under the name of belles-lettres, two dead languages which are of
use only to a small number of citizens; it is there that they are
studied for six or seven years without being learned; under the
name of rhetoric, the art of speaking is taught before the art
of thinking, and that of speaking elegantly before having ideas;
under the name of logic, the head is filled with the subtilties of
Aristotle, and of his very sublime and very useless theory of the
syllogism, and there is spread over a hundred obscure pages what
might have been clearly stated in four; under the name of ethics,
I do not know what is said, but I know that there is not a word
said either of the qualities of mind or heart; under the name of
metaphysics, there are discussed theses as trifling as they are
knotty, the first elements of scepticism and bigotry, and the germ
of the unfortunate gift of replying to everything; under the name
of physics, there is endless dispute about the elements of matter
and the system of the world; but not a word on natural history, not
a word on real chemistry, very little on the movement and fall of
bodies; very few experiments, less still of anatomy, and nothing of
geography.”[182]
353. PROPOSED REFORMS.--After such a spirited criticism, it was
Diderot’s duty to propose earnest and radical reforms; but all of
those which he suggests are not equally commendable.
Let us first note the idea revived in our day by Auguste Comte and
the school of positivists, of a connection and a subordination of
the sciences, classified in a certain order, according as they
presuppose the science which has preceded, or as they facilitate
the study of the science which follows, and also according to
the measure of their utility.[183] It is according to this last
principle in particular, that Diderot distributes the work of the
school, after having called attention to the fact that the order
of the sciences, as determined by the needs of the school, is not
their logical order:--
“The natural connection of one science with the others designates
for it a place, and the principle of utility, more or less general,
determines for it another place.”
But Diderot forgets that we must take into account, not alone the
principle of utility in the distribution of studies, but that the
essential thing of all others is to adapt the order of studies to
the progress of the child in age and aptitudes.
354. PREFERENCES FOR THE SCIENCES.--Although equally enamored
of letters and the sciences, Diderot did not know how to hold
a just balance between a literary and a scientific education.
Anticipating Condorcet and Auguste Comte, he displaces the centre
of instruction, and gives a preponderance to the sciences. Of the
eight classes comprised in his Faculty of Arts, the first five are
devoted to the mathematics, to mechanics, to astronomy, to physics,
and to chemistry. Grammar and the ancient languages are relegated
to the last three years, which nearly correspond to what are called
in our colleges the “second” and “rhetoric.”[184]
The charge that must be brought against Diderot in this place, is
not merely that he puts an unreasonable restriction on literary
studies, but also that he makes a bad distribution of scientific
studies in placing the mathematics before physics. It is useless
for him to assert that “it is easier to learn geometry than to
learn to read.” He does not convince us of this. It is a grave
error to begin by keeping the child’s attention on numerical
abstractions, by leaving his senses unemployed, by postponing so
long the study of natural history and experimental physics, those
sciences expressly adapted to children, because, as Diderot himself
expresses it, “they involve a continuous exercise of sight, smell,
taste, and memory.”
To excuse Diderot’s error, it does not suffice to state that his
pupil does not enter the Faculty of Arts till his twelfth year.
Till that period, he will learn only reading, writing, and
orthography. There is ground for thinking that these first years
will be rather poorly employed; but besides this, it is evident
that even at the age of twelve the mind is not sufficiently mature
to be plunged into the cold deductions of mathematics.
355. INCOMPLETE VIEWS AS TO THE SCOPE OF LITERARY
STUDIES.--Diderot’s attitude with respect to classical studies is
a matter of surprise. On the one hand, he postpones their study
till the pupil’s nineteenth and twentieth year. On the other, with
what enthusiasm this eloquent scholar speaks of the ancients,
particularly of Homer!
“Homer is the master to whom I am indebted for whatever merit I
have, if indeed I have any at all. It is difficult to attain to
excellence in taste without a knowledge of the Greek and Latin
languages. I early drew my intellectual nourishment from Homer,
Virgil, Horace, Terence, Anacreon, Plato, and Euripides on the one
hand, and from Moses and the Prophets on the other.”
