlée" (AOC) (regulated appellation) laws, (lentils from Le Puy-en-Velay also have an AOC status). Another French product of special note is the Charolais cattle.


title: Culture of France

text: The French typically eat only a simple breakfast ("petit déjeuner") which consists of coffee, tea or hot chocolate with milk, served traditionally in a large handleless "bol" (bowl) and bread or breakfast pastries (croissants). Lunch ("déjeuner") and dinner ("dîner") are the main meals of the day. Formal four course meals consist of a starter course ("entrée"), a salad, a main course ("plat principal"), and finally a cheese or dessert course. While French cuisine is often associated with rich desserts, in most homes dessert consists of only fruit or yogurt.


title: Culture of France

text: Food shopping in France was formerly done almost daily in small local shops and markets, but the arrival of the supermarket and the even larger ""hypermarchés"" (large-surface distributors) in France have disrupted this tradition. With depopulation of the countryside, many towns have been forced to close shops and markets.


title: Culture of France

text: Rates of obesity and heart disease in France have traditionally been lower than in other north-western European countries. This is sometimes called the French paradox (see, for example, Mireille Guiliano's 2006 book "French Women Don't Get Fat"). French cuisine and eating habits have however come under great pressure in recent years from modern fast food, such as American products and the new global agricultural industry. While French youth culture has gravitated toward fast food and American eating habits (with an attendant rise in obesity), the French in general have remained committed to preserving certain elements of their food culture through such activities as including programs of taste acquisition in their public schools, by the use of the appellation d'origine contrôlée laws, and by state and European subsidies to the French agricultural industry. Emblematic of these tensions is the work of José Bové, who founded in 1987, the "Confédération Paysanne", an agricultural union that places its highest political values on humans and the environment, promotes organic farming and opposes genetically modified organisms; Bové's most famous protest was the dismantling of a McDonald's franchise in Millau (Aveyron), in 1999.


title: Culture of France

text: In France, cutlery is used in the continental manner (with the fork in the left hand, prongs facing down and the knife in the right hand). French etiquette prohibits the placing of hands below the table and the placing of elbows on it.


title: Culture of France

text: France is one of the oldest wine producing regions of Europe. France now produces the most wine by value in the world (although Italy rivals it by volume and Spain has more land under cultivation for wine grapes). Bordeaux wine, Bourgogne wine and Champagne are important agricultural products.


title: Culture of France

text: The cigarette smoking age is 18 years. According to a widespread cliché, smoking has been part of French culture – actually figures indicate that in terms of consumption per capita, France is only the 60th country out of 121.


title: Culture of France

text: France, from 1 February 2007, tightened the existing ban on smoking in public places found in the 1991 Évin law: Law n°91-32 of 10 January 1991, containing a variety of measures against alcoholism and tobacco consumption.


title: Culture of France

text: Smoking is now banned in all public places (stations, museums, etc.); an exception exists for special smoking rooms fulfilling drastic conditions, see below. A special exemption was made for cafés and restaurants, clubs, casinos, bars, etc. which ended, 1 January 2008. Opinion polls suggest 70% of people support the ban. Previously, under the former implementation rules of the 1991 Évin law, restaurants, cafés etc. just had to provide smoking and non-smoking sections, which in practice were often not well separated.


title: Culture of France

text: Under the new regulations, smoking rooms are allowed, but are subjected to very strict conditions: they may occupy at most 20% of the total floor space of the establishment and their size may not be more than 35 m²; they need to be equipped with separate ventilation which replaces the full volume of air ten times per hour; the air pressure of the smoking room must constantly be lower than the pressure in the contiguous rooms; they have doors that close automatically; no service can be provided in the smoking rooms; cleaning and maintenance personnel may enter the room only one hour after it was last used for smoking.


title: Culture of France

text: The possession, sale and use of cannabis (predominantly Moroccan hashish) is illegal in France. Since 1 March 1994, the penalties for cannabis use are from two months to a year and/or a fine, while possession, cultivation or trafficking of the drug can be punished much more severely, up to ten years. According to a 1992 survey by SOFRES, 4.7 million French people ages 12–44 have smoked cannabis at least once in their lives.


title: Culture of France

text: Football (French: "Le Foot") is the most popular sport in France. Other popular sports played in France are rugby union, cycling, tennis, handball, basketball and sailing. France is notable for holding and winning the FIFA World Cup in 1998 and 2018, and holding the annual cycling race Tour de France, and the tennis Grand Slam tournament the French Open. Sport is encouraged in school, and local sports clubs receive financial support from the local governments. While football is definitely the most popular, rugby union and rugby league takes dominance in the southwest, especially around the city of Toulouse (see: Rugby union in France and Rugby league in France).


title: Culture of France

text: Professional sailing in France is centred on singlehanded and shorthanded ocean racing with the pinnacle of this branch of the sport being the Vendée Globe singlehanded around the world race which starts every 4 years from the French Atlantic coast. Other significant events include the Solitaire du Figaro, Mini Transat 6.50, Tour de France a Voile and Route du Rhum transatlantic race. France has been a regular competitor in the America's Cup since the 1970s.


title: Culture of France

text: Like other cultural areas in France, sport is overseen by a government ministry, the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports (France) which is in charge of national and public sport associations, youth affairs, public sports centers and national stadia (like the Stade de France).


title: Culture of France

text: Along with Milan, London and New York, Paris is center of an important number of fashion shows. Some of the world's biggest fashion houses (ex: Chanel) have their headquarters in France.


title: Culture of France

text: The association of France with fashion () dates largely to the reign of Louis XIV when the luxury goods industries in France came increasingly under royal control and the French royal court became, arguably, the arbiter of taste and style in Europe.


title: Culture of France

text: France renewed its dominance of the high fashion ( or ) industry in the years 1860–1960 through the establishing of the great couturier houses, the fashion press ("Vogue" was founded in 1892; "Elle" was founded in 1945) and fashion shows. The first modern Parisian couturier house is generally considered the work of the Englishman Charles Frederick Worth who dominated the industry from 1858 to 1895. In the early twentieth century, the industry expanded through such Parisian fashion houses as the house of Chanel (which first came to prominence in 1925) and Balenciaga (founded by a Spaniard in 1937). In the post war year, fashion returned to prominence through Christian Dior's famous "new look" in 1947, and through the houses of Pierre Balmain and Hubert de Givenchy (opened in 1952). In the 1960s, "high fashion" came under criticism from France's youth culture while designers like Yves Saint Laurent broke with established high fashion norms by launching "prêt-à-porter" ("ready to wear") lines and expanding French fashion into mass manufacturing and marketing. Further innovations were carried out by Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin. With a greater focus on marketing and manufacturing, new trends were established in the 70s and 80s by Sonia Rykiel, Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix. The 1990s saw a conglomeration of many French couture houses under luxury giants and multinationals such as LVMH.


