KEY POINTS:
PARIS - Charles de Gaulle, the Resistance, the tricolore, the Marseillaise and even French cuisine are being enlisted in a campaign by President Nicolas Sarkozy to strengthen national sentiment in France.
Sarkozy was elected in May last year on a manifesto that pledged a return to patriotism and traditional values and he has been true to his word.
At centre stage in his vision is De Gaulle, venerated for rallying resistance after Hitler overran France and for founding a political movement from which conservative politicians even today draw their roots.
"For 28 million French people born after 1970, Gaullism is just a part of history," Sarkozy said as he inaugurated a museum in Paris dedicated to de Gaulle.
"Together, let us teach our children why Gaullism ... has a deep significance for us which is not only historical but also moral, why it speaks to us not just of the past but of the future."
The €18 million ($33 million) museum - a project started by Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac - is not located just anywhere.
It is housed alongside Napoleon's tomb in the courtyard under the Invalides built by the Sun King, a move "that gives the great man the place that is rightfully his", says Pierre Mazeaud, president of the Charles de Gaulle Foundation.
The display revolves around three of the big events in De Gaulle's life: his radio appeal from London on June 18, 1940 for France to resist German occupation; the August 1944 liberation of Paris and the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958, setting down the institutions that govern France today.
Sarkozy is also pointing to the Resistance as examples for young French people to follow. The President has called on schools, at the resumption of classes after the long summer holidays, to read out a letter by a young Communist hero of the Resistance, Guy Moquet, that was written in his prison cell just hours before his execution by the Nazis.
National symbols are key components of Sarkozy's plans to overhaul primary education, too.
His scheme principally focuses on reinforcing basic skills in literacy and numeracy. But a whole chapter of his proposal is about "strengthening moral and civic education", including respect for the flag, Marianne (the female figure of the French republic) and the national anthem, "for which children should stand when played".
For history, children will also be required to know "the traits that constitute the French nation" - a term that carries many rightwing echoes - and "the rules for acquiring French citizenship".
Sarkozy has also said that as part of their final year in primary school, French children should "adopt" a Jewish child who was killed in the Nazi death camps in order to reinforce the lessons of the Holocaust. He has come under fire from unions and parents' groups about the perils of moralising and of peddling a national identity that would be meaningless for children of Arab and African heritage.
"What is being meant by moral?" asked the main parents' federation, the FCPE. "What is the political intention behind the programme of having children learn the rules for acquiring French nationality?"
His Holocaust proposal has been mauled by politicians across the spectrum as flashy, lugubrious or unworkable and by several Jewish leaders as perilous sentimentalisation.
Centrist leader Francois Bayrou, a former education minister who jousted for the presidency last year, accused Sarkozy of trying to manipulate young minds. "There's a question of democracy that has to be addressed here. Is it right for the President, by himself, to awaken thoughts of this kind in the minds of children, let alone in school programmes? This has never happened before in the history of the French republic, nor in any other country to my knowledge."
Even Sarkozy's most stalwart allies have doubts about his motives. The rightwing daily le Figaro, in an unusually bitter analysis of Sarkozy's speech at the Invalides, accused him of "claiming De Gaulle's heritage".
Sarkozy had portrayed De Gaulle as stoic in the face of overwhelming adversity, in a naked attempt to draw a parallel with his own response to deep unpopularity, said le Figaro.
Another Sarkozy wheeze is to have French cuisine enshrined by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. The agency has turned down a similar request by Mexico, the first country to seek UN recognition of its food heritage.
IN EDUCATION
As part of a plan to instil a sense of national pride in France's young, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants French children to:
* Show respect for the flag and to stand in a show of respect when the national anthem is played.
* To know "the traits that constitute the French nation" and "the rules for acquiring French citizenship".
* To "adopt" a Jewish child who was killed in the Nazi death camps in order to reinforce the lessons of the Holocaust.