How are we to explain this contradiction of an inconsistent and
ungrateful humanist who extols the humanities to the skies, and
at the same time puts such restrictions on the teaching of them
as almost to annihilate them? The reason for this is, that, in
his opinion, the belles-lettres are useful only for the training
of orators and poets, but are not serviceable in the general
development of the mind. Consequently, being fancy studies, so to
speak, they are fit only for a small minority of pupils, and have
no right to the first place in a common education, destined for
men in general. Diderot is not able to discern what, in pedagogy,
is their true title to nobility,--that they are an admirable
instrument of intellectual gymnastics, and the surest and also the
most convenient means of acquiring those qualities of justness, of
precision, and of clearness, which are needed by all conditions of
men, and are applicable to all the special employments of life.[185]
356. OPINION OF MARMONTEL.--Diderot seems to reduce the office of
letters to a study of words, and to an exercise of memory. He might
have learned a lesson from one of his contemporaries, Marmontel,
whose intellect, though less brilliant, was sometimes more just, an
advantage which the intelligence gains from early discipline in the
study of the languages:--
“The choice and use of words, in translating from one language to
another, and even then some degree of elegance in the construction
of sentences, began to interest me; and this work, which did not
proceed without the analysis of ideas, fortified my memory. I
perceived that it was the idea attached to the word which made it
take root, and reflection soon made me feel that the study of the
languages was also the study of the art of distinguishing shades of
thought, of decomposing it, of forming its texture, and of catching
with precision its spirit and its relations; and that along with
words, an equal number of new ideas were introduced and developed
in the heads of the young,[186] and that in this way the early
classes were a course in elementary philosophy, much more rich,
more extended, and of greater real utility than we think, when we
complain that in our colleges nothing is learned but Latin.”[187]
357. OTHER NOVELTIES IN DIDEROT’S PLAN.--Without entering into the
details of the very elaborate organization of Diderot’s _Russian
University_, we shall call attention to some other novelties of his
system:--
1. The division of the classes into several series of parallel
courses: first, the series of scientific and literary courses;
then, the series of lectures devoted to religion, to ethics, and to
history; and finally, courses in drawing, music, etc.
2. The whimsical idea of teaching history in an inverted order, so
to speak, in beginning with the most recent events, and little by
little going back to antiquity.
3. His extreme estimate of the art of reading: “Let a teacher of
reading be associated with a professor of drawing; there are so
few men, even the most enlightened, who know how to read well, a
gift always so agreeable, and often so necessary.”
4. A special regard for the study of art and for æsthetic
education, which could not be a matter of indifference to the great
art critic who wrote the _Salons_.
5. A reform in the system of ushers.[188] Diderot would have for
supervising assistants in colleges, educated men, capable on
occasion of supplying the places of the professors themselves. To
attach them to their duties, he requires that some dignity be given
to their modest and useful functions, and that the usher be a sort
of supernumerary, or “professor in reversion,” who aspires to the
chair of the professor, whose place he supplies from time to time,
and which he may finally attain.
358. HELVETIUS (1715-1771).--In undertaking the study of the
thoughts of Helvetius on education, and the rapid analysis of his
_Treatise on Man_, we shall not take leave of Diderot, for the work
of Helvetius has had the good or the bad fortune of being commented
on and criticised by his illustrious contemporary. Thanks to the
_Systematic Refutation of the Book of Helvetius on Man_, which
forms a charming accompaniment of pungent or vigorous reflections
to a dull and languid book, the reading of the monotonous treatise
of Helvetius becomes easy and almost agreeable.
359. THE TREATISE ON MAN.--Under this title, a little long, _De
l’homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son éducation_,
Helvetius has composed a large work which he had in contemplation
for fifteen years, and which did not appear till after his
death, in 1772. As a matter of fact, education does not directly
occupy the author’s attention except in the first and the last
chapters (sections I. and X.). With this exception, the whole
book is devoted to long developments of the favorite maxims of
his philosophy: as the intellectual equality of all men, and the
reduction of all the passions to the pursuit of pleasure; or to
platitudes, such as the influence of laws on the happiness of
people, and the evils which result from ignorance.
360. POTENCY OF EDUCATION.--When he does not fall into platitudes,
Helvetius goes off into paradoxes that are presumptuous and
systematic. His habitual characteristic is pedantry in what is
false. According to him, for example, education is all-powerful; it
is the sole cause of the difference between minds. The mind of the
child is but an empty capacity, something indeterminate, without
predisposition. The impressions of the senses are the only elements
of the intelligence; so that the acquisitions of the five senses
are the only thing that is of moment; “the senses are all that
there is of man.” It is not possible to push sensationalism further
than this.
The impressions of the senses are, then, the basis of human nature,
and as these impressions vary with circumstances, Helvetius
arrives at this conclusion, that chance is the great master in the
formation of mind and character. Consequently, he undertakes to
produce at will men of genius, or, at least, men of talent. For
this purpose, it suffices to ascertain, by repeated observations,
the means which chance employs for making great men. These means
once discovered, it remains only to set them at work artificially
and to combine them, in order to produce the same effects.
“Genius is a product of chance. Rousseau, like a countless number
of illustrious men, may be regarded as one of the masterpieces of
chance.”
361. HELVETIUS REFUTED BY DIDEROT.--It is easy to reply to
extravagant statements of this sort. Had Helvetius consulted
teachers and parents, had he observed himself, had he simply
reflected on his two daughters, so unequally endowed though
identically educated, he would doubtless have felt constrained
to acknowledge the limitations of education; he would have
comprehended that it cannot give imagination to minds of sluggish
temperament, nor enthusiasm and sensibility to inert souls, and
that the most marvellously helpful circumstances will not make of
a Helvetius a Montesquieu or a Voltaire.