title: Culture of France

text: Since the 1960s, France's fashion industry has come under increasing competition from London, New York, Milan and Tokyo, and the French have increasingly adopted foreign (particularly American) fashions (such as jeans, tennis shoes). Nevertheless, many foreign designers still seek to make their careers in France.


title: Culture of France

text: In 2006, 52% of French households had at least one pet: In total, 9.7 million cats, 8.8 million dogs, 2.3 million rodents, 8 million birds, and 28 million fish were kept as pets in France during this year.


title: Culture of France

text: The first paintings of France are those that are from prehistoric times, painted in the caves of Lascaux well over 10,000 years ago. The arts were already flourishing 1,200 years ago, at the time of Charlemagne, as can be seen in many hand made and hand illustrated books of that time.


title: Culture of France

text: Gothic art and architecture originated in France in the 12th century around Paris and then spread to all of Europe. In the 13th century, French craftsmen developed the stained glass painting technique and sophisticated illuminated manuscripts for private devotion in the new gothic style. The final phase of gothic architecture, known as Flamboyant, also began in France in the 15th century before spreading to the rest of Europe.


title: Culture of France

text: The 17th century was one of intense artistic achievements : French painting emerged with a distinct identity, moving from Baroque to Classicism. Famous classic painters of the 17th century in France are Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. French architecture also proved influential with the Palace of Versailles, built for the powerful king Louis XIV, becoming the model of many European royal palaces. During the 18th century the Rococo style emerged as a frivolous continuation of the Baroque style. The most famous painters of the era were Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. At the end of the century, Jacques-Louis David and Dominique Ingres were the most influential painters of the Neoclassicism.


title: Culture of France

text: Géricault and Delacroix were the most important painters of the Romanticism. Afterwards, the painters were more realistic, describing nature (Barbizon school). The realistic movement was led by Courbet and Honoré Daumier. Impressionism was developed in France by artists such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro. At the turn of the century, France had become more than ever the center of innovative art. The Spaniard Pablo Picasso came to France, like many other foreign artists, to deploy his talents there for decades to come. Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Cézanne were painting then. Cubism is an avant-garde movement born in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century.


title: Culture of France

text: The Louvre in Paris is one of the most famous and the largest art museums in the world, created by the new revolutionary regime in 1793 in the former royal palace. It holds a vast amount of art of French and other artists, e.g. the Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci, and classical Greek Venus de Milo and ancient works of culture and art from Egypt and the Middle East.


title: Culture of France

text: France boasts a wide variety of indigenous folk music, as well as styles played by immigrants from Africa, Latin America and Asia. In the field of classical music, France has produced a number of notable composers such as Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Hector Berlioz while modern pop music has seen the rise of popular French hip hop, French rock, techno/funk, and turntablists/djs.


title: Culture of France

text: The Fête de la Musique was created in France (first held in 1982), a music festival, which has since become celebrated worldwide as world music day. It takes place every 21 June, on the first day of summer.


title: Culture of France

text: In 2010, the French electronic music duo, Daft Punk was admitted into the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, an order of merit of France. Bangalter and de Homem-Christo were individually awarded the rank of Chevalier (knight)..


title: Culture of France

text: France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions: Antoine Lumière realized, on 28 December 1895, the first projection, with the Cinematograph, in Paris. Philippe Binant realized, on 2 February 2000, the first digital cinema projection in Europe, with the DLP CINEMA technology developed by Texas Instruments, in Paris. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle Vague, began in the country.


title: Culture of France

text: Additionally, France is an important Francophone film production country. A certain amount of the movies created share international distribution in the western hemisphere thanks to Unifrance. Although French cinema industry is rather small in terms of budget and revenues, it enjoys qualitative screenplay, cast and story telling. French Cinema is often portrayed as more liberal in terms of subjects (Sex, Society, Politics, Historical).


title: Culture of France

text: Within the domestic market, French movies are ranked by the number of admissions. Movies are premiered on Wednesdays.


title: Culture of France

text: "Going to the movies" is a popular activity within metropolitan areas. Many cinema operators offer a "flat-rate pass" for approx. €20 per month. Prices per movie range between €5.50 and €10.


title: Culture of France

text: French major cinema operators are UGC and Pathé, mainly located in city suburbs due to the number of screens and seating capacity.


title: Culture of France

text: Within France many "small" cinemas are located in the downtown parts of a city, resisting the big cinema operators nationwide. Paris has the highest density of cinemas (movie theaters) in the world: biggest number of movie theaters per inhabitants, and that in most "downtown Paris" movie theaters, foreign movies which would be secluded to "art houses" cinemas in other places, are shown alongside "mainstream" works as Parisians are avid movie-goers. Proximity of restaurants, accessibility, ambiance and the showing of alternative foreign movies is often cited as being the advantage of these small theaters.


title: Culture of France

text: The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films unrestricted by country of origin.


title: Culture of France

text: France has the reputation of being a "literary culture", and this image is reinforced by such things as the importance of French literature in the French educational system, the attention paid by the French media to French book fairs and book prizes (like the Prix Goncourt, Prix Renaudot or Prix Femina) and by the popular success of the (former) literary television show "Apostrophes" (hosted by Bernard Pivot).


title: Culture of France

text: Although the official literacy rate of France is 99%, some estimates have placed functional illiteracy at between 10% and 20% of the adult population (and higher in the prison population).


title: Culture of France

text: While reading remains a favorite pastime of French youth today, surveys show that it has decreased in importance compared to music, television, sports and other activities. The crisis of academic publishing has also hit France (see, for example, the financial difficulties of the Presses universitaires de France (PUF), France's premier academic publishing house, in the 1990s).


title: Culture of France

text: Literary taste in France remains centered on the novel (26.4% of book sales in 1997), although the French read more non-fiction essays and books on current affairs than the British or Americans. Contemporary novels, including French translations of foreign novels, lead the list (13% of total books sold), followed by sentimental novels (4.1%), detective and spy fiction (3.7%), "classic" literature (3.5%), science fiction and horror (1.3%) and erotic fiction (0.2%). About 30% of all fiction sold in France today is translated from English (authors such as William Boyd, John le Carré, Ian McEwan, Paul Auster and Douglas Kennedy are well received).


title: Culture of France

text: An important subset of book sales is comic books (typically Franco-Belgian comics like "The Adventures of Tintin" and "Astérix") which are published in a large hardback format; comic books represented 4% of total book sales in 1997. French artists have made the country a leader in the graphic novel genre and France hosts the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Europe's preeminent comics festival.


