[PoignardAzur]

Which European counterpart? Europe is extremely multicultural.

Speaking as someone who went through French school... nope, it's a brutal hellscape where they try to fit you in tidy little boxes and what they teach you is decided on the basis of how easy it is to grade, just like everywhere else.

Though multiple-choice question tests are a lot less common than in the US, I think.

I wish everyone just did Montessori or something similar.

[sofixa]

Not only that, IIRC ( never went through it), France has a popular test format with multiple choice questions, QCM, which penalises you for mistakes ( as in points are actively deducted for every wrong answer instead of just not given), which is IMHO terrible because it encourages memorisation and zero thought.

[PoignardAzur]

I mean, it exists, like everywhere else, but I wouldn't call it popular. Most of the tests aren't multiple-choice.