But if it is easy to refute Helvetius, it is impossible to
criticise him with more brilliancy and eloquence than Diderot has
done. With what perfection of reason he restores to nature, to
innate and irresistible inclinations, the influence which Helvetius
denies to them in the formation of character!
“The accidents of Helvetius,” he says, “are like the spark which
sets on fire a cask of wine, and which is extinguished in a bucket
of water.”
“For thousands of centuries the dew of heaven has fallen on the
rocks without making them fertile. The sown fields await it in
order to become productive, but it is not the dew that scatters the
seed. Accidents themselves no more produce anything, than the pick
of the laborer who delves in the mines of Golconda produces the
diamond that it brings to the surface.”
Doubtless education has a more radical effect than that which is
attributed to it by La Bruyère when he said that “it touches only
the surface of the soul.” But if it can do much, it cannot do all.
It perfects if it is good; it deadens and it perverts if it is bad;
but it can never be a substitute for lacking aptitude, and can
never replace nature.
362. SECULARIZED INSTRUCTION.--In other parts of his system
Helvetius is in accord with Diderot. Like him, he believes the
necessary condition of progress in education is that it be made
secular and entrusted to the civil power. The vices of education
come from the opposition of the two powers, spiritual and temporal,
that assume to direct it. Between the Church and the State
there is an opposition of interests and views. The State would
have the nation become brave, industrious, and enlightened. The
Church demands a blind submission and unlimited credulity. Hence
there is contradiction in pedagogical precepts, diversity in the
means that are employed, and, consequently, an education that is
hesitating, that is pulled in opposite directions, that does not
know definitely where it is going, that misses its way, that gropes
and wastes time.
But the conclusion of Helvetius is not as we might expect,--the
separation of Church and State in the matter of instruction
and education, such as recent laws have established in France.
No; Helvetius would have the State absorb the Church, and have
religious power and civil power lodged in the same hands and both
belong to those who control the government,--a vexatious confusion
that would end in the oppression of consciences.
Helvetius, whatever may be thought of him, does not deserve to
claim our attention for any length of time, and we cannot seriously
consider as an authority in pedagogy a writer who, in intellectual
as in moral education, reduces everything to a single principle,
the development and the satisfaction of physical sensibility.[189]
363. THE ENCYCLOPÆDISTS.--The vast collection which, under the
name _Encyclopédie_, sums up the science and the philosophy of
the eighteenth century, touches educational questions only in
passing. Properly speaking, the _Encyclopédie_ contains no system
of pedagogy. The principal fragment is the article _Éducation_,
written by the grammarian and Latinist Dumarsais.
But this piece of work is little worthy of its author, and little
worthy in particular of the _Encyclopédie_. It contains scarcely
anything but vague and trite generalities, and belongs to the
category of those articles for padding which caused Voltaire to
say: “You accept articles worthy of the Journal of Trévoux.” We
shall notice, however, in this article, the importance accorded
to the study of physics, and to the practice of the arts,
even the most common, and the marked purpose to “subordinate”
knowledges and studies, or to distribute them in a logical, or
rather psychological, order; for example, to cause the concrete
always to precede the abstract. But, after having lost himself in
considerations of but little interest on the development of ideas
and sentiments in the human soul, the author, who is decidedly far
below his task, concludes by recommending to young people “the
reading of newspapers.”
The other pedagogical articles of the _Encyclopédie_ are equally
deficient in striking novelties. If the great work of D’Alembert
and Diderot has contributed something to the progress of education,
it is less through the insufficient efforts which it has directly
attempted in this direction, than through the general influence
which it has exercised on the French mind in extolling the
sciences in their theoretical study as well as in their practical
applications, in diffusing technical knowledge, in glorifying
the industrial arts, and in thus preparing for the coming of
a scientific and positive education in place of an education
exclusively literary and of pure form.
364. KANT (1724-1804).--We know the considerable influence
which, for a century, Kant has exercised on the development of
philosophy. Since Descartes, no thinker had to the same degree
excited an interest in the great problems of philosophy, nor more
vigorously obliged the human reason to render an account of itself.
It is then a piece of good fortune for the science of education
that a philosopher of this order has taken up the discussion of
pedagogical questions, and has thrown upon them the light of his
penetrating criticism. The admiration which he felt for Rousseau,
his attentive and impassioned reading of the _Émile_, his own
reflections on the monastic education which he had received at the
Collegium Fredericianum, a sort of small seminary conducted by the
Pietists, the experience which he had had as a preceptor in several
families that entrusted him with their children, and finally, above
all else, his profound studies on human nature and his exalted
moral philosophy, had given him a capital preparation for treating
educational questions. Professor at the University of Königsberg,
he several times resumes the discussion of pedagogical subjects
with a marked predilection for them, and the notes of his lectures,
collected by one of his colleagues, formed the little _Treatise on
Pedagogy_ which we are about to analyze.[190]
365. HIGH CONCEPTION OF EDUCATION.--In the opinion of Kant, the
art of educating men, with that of governing them, is the most
difficult and the most important of all. It is by education alone
that humanity can be perfected and regenerated:--
“It is pleasant to think that human nature will always be better
and better developed by education, and that at last there will thus
be given it the form which best befits it.