title: Culture of France

text: Like other areas of French culture, book culture is influenced, in part, by the state, in particular by the "Direction du livre et de la lecture" of the Ministry of Culture, which oversees the "Centre national du livre" (National Book Center). The French Ministry of Industry also plays a role in price control. Finally, the VAT for books and other cultural products in France is at the reduced rate of 5.5%, which is also that of food and other necessities ().


title: Culture of France

text: In terms of journalism in France, the regional press (see list of newspapers in France) has become more important than national dailies (such as "Le Monde" and "Le Figaro") over the past century: in 1939, national dailies were 2/3 of the dailies market, while today they are less than 1/4. The magazine market is currently dominated by TV listings magazines followed by news magazines such as "L'Obs", "L'Express" and "Le Point".


title: Culture of France

text: There are significant differences in lifestyles with respect to transportation between very urbanized regions such as Paris, and smaller towns and rural areas. In Paris, and to a lesser extent in other major cities, many households do not own an automobile and simply use efficient public transport. The cliché about the Parisien is rush hour in the "Métro" subway. However, outside of such areas, ownership of one or more cars is standard, especially for households with children.


title: Culture of France

text: Despite the principles of "laïcité" and the separation of church from state, public and school holidays in France generally follow the Roman Catholic religious calendar (including Easter, Christmas, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Assumption of Mary, All Saints Day, etc.). Labor Day and the National Holiday are the only business holidays determined by government statute; the other holidays are granted by "convention collective" (agreement between employers' and employees' unions) or by agreement of the employer.


title: Culture of France

text: On 1 May, Labour Day ("La Fête du Travail") the French give flowers of Lily of the Valley (Le Muguet) to one another.


title: Culture of France

text: The National holiday (called Bastille Day in English) is on 14 July. Military parades, called Défilés du 14 juillet, are held, the largest on the Champs-Élysées avenue in Paris in front of the President of the Republic.


title: Culture of France

text: On 2 November, All Souls Day ("La Fête des morts"), the French traditionally bring chrysanthemums to the tombs of departed family members.


title: Culture of France

text: On 11 November, Remembrance Day ("Le Jour de la Commémoration" or "L' Armistice") is an official holiday.


title: Culture of France

text: Christmas is generally celebrated in France on Christmas Eve by a traditional meal (typical dishes include oysters, boudin blanc and the bûche de Noël), by opening presents and by attending the midnight mass (even among Catholics who do not attend church at other times of the year).


title: Culture of France

text: Candlemas ("La Chandeleur") is celebrated with crêpes. The popular saying is that if the cook can flip a crêpe singlehandedly with a coin in the other hand, the family is assured of prosperity throughout the coming year.


title: Culture of France

text: The Celtic holiday Halloween, which is popular throughout the English speaking world, has grown in popularity following its introduction in the mid-1990s by the trade associations. The growth seems to have stalled during the following decade.


title: Culture of France

text: Wherever one comes from, "culture" consists of beliefs and values learned through the socialization process as well as material artifacts. "Culture is the learned set of beliefs, values, norms and material goods shared by group members. Culture consists of everything we learn in groups during the life course-from infancy to an old age."


title: Culture of France

text: The conception of "French" culture however poses certain difficulties and presupposes a series of assumptions about what precisely the expression "French" means. Whereas American culture posits the notion of the "melting-pot" and cultural diversity, the expression "French culture" tends to refer implicitly to a specific geographical entity (as, say, "metropolitan France", generally excluding its overseas departments) or to a specific historico-sociological group defined by ethnicity, language, religion and geography. The realities of "Frenchness" however, are extremely complicated. Even before the late 18th–19th century, "metropolitan France" was largely a patchwork of local customs and regional differences that the unifying aims of the Ancien Régime and the French Revolution had only begun to work against, and today's France remains a nation of numerous indigenous and foreign languages, of multiple ethnicities and religions, and of regional diversity that includes French citizens in Corsica, Guadeloupe, Martinique and elsewhere around the globe also in America.


title: Culture of France

text: The creation of some sort of typical or shared French culture or "cultural identity", despite this vast heterogeneity, is the result of powerful internal forces – such as the French educational system, mandatory military service, state linguistic and cultural policies – and by profound historic events – such as the Franco-Prussian war and the two World Wars — which have forged a sense of national identity over the last 200 years. However, despite these unifying forces, France today still remains marked by social class and by important regional differences in culture (cuisine, dialect/accent, local traditions) that many fear will be unable to withstand contemporary social forces (depopulation of the countryside, immigration, centralization, market forces and the world economy).


title: Culture of France

text: In recent years, to fight the loss of regional diversity, many in France have promoted forms of multiculturalism and encouraged cultural enclaves ("communautarisme"), including reforms on the preservation of regional languages and the decentralization of certain government functions, but French multiculturalism has had a harder time of accepting, or of integrating into the collective identity, the large non-Christian and immigrant communities and groups that have come to France since the 1960s.


title: Culture of France

text: The last 70 years has also seen French cultural identity "threatened" by global market forces and by American "cultural hegemony". Since its dealings with the 1943 GATT free trade negotiations, France has fought for what it calls the "exception culturelle", meaning the right to subsidize or treat favorably domestic cultural production and to limit or control foreign cultural products (as seen in public funding for French cinema or the lower VAT accorded to books). The notion of an explicit "exception française" however has angered many of France's critics.


title: Culture of France

text: The French are often perceived as taking a great pride in national identity and the positive achievements of France (the expression "chauvinism" is of French origin) and cultural issues are more integrated in the body of the politics than elsewhere (see "The Role of the State", below). The French Revolution claimed universalism for the democratic principles of the Republic. Charles de Gaulle actively promoted a notion of French "grandeur" ("greatness"). Perceived declines in cultural status are a matter of national concern and have generated national debates, both from the left (as seen in the anti-globalism of José Bové) and from the right and far right (as in the discourses of the National Front).


title: Culture of France

text: According to Hofstede's Framework for Assessing Culture, the culture of France is moderately individualistic and high Power Distance Index.


title: Culture of France

text: Now, the interracial blending of some native French and newcomers stands as a vibrant and boasted feature of French culture, from popular music to movies and literature. Therefore, alongside mixing of populations, exists also a cultural blending ("le métissage culturel") that is present in France. It may be compared to the traditional US conception of the melting-pot. The French culture might have been already blended in from other races and ethnicities, in cases of some biographical research on the possibility of African ancestry on a small number of famous French citizens. Author Alexandre Dumas, père possessed one-fifth black Haitian descent, and Empress Josephine Napoleon who was born and raised in the French West Indies from a plantation estate family.


