France's expert on meaning of success is heading for a fall

A French politician's career is tottering towards failure a month after he published a book entitled What Is A Successful Life?

The book has been a resounding hit, unlike the author, Luc Ferry, who was appointed Education Minister only six months ago.

President Jacques Chirac is said to regret his decision to choose the floppy-haired intellectual with no previous political experience. Teaching unions and parents' groups have called for a national demonstration against the government's education policy next month.

M. Ferry has not cut the budget or changed much of his department's policy, but teaching unions have decided to be pre-emptively furious, just in case.

The minister has been criticised openly for sending two of his daughters to a private, Catholic school in Paris.

The criticism was somewhat misplaced because the school, as with most private schools in France, is attached to the state education system.

The newspaper Libération reported that President Chirac lost patience with M. Ferry after he gave an abstract presentation to a cabinet meeting. "School issues should be dealt with on the ground, not on drawing rooms or in reports," the President snapped. In private, M. Chirac had described M. Ferry as a dilettante and a socialite, the newspaper said.

The President is said to be enraged by M. Ferry's languid style, mop of unruly black hair and habit of peppering his conversation with Latin words and phrases.

Asked about the criticism yesterday, the philosopher-turned-politician said: "I am waiting with calm and serenity, for the tornado to move on."

To cheer himself up, he need only look at the French bestsellers list. His book, Qu'est-ce Qu'une Vie Réussie? is at the top of the non-fiction list. The success of the book is as puzzling as the ferocity of the criticism of M. Ferry's brief political career.

Despite the title, this is not an airport "positive thinking" book. It is an elegant and sometimes impenetrable academic study by M. Ferry of the definitions of success put forward by philosophers since ancient times.

M. Ferry's difficulties in government can partly be explained by the jealousies of professional politicians of the centre-right, angered that M. Chirac and his Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, opened the cabinet to outsiders. In particular, the deputy education minister, Xavier Darcos, is said to believe that he is carrying most of the workload while M. Ferry enjoys the social standing that goes with the title. Relations between the two men are "glacial", according to Liberation.

One of the other points on which M. Ferry has been criticised is his relatively blasé comments on the common practice of "bizutage" (the ritual ill-treatment of new students) at some celebrated higher education colleges in France. The Education Minister may be going through a political "bizutage" of his own.