“To know how far the omnipotence of education can go, it would be
necessary that a being of a superior order should undertake the
bringing up of men.”
But in order that it may attain this exalted end, education must
be set free from routine and traditional methods. It must bring
up children, not in view of their success in the present state of
human society, but “in view of a better state, possible in the
future, and according to an ideal conception of humanity and of its
complete destination.”
366. PSYCHOLOGICAL OPTIMISM.--Kant comes near accepting the opinion
of Rousseau on the original innocence of man and the perfect
goodness of his natural inclinations:--
“It is said in medicine that the physician is but the servant of
nature. This is true of the moralist. Ward off the bad influences
from without, and nature can be trusted to find for herself the
best way.”[191]
Thus Kant does not tire of exalting the service which Rousseau
had rendered pedagogy, in recalling educators to the confidence
and respect that are due to calumniated human nature. Let us add,
however, that the German philosopher is not content to repeat
Rousseau. He corrects him in affirming that man, at his birth, is
neither good nor evil, because he is not naturally a moral being.
He does not become such till he raises his reason to the conception
of duty and law. In other terms, in the infant everything is in
germ. The infant is a being in preparation. The future alone,
the development which he will receive from his education, will
make him good or bad. At the beginning, he has but indeterminate
dispositions, and evil will come, not from a definite inclination
of nature, but solely from the fact that we will not have known how
to direct it,--from the fact, according to Kant’s own expression,
that we will not have “subjected nature to rules.”
367. RESPECT FOR THE LIBERTY OF THE CHILD.--The psychological
optimism of Kant inspires him, as it does Rousseau, with the idea
of a negative education, respectful of the liberty of the child:--
“In general, it must be noted that the earliest education should
be negative; that is to say, nothing should be added to the
precautions taken by nature, and that the effort should be limited
to the preservation of her work.... It is well to employ at first
but few helps, and to leave children to learn for themselves. Much
of the weakness of man is due, not to the fact that nothing is
taught him, but to the fact that false impressions are communicated
to him.”
Without going so far as to say with Rousseau that all dependence
with respect to men is contrary to order, Kant took great care
to respect the liberty of the pupil. He complains of parents who
are always talking about “breaking the wills of their sons.” He
maintains, not without reason, that it is not necessary to offer
much resistance to children, if we have not begun by yielding
too readily to their caprices, and by always responding to their
cries. Nothing is more harmful to them than a discipline which
is provoking and degrading. But, in his zeal for human liberty,
the theorist of the autonomy of wills goes a little too far. He
fears, for example, the tyranny of habits. He requires that they
be prevented from being formed, and that children be accustomed to
nothing. He might as well demand the suppression of all education,
since education should be but the acquisition of a body of good
habits.
368. STORIES INTERDICTED.--In the education of the intellectual
faculties or talents, which he calls the _physical culture_ of the
soul, as distinguished from _moral culture_, which is the education
of the will, Kant also approaches Rousseau. He proscribes romances
and stories. “Children have an extremely active imagination
which has no need of being developed by stories.” It may be said
in reply, that fables and fictions, at the same time that they
develop the imagination, also direct it and adorn it with their
own proper grace, and may even lend it moral support. Rousseau,
notwithstanding the ardor of his criticisms on the _Fables_ of La
Fontaine, himself admitted the moral value of the apologue.
369. CULTURE OF THE FACULTIES.--That which distinguishes Kant
as an educator is that he is pre-occupied with the culture of
the faculties much more than with the acquisition of knowledge.
He passes in review the different intellectual forces, and his
reflections on each of them might be collected as the elements of
an excellent system of educational psychology. He will criticise,
for example, the abuse of memory:--
“Men who have nothing but memory,” he says, “are but living
lexicons, and, as it were, the pack-horses of Parnassus.”
For the culture of the understanding, Kant proposes “at first to
train it passively to some degree,” by requiring of the child
examples which illustrate a rule, or, on the contrary, the rule
which applies to particular examples.
For the exercise of the reason, he recommends the Socratic method,
and, in general, for the development of all the faculties of the
mind, he thinks that the best way of proceeding is to cause the
pupil to be active:--
“The best way to comprehend is to do. What we learn the most
thoroughly is what we learn to some extent by ourselves.”
370. DIFFERENT KINDS OF PUNISHMENTS.--Kant has made a subtile
analysis of the different qualities with which punishment may be
invested. He distinguishes from _physical punishment_, _moral
punishment_, which is the better. It consists in humiliating the
pupil, in greeting him coolly, “in encouraging the disposition of
the child to be honored and loved, that auxiliary of morality.”