title: Culture of France

text: We can mention as well, the most famous French-Canadian singer Celine Dion whose grandmother was a North African from Kabylie.


title: Culture of France

text: For a long time, the only objection to such outcomes predictably came from the far-left schools of thought. In the past few years, other unexpected voices are however beginning to question what they interpret, as the new philosopher Alain Finkielkraut coined the term, as an "Ideology of miscegenation" ("une idéologie du métissage") that may come from what one other philosopher, Pascal Bruckner, defined as "The Tears of the White Man" ("le sanglot de l'homme blanc"). These critics have been dismissed by the mainstream and their propagators have been labelled as new reactionaries ("les nouveaux réactionnaires"), even if racist and anti-immigration sentiment has recently been documented to be increasing in France at least according to one poll.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: After the war ended, Fuchida became a Christian convert and evangelist, traveling across the United States and Europe to tell his story. He later settled in the U.S. (although never taking American citizenship for himself). Some of Fuchida's wartime claims have been challenged as self-serving by historians, including his claimed advocacy for a third wave attack on Pearl Harbor.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: Mitsuo Fuchida was born in what is now part of Katsuragi, Nara Prefecture, Japan to Yazo and Shika Fuchida on 3 December 1902. He entered the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy at Etajima, Hiroshima, in 1921, where he befriended classmate Minoru Genda and discovered an interest in flying. He graduated as a midshipman on 24 July 1924, and was promoted to ensign on 1 December 1925 and to sub-lieutenant on 1 December 1927. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 December 1930. Specializing in horizontal bombing, Fuchida was made an instructor in that technique in 1936. He gained combat experience during the Second Sino-Japanese War, when he was assigned to the aircraft carrier in 1929 and then to the Sasebo Air Group, He was promoted to lieutenant commander on 1 December 1936 and was accepted into the Naval Staff College. Fuchida joined the aircraft carrier in 1939 as the commander of the air group. Fuchida was made commander in October 1941.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: On Sunday, 7 December 1941, a Japanese force under the command of Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo—consisting of six carriers with 423 aircraft—was ready to attack the United States base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. At 06:00, the first wave of 183 dive bombers, torpedo bombers, horizontal bombers and fighters took off from carriers north of Oahu and headed for the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: At 07:40 Hawaiian Standard Time, Mitsuo Fuchida, who by this time had achieved the rank of commander, arrived with the first attack wave on Oahu's north shore near Kahuku Point. The first attack wave then banked west and flew along the northwest coast. Fuchida ordered ""Tenkai"" (Take attack position), and upon seeing no U.S. activity at Pearl Harbor, Fuchida slid back the canopy of his Nakajima B5N2 torpedo bomber, tailcode "AI-301", and fired a single dark blue flare known as a "black dragon", the signal to attack.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: Passing Waimea Bay at 07:49, Fuchida instructed his radio operator, Petty Officer 1st Class Norinobu Mizuki, to send the coded signal ""To, To, To"" ("totsugekiseyo"—"to charge") to the other aircraft. Fuchida, thinking Lt Cmdr Shigeru Itaya's Zeroes had missed the signal, fired a second flare. Lt Cmdr Kakuichi Takahashi, overall leader of the first wave dive bombers, saw both flares and misunderstood the signal. Thinking the dive bombers were to attack, he led his dive bombers into immediate attack position. Lt Cmdr Shigeharu Murata, overall leader of the torpedo bombers, observed both flares and saw Takahashi's planes gliding into attack formation. He knew there was a misunderstanding which could not be rectified, so he led his torpedo bombers into attack positions. At this point, Cmdr Fuchida's pilot, Lieutenant Mitsuo Matsuzaki, guided their bomber along with the remaining horizontal bombers in a formation sweep around Kaena Point and headed down the western coast of Oahu.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: At 07:53, Fuchida ordered Mizuki to send the code words ""Tora! Tora! Tora!"" back to the carrier "Akagi", the flagship of 1st Air Fleet. The message meant that complete surprise had been achieved. Due to favorable atmospheric conditions, the transmission of the ""Tora! Tora! Tora!"" code words from the moderately powered transmitter were heard over a ship's radio in Japan by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the naval commander, and his staff, who were sitting up through the night awaiting word on the attack.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: As the first wave returned to the carriers, Fuchida remained over the target to assess damage and observe the second-wave attack. He returned to his carrier only after the second wave had completed its mission. With great pride, he announced that the U.S. battleship fleet had been destroyed. Fuchida inspected his craft and found 21 large flak holes: the main control wires were barely holding together. The successful attack made Fuchida a national hero who was granted a personal audience with Emperor Hirohito.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: On 19 February 1942, Fuchida led the first of two waves of 188 aircraft in a devastating air raid on Darwin, Australia. On 5 April, he led another series of air attacks by carrier-based Japanese aircraft against Royal Navy bases in Ceylon, which was the headquarters of the British Eastern Fleet, in what Winston Churchill described as "the most dangerous moment" of World War II.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: On 4 June 1942, while onboard "Akagi", Fuchida was wounded at the Battle of Midway. Unable to fly while recovering from an emergency shipboard appendectomy a few days before the battle, he was on the ship's bridge during the morning attacks by U.S. aircraft. After "Akagi" was hit, a chain reaction from burning fuel and live bombs began the destruction of the ship. When flames blocked the exit from the bridge, the officers evacuated down a rope, and as Fuchida slid down, an explosion threw him to the deck and broke both his ankles.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: After spending several months recuperating, Fuchida spent the rest of the war in Japan as a staff officer. In October 1944, he was promoted to captain. The day before the first nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima, he was in that city to attend a week-long military conference with Japanese army officers. Fuchida received a long-distance phone call from Navy Headquarters asking him to return to Tokyo. The day after the bombing, he returned to Hiroshima with a party sent to assess the damage. All members of Fuchida's party later died of radiation poisoning, but Fuchida exhibited no symptoms. Fuchida's military career ended with his demobilization in November 1945 during the American-led occupation of Japan.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: After the war, Fuchida was called on to testify at the trials of some of the Japanese military for Japanese war crimes. This infuriated him, as he believed this was little more than "victors' justice". In the spring of 1947, convinced that the U.S. had treated the Japanese the same way and determined to bring that evidence to the next trial, Fuchida went to Uraga Harbor near Yokosuka to meet a group of returning Japanese prisoners of war. He was surprised to find his former flight engineer, Kazuo Kanegasaki, who all had believed had died in the Battle of Midway. When questioned, Kanegasaki told Fuchida that they were not tortured or abused, much to Fuchida's surprise, and then went on to tell him of a young lady, Peggy Covell, who served them with the deepest love and respect, but whose missionary parents had been killed by Japanese soldiers on the island of Panay in the Philippines.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: For Fuchida, this was inexplicable, as in the "Bushido" code revenge was not only permitted, it was "a responsibility" for an offended party to carry out revenge to restore honor. The murderer of one's parents would be a sworn enemy for life. He became almost obsessed trying to understand why anyone would treat their enemies with love and forgiveness.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: In the fall of 1948, Fuchida was passing by the bronze statue of Hachikō at the Shibuya Station when he was handed a pamphlet about the life of Jacob DeShazer, a member of the Doolittle Raid who was captured by the Japanese after his B-25 bomber ran out of fuel over occupied China. In the pamphlet, "I Was a Prisoner of Japan" DeShazer, a former U.S. Army Air Forces staff sergeant and bombardier, told his story of imprisonment, torture and his account of an "awakening to God." This experience increased Fuchida's curiosity of the Christian faith. In September 1949, after reading the Bible for himself, he became a Christian. In May 1950, Fuchida and DeShazer met for the first time. Fuchida created the Captain Fuchida Evangelistical Association based in Seattle, Washington and spoke full-time of his conversion to the Christian faith in presentations titled "From Pearl Harbor To Calvary".