Physical punishments ought to be employed with precaution, “to the
end that they may not entail servile dispositions.”
Another distinction is that of _natural_ punishments and
_artificial_ punishments. The first are preferable to the second,
because they are the very consequences of the faults which have
been committed; “indigestion, for example, which a child brings
on himself when he eats too much.” Another advantage of natural
punishment, Kant justly remarks, “is that man submits to it all his
life.”[192]
Finally, Kant divides punishments into _negative_ and _positive_.
The first are to be used for minor faults, and the others are to be
reserved for the punishment of conduct that is absolutely bad.
Moreover, whatever punishment may be applied, Kant advises the
teacher to avoid the appearance of feeling malice towards the
pupil:--
“The punishments we inflict while exhibiting signs of anger have a
wrong tendency.”
371. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.--At first view, we might be tempted to
think that Kant has adopted the conclusions of Rousseau, and that,
like him, he refuses to take an early occasion to inculcate in the
child’s mind the notion of a Supreme Being:--
“Religious ideas always suppose some system of theology. Now, how
are we to teach theology to the young, who, far from knowing the
world, do not yet know themselves? How shall the young who do not
yet know what duty is, be in a condition to comprehend an immediate
duty towards God?”
To speak of religion to a young man, it would then be logical to
wait till he is in a condition to form a clear and fixed conception
of the nature of God. But it is impossible to do this, says Kant,
because the young man lives in a society where he hears the name
of the Divinity spoken at each moment, and where he takes part
in continual observances of piety. It is better, then, to teach
him at an early hour true religious notions, for fear that he may
borrow from other men notions that are superstitious and false. In
reality, Kant dissents from Rousseau only because, re-establishing
the conditions of real life, he restores Émile to society, no
longer keeping him in a fancied state of isolation. What a broad
and noble way, moreover, of conceiving religious education! The
best way of making clear to the mind of children the idea of God,
is, according to Kant, to seek an analogy in the idea of a human
father. It is necessary, moreover, that the conception of duty
precede the conception of God; that morality precede, and that
theology follow. Without morality, religion is but superstition;
without morality, the pretended religious man is but a courtier, a
suitor for divine favor.
372. MORAL CATECHISM.--Those who know to what a height Kant
could raise the theory of morality, will not be surprised at the
importance which he ascribes to the teaching of morals.
“Our schools,” he says, “are almost entirely lacking in one
thing which, however, would be very useful for training children
in probity,--I mean a catechism on duty. It should contain, in
a popular form, cases concerning the conduct to be observed
in ordinary life, and which would always naturally raise this
question: Is this right or not?”
He had begun to write a book of this kind under the title _Moral
Catechism_;[193] and he would have desired that an hour a day
of school time be given to its study, “in order to teach pupils
to know and to learn by heart their duty to men,--that power of
God on the earth.” The child, he says again, would there learn
to substitute the fear of his own conscience for that of men and
divine punishment, inward dignity for the opinion of others, the
intrinsic value of actions for the apparent value of words, and,
finally, a serene and cheerful piety for a sad and gloomy devotion.
[373. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. This study exhibits the influence
of philosophical systems on education. New conceptions of human
destiny, new theories with respect to the composition of human
nature, or a new hypothesis concerning man’s place in nature,
determine corresponding changes in educational theory.
2. Perhaps the broadest generalization yet reached in educational
theory is the assumption made by Condillac, that the education
of each individual should be a repetition of civilization _in
petto_. With Mr. Spencer this hypothesis becomes a law.
3. In theory, the secularization of education has begun. The
Church is to lose one of its historical prerogatives, and the
modern State is to become an educator.
4. Helvetius typifies what may be called the _plastic theory_ in
education, or the conception that the teacher, if wise enough,
may ignore all differences in natural endowment. This makes man
the victim of his environment. The truth evidently is that man is
the only creature which can bend circumstances to his will; and
he has such an endowment of power in this direction that he can
virtually recreate his environment and thus rise superior to it.
And farther than this, there are innate differences in endowment
that will persist in spite of all that education can do.
5. The culture value of literary studies is justly exhibited in
the quotation from Marmontel, and in particular the disciplinary
value of translation.
6. Education for training, discipline, or culture, as
distinguished from an education whose chief aim is to impart
knowledge, receives definite recognition from Kant.]
FOOTNOTES:
[177] _Discours préliminaire sur la grammaire_, in the _Œuvres
complètes_ of Condillac, Tome VI. p. 264.
[178] This is also the main principle in Mr. Spencer’s educational
philosophy. “The education of the child must accord both in mode
and arrangement with the education of mankind as considered
historically; or, in other words, the genesis of knowledge in the
individual must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge
in the race.”--_Education_, p. 122. (P.)