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: In 1951, Fuchida, along with a colleague, published an account of the Battle of Midway from the Japanese side. In 1952, he toured the United States as a member of the Worldwide Christian Missionary Army of Sky Pilots. Fuchida remained dedicated to a similar initiative as the group for the remainder of his life.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: In February 1954, "Reader's Digest" published Fuchida's story of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Fuchida also wrote and co-wrote books, including "From Pearl Harbor to Golgotha", a.k.a. "From Pearl Harbor to Calvary", and a 1955 expansion of his 1951 book "Midway", a.k.a. "Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story". His autobiography, titled "Shinjuwan Kogeki no Sotaicho no Kaiso", was published in Japan in 2007. This was translated into English by Douglas Shinsato and Tadanori Urabe and published in 2011 under the title, "For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, Commander of the Attack on Pearl Harbor". Fuchida's story is also recounted in "God's Samurai: Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor" by Donald Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon and Gordon W. Prange.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: In 1959, Fuchida was among a group of Japanese visiting the tour of U.S. Air Force equipment given by General Paul Tibbets, who piloted the "Enola Gay" that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Fuchida recognized Tibbets and had a conversation with him. Tibbets said to Fuchida that "[y]ou sure did surprise us [at Pearl Harbor]" in which he replied "what do you think you did to us [at Hiroshima]?" Fuchida further told him that:


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: According to Fuchida's son, his father had a green card allowing permanent residence in the U.S. but he never obtained U.S. citizenship. This is contrary to the assertions of several authors.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: Fuchida died of complications caused by diabetes in Kashiwara, near Osaka on 30 May 1976 at the age of 73.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: Fuchida was the author of three books: one on the Battle of Midway, one a memoir, and one on his conversion to Christianity.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: Fuchida was an important figure in the early portion of the Pacific War, and his written accounts, translated into English and published in the U.S., were highly influential. However, the veracity of Fuchida's statements on a variety of topics has been subsequently called into question. This process began in Japan in 1971, with the publication of the Japanese official war history volume on the Battle of Midway, which explicitly contradicted Fuchida's version of events. In 2001, historians H.P. Willmott and Haruo Tohmatsu in their "Pearl Harbor", dismissed Fuchida's rendition of having demanded a third-wave against Pearl Harbor's fuel tanks as "blatant and shameless self-advertisement" regarding "an episode which never took place." These criticisms were repeated by historian Jonathan Parshall and Mark Stille's "Tora! Tora! Tora! Pearl Harbor 1941". Alan Zimm's 2011 "Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions", reinforced and enlarged these earlier criticisms and added new charges, including Fuchida having fabricated a battle damage assessment that was presented to Emperor Hirohito. Zimm subsequently accused Fuchida of lying about important decisions and signals he made as strike leader immediately prior to the attack, while blaming others for his own errors. With respect to the Battle of Midway, Fuchida's account of the readiness of the Japanese counterstrike aircraft during the American dive-bomber attack has been disputed by historians Parshall and Anthony Tully in their 2005 work "", as well as Dallas Isom's "Midway Inquest", Craig Symonds "The Battle of Midway"., and Evan Mawdsley, with Mawdsley noting "Parshall and Tully compellingly contradict Fuchida." Parshall also disputed Fuchida's uncorroborated claims of attendance on the battleship during the Japanese surrender ceremony in 1945, these criticisms being later amplified by Zimm.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: Fuchida's hand-drawn map showing the post-Pearl Harbor attack destruction sold at auction for $425,000 in New York City on 6 December 2013. The map had previously been owned by Malcolm Forbes.


title: Mitsuo Fuchida

text: The map was purchased by the Jay I. Kislak foundation, who then donated it to Miami-Dade Library. The library then sold it to the Library of Congress in 2018.


title: Exploding Plastic Inevitable

text: The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, sometimes simply called Plastic Inevitable or EPI, was a series of multimedia events organized by Andy Warhol in 1966 and 1967, featuring musical performances by The Velvet Underground & Nico, screenings of Warhol's films, and dancing and performances by regulars of Warhol's Factory, especially Mary Woronov and Gerard Malanga. "Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable" is also the title of an 18-minute film by Ronald Nameth with recordings from one week of performances of the shows which were filmed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1966. In December 1966 Warhol included a one-off magazine called "The Plastic Exploding Inevitable" as part of the "Aspen" No. 3 package.


title: Exploding Plastic Inevitable

text: The "Exploding Plastic Inevitable" had its beginnings in an event staged on January 13, 1966, at a dinner for the New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry. This event, called "Up-Tight", included performances by the Velvet Underground and Nico, along with Malanga and Edie Sedgwick as dancers and Barbara Rubin as a performance artist. Inaugural shows were held at the Dom in New York City in April 1966, advertised in "The Village Voice" as follows: "The Silver Dream Factory Presents The Exploding Plastic Inevitable with Andy Warhol/The Velvet Underground/and Nico." Shows were also held in "The Gymnasium" in New York and in various cities throughout the United States and Canada.


title: Exploding Plastic Inevitable

text: Andy Warhol's lights engineer Danny Williams pioneered many innovations that have since become standard practice in rock music light shows. From May 27–29 the EPI played The Fillmore in San Francisco, where Williams built a light show including stroboscopes, slides and film projections onstage. At Bill Graham's request he was soon to come back and build more. Film maker Jonas Mekas (who pioneered film projections during concerts at New York's Cinematheque), Andy Warhol and Danny Williams' influential ideas contributed much to the legendary Fillmore Auditorium's prestige and were also used at the Fillmore East and Fillmore West, both opening in 1968.


title: Child protective services

text: Child protective services (CPS) is the name of a government agency in many states of the United States responsible for providing child protection, which includes responding to reports of child abuse or neglect. Some states use other names, often attempting to reflect more family-centered (as opposed to child-centered) practices, such as department of children and family services (DCFS). CPS is also sometimes known by the name of department of social services (DSS or simply "social services" for short), though these terms more often have a broader meaning.


title: Child protective services

text: In 1690, in what is now the Americas, there were criminal court cases involving child abuse. In 1692, states and municipalities identified care for abused and neglected children as the responsibility of local government and private institutions. In 1696, The Kingdom of England first used the legal principle of "parens patriae", which gave the royal crown care of "charities, infants, idiots, and lunatics returned to the chancery". This principle of "parens patriae" has been identified as the statutory basis for U.S. governmental intervention in families' child rearing practices.


title: Child protective services

text: In 1825, states enacted laws giving social-welfare agencies the right to remove neglected children from their parents and from the streets. These children were placed in almshouses, in orphanages and with other families. In 1835, the Humane Society founded the National Federation of Child Rescue agencies to investigate child maltreatment. In the late-19th century, private child protection agencies—modeled after existing animal protection organizations—developed to investigate reports of child maltreatment, present cases in court and advocate for child welfare legislation.


title: Child protective services

text: In 1853, the Children's Aid Society was founded in response to the problem of orphaned or abandoned children living in New York City. Rather than allow these children to become institutionalized or continue to live on the streets, the children were placed in the first "foster" homes, typically with the intention of helping these families work their farms as family labor.


title: Child protective services

text: In 1874, the first case of child abuse was criminally prosecuted in what has come to be known as the "case of Mary Ellen". Outrage over this case started an organized effort against child maltreatment In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt convened the White House Conference on Child Dependency, which created a publicly funded volunteer organization to "establish and publicize standards of child care". By 1926, 18 states had some version of county child welfare boards whose purpose was to coordinate public and private child related work. Issues of abuse and neglect were addressed in the Social Security Act in 1930, which provided funding for intervention for "neglected and dependent children in danger of becoming delinquent".


title: Child protective services

text: In 1912, the federal children's bureau was established with a mandate that included services related to child maltreatment. In 1958, amendments to the Social Security Act mandated that states fund child protection efforts. In 1962, professional and media interest in child maltreatment was sparked by the publication of C. Henry Kempe and associates' "The battered child syndrome" in the "JAMA". By the mid-1960s, in response to public concern that resulted from this article, 49 U.S. states passed child-abuse reporting laws. In 1974, these efforts by the states culminated in the passage of the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) providing federal funding for wide-ranging federal and state child-maltreatment research and services. In 1980, Congress passed the first comprehensive federal child protective services act, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, which focused on family preservation efforts to help keep families together and children out of foster care or other out-of-home placement options.


title: Child protective services

text: Partly funded by the federal government, child protective services (CPS) agencies were first established in response to the 1974 CAPTA, which mandated that all states establish procedures to investigate suspected incidents of child maltreatment.


title: Child protective services

text: In the 1940s and 1950s, due to improved technology in diagnostic radiology, the medical profession began to take notice of what they believed to be intentional injuries, the so-called "shaken baby syndrome". In 1961, Kempe began to further research this issue, eventually identifying and coining the term "battered child syndrome". At this same time, there were also changing views about the role of children in society, fueled in part by the Civil Rights Movement.


title: Child protective services

text: In 1973, Congress took the first steps toward enacting federal legislature to address the issues of poverty and minorities. The CAPTA was passed in 1974, which required states "to prevent, identify and treat child abuse and neglect".


title: Child protective services

text: Shortly thereafter, in 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed in response to attempts to destroy the Native Americans by taking large numbers of Native American children, separating them from their tribes and placing them in foster care or sending them to far away schools where many were maltreated, lost and some died. This legislation not only opened the door for consideration of cultural issues while stressing ideas that children should be with their families, leading to the beginnings of family preservation programs. In 1980, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act was introduced as a way to manage the high numbers of children in placement. Although this legislation addressed some of the complaints from earlier pieces of legislation around the elimination of due process for parents, these changes were not designed to alleviate the high numbers of children in placement or continuing delays in permanence. This led to the introduction of the home visitation models, which provided funding to private agencies to provide parents with intensive services as an alternative to adoption.


title: Child protective services

text: In addition to family services, the focus of federal child welfare policy changed to try to address permanence for the large numbers of foster children care. Several pieces of federal legislation attempted to ease the process of adoption and taking away parental rights, including incentives for adoption and removal with the Adoption Assistance Act; the 1988 Child Abuse Prevention, Adoption, and Family Services Act; and the 1992 Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Adoption, and Family Services Act. The 1994 Multi-Ethnic Placement Act, which was revised in 1996 to add the Interethnic Placement Provisions, also attempted to promote permanency through adoption, creating regulations that adoptions could not be delayed or denied due to issues of parental rights, the children's right, discrimination, race, color, or national origin of the child or the adoptive parent.


title: Child protective services

text: All of these policies led up to the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), much of which guides current practice. Changes in the Adoptions and Safe Families Act shifted the emphasis towards children's health and safety concerns and away from a policy of reuniting children with their birth parents without regard to prior abusiveness. This law requires counties to provide "reasonable efforts" to preserve or reunify families, but required that states move to terminate parental rights for children who had been in foster care for 15 out of the last 22 months, with several exceptions.


title: Child protective services

text: For decades, before 1990, there had been pressure from NGOs and children's organizations for protecting children battered by poverty and hunger and despised by sections of the community in Brazil. After this, became a chapter on the rights of children and adolescents in the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil. In 1990, an even greater victory, when the Statute of the Child and Adolescent was approved ligating the government to protect child rights. This ensured a comprehensive child welfare system in Brazil. To ensure that the statute's provisions are enforced, councils for the rights of the child and adolescent were set up at federal, state and local levels.


title: Child protective services

text: The National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (CONANDA) is a federal authority. The councils of guardianship are the local authorities and have duties and responsibilities towards children in their area. All work is based in the Statute of the Child and Adolescents (Law No. 8,069, July 13, 1990).