[179] The general law of human progress is _inheritance
supplemented by individual acquisition_. Using the symbols _i_
(inheritance) and _a_ (acquisition), the progress of the race
from its origin upwards, through successive generations, may be
exhibited by this series: _i_; _i_ + _a_; _i_ (2_a_) + _a_; _i_
(3_a_) + _a_; _i_ (4_a_) + _a_. If the factor of inheritance could
be eliminated, as Condillac and Spencer recommend, the series would
take this form: _a_′; _a_″; _a_‴; _a_^{iv}; _a_^v: the successive
increments in acquisition being due to successive increments in
power gained through heredity. But, happily, the law of inheritance
cannot be abrogated, and so philosophers write books in order to
save succeeding generations from the fate of Sisyphus. (P.)
[180] _Cours d’études_, Tome X. Introduction.
[181] See _Œuvres complètes_ of Diderot. Edited by Tourneux,
1876-77. Tomes II. and III.
[182] _Œuvres_, Tome III. p. 459.
[183] For Comte’s classification of the sciences, see Spencer’s
_Illustrations of Universal Progress_, Chap. III. (P.)
[184] See note, p. 131.
[185] This thought will bear extension as in the following
quotation: “The reasoning that I oppose starts from the low and
false assumption that instruction serves only for the practical
use that is made of it; for example, that he who, by his social
position, does not make use of his intellectual culture, has no
need of that culture. Literature, from this point of view, is
useful only to the man of letters, science only to the scientist,
good manners and fine bearing only to men of the world. The poor
man should be ignorant, for education and knowledge are useless
to him. Blasphemy, Gentlemen! The culture of the mind and the
culture of the soul are duties for every man. They are not simple
ornaments; they are things as sacred as religion” (Renan, _Famille
et État_, p. 3). This is a sufficient answer to Mr. Spencer’s
assumption (_Education_, p. 84), that the studies that are best for
guidance are at the same time the best for discipline. See also
Dugald Stewart (_Elements_, p. 12). (P.)
[186] This thought throws light on a dictum of current pedagogy,
“First, the idea, then the term.” It shows that very often, in
actual experience, the sequence is from term to idea. The relation
between term and idea is the same in kind as that between sentence
and thought. Must we then say, “First the thought, then the
sentence”? Or, “First the thought, then the chapter or the book”?
The disciplinary value of translation is also well stated. It may
be doubted whether the schools furnish a better “intellectual
gymnastic.” Three high intellectual attainments are involved in
a real translation: 1. The separation of the thought from the
original form of words; 2. The seizing or comprehension of the
thought as a mental possession; and 3. The embodying of the thought
in a new form. A strictly analogous process, of almost equal
value in its place, is that variety of reading in which the pupil
is required to express the thought of the paragraph _in his own
language_. This exercise involves the three processes above stated,
and may be called “the translation of thought from one form into
another, in the same language.” (P.)
[187] Marmontel, _Mémoires d’un père pour servir à l’instruction de
ses enfants_, Tome I. p. 19.
[188] _Maître d’étude_: “He who in a lycée, college, or
boarding-school, has oversight of pupils during study hours and
recreations.”--LITTRÉ.
[189] It is a matter of surprise that in a German _Pedagogical
Library_ the very first French work published is the _Traité de
l’Homme_ of Helvetius. This is giving the place of honor to what is
perhaps of the most ordinary value in French pedagogical literature.
[190] See the French translation of this tract at the end of the
volume, published by Monsieur Barni, under the title, _Éléments
métaphysiques de la doctrine de la vertu_. Paris, 1855. The work of
Kant appeared in German in 1803.
[191] Extract from Kant’s _Fragments posthumes_.
[192] Monsieur Compayré seems to give his sanction to the
“Discipline of Consequences.” I think that Mr. Fitch has correctly
stated its limitations (_Lectures_, p. 117). Kant doubtless
borrowed the idea from Rousseau, who employs it in the government
of his imaginary pupil. (See Miss Worthington’s translation of
the _Émile_, p. 66.) This doctrine is the basis of Mr. Spencer’s
chapter on _Moral Education_. (P.)
[193] Helvetius, but poorly qualified for teaching moral questions,
had had the idea of a _Catéchisme de probité_. Saint Lambert
published, in 1798, a _Catéchisme universel_.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ORIGIN OF LAY AND NATIONAL INSTRUCTION.--LA CHALOTAIS AND
ROLLAND.