title: Child protective services

text: In Ontario, services are provided by independent children's aid societies. The societies receive funding from, and are under the supervision of the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services. However, they are regarded as a non-governmental organization (NGO) which allows the CAS a large degree of autonomy from interference or direction in the day-to-day running of CAS by the ministry. The Child and Family Services Review Board exists to investigate complaints against CAS and maintains authority to act against the societies.


title: Child protective services

text: The federal government passed Bill C-92—officially known as An Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families—in June 2019 coming into force on January 1, 2020. The new legislation creates national standards on how Indigenous children are to be treated. For example, when looking to place kids in foster care, authorities are to prioritize extended family and home communities. The law also allows Indigenous communities to create their own child welfare laws. Indigenous children make up 7% of Canada's population, but represent about 50% of youth in care.


title: Child protective services

text: The agency was founded in 1930 by Luis Felipe Gonzalez Flores, a Costa Rican magnate at the time. It was founded to combat infant mortality, that at the time, was rampant in Costa Rica. The idea was to put infants up for adoption that the mother could not afford to support (abortion is a crime in Costa Rica).


title: Child protective services

text: In 1949, after the Costa Rican Civil War, a new constitution was written, it called for the agency to be an autonomous institution in the government, autonomous from any ministry.


title: Child protective services

text: Today the focus is on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The agency still favors adoption, since abortion is illegal in Costa Rica.


title: Child protective services

text: The United Kingdom has a comprehensive child welfare system under which local authorities have duties and responsibilities towards children in need in their area. This covers provision of advice and services, accommodation and care of children who become uncared for, and also the capacity to initiate proceedings for the removal of children from their parents care/care proceedings. The criteria for the latter is "significant harm" which covers physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect. In appropriate cases the care plan before the court will be for adoption. The local authorities also run adoption services both for children put up for adoption voluntarily and those becoming available for adoption through court proceedings. The basic legal principle in all public and private proceedings concerning children, under the Children Act 1989, is that the welfare of the child is paramount. In recognition of attachment issues, social work good practice requires a minimal number of moves and the 1989 Children Act enshrines the principle that delay is inimical to a child's welfare. Care proceedings have a time frame of 26 weeks (although capable of extension under certain circumstances) and concurrent planning is required. The final care plan put forward by the local authority is required to provide a plan for permanence, whether with parents, family members, long-term foster parents or adopters. The court routinely joins children as parties to their own care proceedings, and their best interests are explored and advanced by children's guardians, independent social workers who specialise in representation of children in proceedings. It is a feature of care proceedings that judges of all levels are expected to adhere to the recommendations of the children's guardian unless there are cogent reasons not to. Nevertheless, "drift" and multiple placements still occur as many older children are difficult to place or maintain in placements. The role of independent visitor, a voluntary post, was created in the United Kingdom under the 1989 Children Act to befriend and assist children and young people in care.


title: Child protective services

text: In England, Wales and Scotland, there has never been a statutory obligation to report alleged child abuse to the police. However both the Children Act 1989 and 2004 make clear a statutory obligation to all professionals to report suspected child abuse.


title: Child protective services

text: The statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children 2006 created the role of "local authority designated officer". This officer is responsible for managing allegations of abuse against adults who work with children (teachers, social workers, church leaders, youth workers etc.).


title: Child protective services

text: Local safeguarding children boards (LSCBs) are responsible ensuring agencies and professionals, in their area, effectively safeguard and promote the welfare of children. In the event of the death or serious injury of a child, LSCBs can initiate a "Serious Case Review" aimed at identifying agency failings and improving future practice.


title: Child protective services

text: The planned ContactPoint database, under which information on children is shared between professionals, has been halted by the newly elected coalition government (May 2010). The database was aimed at improving information sharing across agencies. Lack of information sharing had been identified as a failing in numerous high-profile child death cases. Critics of the scheme claimed it was evidence of a "big brother state" and too expensive to introduce.


title: Child protective services

text: Working Together to Safeguard Children 2006 (updated in 2010) and the subsequent "The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report" (Laming, 2009) continue to promote the sharing of data between those working with vulnerable children.


title: Child protective services

text: A child in suitable cases can be made a ward of the court and no decisions about the child or changes in its life can be made without the leave of the High Court.


title: Child protective services

text: In England the murder of Victoria Climbié was largely responsible for various changes in child protection in England, including the formation of the Every Child Matters programme in 2003. A similar programme, Getting it Right for Every Child – GIRFEC, was established in Scotland in 2008.


title: Child protective services

text: A bill is being debated in the UK parliament which many people and organisations fear will take away the statutory duty local authorities have to protect vulnerable children.


title: Child protective services

text: Children with histories of maltreatment, such as physical and psychological neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse, are at risk of developing psychiatric problems. Such children are at risk of developing a disorganized attachment. Disorganized attachment is associated with a number of developmental problems, including dissociative symptoms, as well as depressive, anxiety, and acting-out symptoms. Abuse and neglect also affect children and youth social and emotional development. Reason being is because of the negative affect on children's brain and cognitive development.


title: Child protective services

text: Generally speaking, a report must be made when an individual knows or has reasonable cause to believe or suspect that a child has been subjected to abuse or neglect. These standards guide mandatory reporters in deciding whether to make a report to child protective services. However, due to the policy of the business to protect the identity of the reporter many reports have been made due to conflict with other parents or hospitals/doctors being sued by parents concerned with the way their child's needs have been addressed.


title: Child protective services

text: In addition to defining acts or omissions that constitute child abuse or neglect, several states' statutes provide specific definitions of persons who can get reported to child protective services as perpetrators of abuse or neglect. These are persons who have some relationship or regular responsibility for the child. This generally includes parents, grandparents, guardians, foster parents, relatives, legal guardians or bystanders. Once taken away from home, the stated goal of CPS is to reunite the child with their family, however this is largely lip service. In some cases, due to the nature of abuse children are not able to see or converse with the abusers. If parents fail to complete Court Ordered terms and conditions, the children in care may never return home. Most terms and conditions are set by the CPS caseworkers, not the courts.


title: Child protective services

text: The United States government's Administration for Children and Families reported that in 2004 approximately 3.5 million children were involved in investigations of alleged abuse or neglect in the US, while an estimated 872,000 children were determined to have been abused or neglected, and an estimated 1,490 children died that year because of abuse or neglect. In 2007, 1,760 children died as the result of child abuse and neglect. Child abuse impacts the most vulnerable populations, with children under age five years accounting for 76% of fatalities. In 2008, 8.3 children per 1000 were victims of child abuse and neglect and 10.2 children per 1000 were in out of home placement.