JESUITS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS; EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS (1764);
GENERAL COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE EDUCATION OF THE JESUITS; EFFORTS
MADE TO REPLACE THEM; LA CHALOTAIS (1701-1785); HIS ESSAY ON
NATIONAL EDUCATION (1763); SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION; PRACTICAL
END OF INSTRUCTION; NEW SPIRIT IN EDUCATION; INTUITIVE AND
NATURAL INSTRUCTION; STUDIES OF THE EARLIEST PERIOD; CRITICISM OF
NEGATIVE EDUCATION; HISTORY AVENGED OF THE DISDAIN OF ROUSSEAU;
GEOGRAPHY; NATURAL HISTORY; PHYSICAL RECREATIONS; MATHEMATICAL
RECREATIONS; STUDIES OF THE SECOND PERIOD; THE LIVING LANGUAGES;
OTHER STUDIES; THE QUESTION OF BOOKS; ARISTOCRATIC PREJUDICES;
INSTRUCTION WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL; NORMAL SCHOOLS; SPIRIT OF
CENTRALIZATION; TURGOT (1727-1781); ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
374. JESUITS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS.--Of the educators of the
eighteenth century of whom we have been speaking up to the present
time, no one has been called to exercise an immediate and direct
action on the destinies of public education; no one of them had the
power to apply the doctrines which were so dear to him to college
education; so that, so far, we have studied the theory and not the
practice of education in the eighteenth century.
On the contrary, the members of the French Parliaments, after
having solicited and obtained from the king the expulsion of the
Jesuits, made memorable efforts, from 1762 up to the eve of the
Revolution, to supply the places of the teachers whom they had
driven away, to correct the faults of the ancient education, and to
give effect to the idea, cherished by the most of the great spirits
of that time, of a national education adapted to the needs of civil
society. They were the practical organizers of instruction; they
prepared the foundation of the French University of the nineteenth
century; they resumed, not without lustre, the struggle too often
interrupted, which the Jansenists had sustained against the Jesuits.
375. EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS (1764).--The causes of the expulsion
of the Jesuits were doubtless complex, and, above all else,
political. In attacking the Company of Jesus, the Parliaments
desired especially to defend the interests of the State,
compromised by a powerful society which tended to dominate all
Christian nations. But reasons of an educational character had also
some influence on the condemnation pronounced against the Jesuits
by all the Parliaments of France. From all quarters, in the reports
which were drawn up by the municipal or royal officers of all the
cities where the Jesuits had colleges, complaint is made of the
scholastic methods and usages of the Company. Reforms were demanded
which they were incapable of realizing.
And it is not in France alone that the faults in the education of
the Jesuits were vigorously announced. In the edict of 1759, by
which the king of Portugal expelled the Jesuits from his kingdom,
it was said: “The study of the humanities has declined in the
kingdom, and the Jesuits are evidently the cause of the decadence
into which the Greek and Latin tongues have fallen.” Some years
later, in 1768, the king of Portugal congratulated himself on
having banished “the moral corruption, the superstition, the
fanaticism, and the ignorance, which had been introduced by the
Society of Jesus.”
376. GENERAL COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE EDUCATION OF THE JESUITS.--Even
in the middle of the eighteenth century the Jesuits were still
addicted to their old routine, and even their faults were
aggravated with the times.
At Auxerre, complaint is made that pupils study in their schools
only a few Latin authors, and that they leave them without ever
receiving into their hands a single French author.
At Moulins, a request is made that at least one hour a week be
devoted to the history of France, which proves that the Society of
Jesus, always enslaved to its immobile formalism, did not grant
even this little concession to the teaching of history.
At Orleans, the necessity of teaching children the French language
is insisted on.
At Montbrison, the wish is expressed that pupils be taught a
smattering of geography, especially of their own country.
At Auxerre, it is proved that in the teaching of philosophy the
time is employed “in copying and learning note-books filled with
vain distinctions and frivolous questions.”
At Montbrison, the request is made “that the rules of reasoning be
explained in French, and that there be a disuse of debates which
train only disputants and not philosophers.”
It would be interesting to pursue this study, and to collect
from these reports of 1762,--real memorials of a scholastic
revolution,--all the complaints of public opinion against the
Jesuits. Even in religion, the Company of Jesus is charged with
substituting for the sacred texts, books of devotion composed by
the Fathers. At Poitiers, a demand is made in favor of the Old
and the New Testaments, the study of which was wholly neglected.
From time to time the Jesuits were accused of continually mixing
religious questions with classical studies and of catechising at
every turn. “The masters of the fifth and sixth forms in the
College of Auxerre dogmatize in the themes which they dictate to
the children.” Finally, the Company of Jesus maintained in the
schools the teaching of moral casuistry; it encouraged bigotry
and superstition; it relaxed nothing from the severity of its
discipline, and provoked violent recriminations among some of
its former pupils who had preserved a painful recollection of
corrections received in its colleges.[194]
377. EFFORTS MADE TO DISPLACE THE JESUITS.--The Parliaments,
then, did nothing more, so to speak, than register the verdict of
public opinion everywhere excited against the Jesuits. But while
they heartily joined in the general reprobation, they undertook
to determine the laws of the new education. “It is of little use
to destroy,” they said, “if we do not intend to build. The public
good and the honor of the nation require that we should establish
a civil education which shall prepare each new generation for
filling with success the different employments of the State.” It is
not just to say with Michel Bréal, that “once delivered from the
Jesuits, the University installed itself in their establishments
and continued their instruction.” Earnest attempts were made to
reform programmes and methods. La Chalotais, Guyton de Morveau,
Rolland, and still others attempted by their writings, and, when
they could, by their acts, to establish a system of education
which, while inspired by Rollin and the Jansenists, attempted to do
still better.