title: Child protective services

text: On September 30, 2010, there were approximately 400,000 children in foster care in the U.S. of which 36% percent were ages 5 and under. During that same period, almost 120,000 birth to five year-olds entered foster care and a little under 100,000 exited foster care. U.S. Child Protective Services (CPS) received a little over 2.5 million reports of child maltreatment in 2009 of which 61.9% were assigned to an investigation. Research using national data on recidivism indicates that 22% of children were rereported within a two-year period and that 7% of these rereports were substantiated. In 2016, CPS within the state of Rhode Island demonstrated 2,074 cases of abuse or neglect among a population of 223,956 children.


title: Child protective services

text: As last reported in August 2019, 437,238 children nationally were removed from their families and placed in foster homes according to the federal government Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System.


title: Child protective services

text: From August 1999 - August 2019, 9,073,607 American children have been removed from their families and placed in foster homes according to the federal government Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System.


title: Child protective services

text: Two often-used terms in CPS recidivism are "re-report" (also known as "re-referral") and "recurrence". Either of the two can occur after an initial report of child abuse or neglect called an index report. Although the definitions of re-report and recurrence are not consistent, the general difference is that a re-report is a subsequent report of child abuse or neglect after an initial report (also known as an index report) whereas recurrence refers to a confirmed (also known as substantiated) re-report after an initial report of child abuse and neglect. Borrowing from the definition used by Pecora et al. (2000), recidivism is defined as, "Recurring child abuse and neglect, the subsequent or repeated maltreatment of a child after identification to public authorities." This definition is not all-inclusive because it does not include abused children who are not reported to authorities.


title: Child protective services

text: There are three main sources of recidivism data in the U.S.—the NCANDS, the NSCAW, and the NIS—and they all have their own respective strengths and weaknesses. The NCANDS was established in 1974, and it consists of administrative data of all reports of suspected child abuse and neglect investigated by CPS. The NSCAW was established in 1996 and is similar to the NCANDS in that it only includes reports of child abuse and neglect investigated by CPS, but it adds clinical measures related to child and family well-being that the NCANDS is lacking. The NIS was established in 1974, and it consists of data collected from CPS as well. However, it attempts to gather a more comprehensive picture of the incidence of child abuse and neglect by collecting data from other reporting sources called "community sentinels".


title: Child protective services

text: Brenda Scott, in her 1994 book "Out of Control: Who's Watching Our Child Protection Agencies", criticizes CPS, stating, "Child Protective Services is out of control. The system, as it operates today, should be scrapped. If children are to be protected in their homes and in the system, radical new guidelines must be adopted. At the core of the problem is the antifamily mindset of CPS. Removal is the first resort, not the last. With insufficient checks and balances, the system that was designed to protect children has become the greatest perpetrator of harm."


title: Child protective services

text: The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services had itself been an object of reports of unusual numbers of poisonings, death, rapes and pregnancies of children under its care since 2004. The Texas Family and Protective Services Crisis Management Team was created by executive order after the critical report Forgotten Children of 2004.


title: Child protective services

text: Texas Child Protective Services was hit with a rare if not unprecedented legal sanction for a "groundless cause of action" and ordered to pay $32,000 of the Spring family's attorney fees. Judge Schneider wrote in a 13-page order, "The offensive conduct by (CPS) has significantly interfered with the legitimate exercise of the traditional core functions of this court."


title: Child protective services

text: In April 2008, the largest child protection action in American history raised questions as the CPS in Texas removed hundreds of minor children, infants, and women incorrectly believed to be children from the YFZ Ranch polygamist community, with the assistance of heavily armed police with an armored personnel carrier. Investigators, including supervisor Angie Voss convinced a judge that all of the children were at risk of child abuse because they were all being groomed for under-age marriage. The state supreme court disagreed, releasing most children back to their families. Investigations would result in criminal charges against some men in the community.


title: Child protective services

text: Gene Grounds of Victim Relief Ministries commended CPS workers in the Texas operation as exhibiting compassion, professionalism and caring concern. However, CPS performance was questioned by workers from the Hill Country Community Mental Health-Mental Retardation Center. One wrote "I have never seen women and children treated this poorly, not to mention their civil rights being disregarded in this manner" after assisting at the emergency shelter. Others who were previously forbidden to discuss conditions working with CPS later produced unsigned written reports expressed anger at the CPS traumatizing the children, and disregarding rights of mothers who appeared to be good parents of healthy, well-behaved children. CPS threatened some MHMR workers with arrest, and the entire mental health support was dismissed the second week due to being "too compassionate". Workers believed poor sanitary conditions at the shelter allowed respiratory infections and chicken pox to spread.


title: Child protective services

text: The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, as with other states, had itself been an object of reports of unusual numbers of poisonings, death, rapes and pregnancies of children under its care since 2004. The Texas Family and Protective Services Crisis Management Team was created by executive order after the critical report Forgotten Children of 2004. Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn made a statement in 2006 about the Texas foster care system. In Fiscal 2003, 2004 and 2005, respectively 30, 38 and 48 foster children died in the state's care. The number of foster children in the state's care increased 24 percent to 32,474 in Fiscal 2005, while the number of deaths increased 60 percent. Compared to the general population, a child is four times more likely to die in the Texas foster care system. In 2004, about 100 children were treated for poisoning from medications; 63 were treated for rape that occurred while under state care, including four-year-old twin boys, and 142 children gave birth, though others believe Ms. Strayhorn's report was not scientifically researched, and that major reforms need to be put in place to assure that children in the conservatorship of the state get as much attention as those at risk in their homes.


title: Child protective services

text: In the United States, data suggests that a disproportionate number of minority children, particularly African American and Native American children, enter the foster care system. National data in the United States provides evidence that disproportionality may vary throughout the course of a child's involvement with the child welfare system. Differing rates of disproportionality are seen at key decision points including the reporting of abuse, substantiation of abuse, and placement into foster care. Additionally, once they enter foster care, research suggests that they are likely to remain in care longer.


title: Child protective services

text: Research has shown that there is no difference in the rate of abuse and neglect among minority populations when compared to Caucasian children that would account for the disparity.


title: Child protective services

text: The juvenile justice system has also been challenged by disproportionate negative contact of minority children. Because of the overlap in these systems, it is likely that this phenomenon within multiple systems may be related.


title: Child protective services

text: The American Journal of Public Health estimate that 37.4% of all children experience a child protective services investigation by age 18 years. Consistent with previous literature, they found a higher rate for African American children (53.0%) and the lowest rate for Asians and Pacific Islanders (10.2%). They conclude child maltreatment investigations are more common than is generally recognized when viewed across the lifespan. Building on other recent work, our data suggest a critical need for increased preventative and treatment resources in the area of child maltreatment.