378. LA CHALOTAIS (1701-1785).--Of all the parliamentarians who
distinguished themselves in the campaign undertaken towards the
middle of the eighteenth century against the pedagogy of the
Jesuits, the most celebrated, and the most worthy of being such,
is undoubtedly the solicitor-general of the Parliament of Bretagne,
René de la Chalotais. A man of courage and character, he was
arrested and imprisoned in the citadel of Saint Malo for having
upheld the franchise of the province of Bretagne; and it was in
his prison, in 1765, that he drew up for his defence an eloquent
and impassioned memorial, of which Voltaire said, “Woe to every
sensitive soul that does not feel the quivering of a fever in
reading it!”
379. HIS ESSAY ON NATIONAL EDUCATION.--The _Essai_ of La Chalotais
appeared in 1763, one year after the _Émile_. Coming after the
ambitious theories of a philosopher who, scorning polemics and
the dissensions of his time, had written only for humanity and
the future, this was a modest and opportune work, the effort of
a practical man who attempted to respond to the aspirations and
the needs of his time. Translated into several languages, the
_Essai d’éducation nationale_ obtained the enthusiastic approval
of Diderot, and also of Voltaire, who said, “It is a terrible book
against the Jesuits, all the more so because it is written with
moderation.” Grimm carried his admiration so far as to write, “It
would be difficult to present in a hundred and fifty pages more
reflections that are wise, profound, useful, and truly worthy of
a magistrate, of a philosopher, of a statesman.” Too completely
forgotten to-day, this little composition of La Chalotais deserves
to be republished. Notwithstanding some prejudices that mar it, it
is already wholly penetrated with the spirit of the Revolution.
380. SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION.--As a matter of fact, the whole
pedagogy of the eighteenth century is dominated by the idea of the
necessary secularization of instruction. Thorough-going Gallicans
like La Chalotais or Rolland, dauntless free-thinkers like Diderot
or Helvetius, all believe and assert that public instruction is a
civil affair, a “government undertaking,” as Voltaire expressed it.
All wish to substitute lay teachers for religious teachers, and to
open civil schools upon the ruins of monastic schools.
“Who will be persuaded,” says Rolland in his report of 1708, “that
fathers who feel an emotion that an ecclesiastic never should have
known, will be less capable than he of educating children?”
La Chalotais also demands these citizen teachers. He objects to
those instructors who, from interest as well as from principle,
give the preference in their affections to the supernatural world
over one’s native land.
“I do not presume to exclude ecclesiastics,” he said, “but I
protest against the exclusion of laymen. I dare claim for the
nation an education which depends only on the State, because
it belongs essentially to the State; because every State has
an inalienable and indefeasible right to instruct its members;
because, finally, the children of the State ought to be educated
by the members of the State.” This does not mean that La Chalotais
is irreligious; but he desires a national religion which does not
subordinate the interests of the country to a foreign power. What
he wants especially is, that the Church, reserving to herself the
teaching of divine truth, abandon to the State the teaching of
morals, and the control of purely human studies. He is of the same
opinion as his friend Duclos, who said:--
“It is certain that in the education which was given at Sparta, the
prime purpose was to train Spartans. It is thus that in every State
the purpose should be to enkindle the spirit of citizenship; and,
in our case, to train Frenchmen, and in order to make Frenchmen, to
labor to make men of them.”[195]
381. PRACTICAL PURPOSE OF INSTRUCTION.--The particular charge
brought by La Chalotais against the education of his time, against
that of the University as well as against that of the Jesuits, is,
that it does not prepare children for real life, for life in the
State. “A stranger who should visit our colleges might conclude
that in France we think only of peopling the seminaries, the
cloisters, and the Latin colonies.” How are we to imagine that
the study of a dead language, and a monastic discipline, are the
appointed means for training soldiers, magistrates, and heads of
families?
“The greatest vice of education, and perhaps the most inevitable,
while it shall be entrusted to persons who have renounced the
world, is the absolute lack of instruction on the moral and
political virtues. Our education does not affect our habits, like
that of the ancients. After having endured all the fatigues and
irksomeness of the college, the young find themselves in the need
of learning in what consist the duties common to all men. They have
learned no principle for judging actions, evils, opinions, customs.
They have everything to learn on matters that are so important.
They are inspired with a devotion which is but an imitation of
religion, and with practices which take the place of virtue, and
are but the shadow of it.”
382. INTUITIVE AND NATURAL INSTRUCTION.--A pupil of the sensational
school, a disciple of Locke and of Condillac, La Chalotais is too
much inclined to misconceive, in the development of the individual,
the play of natural activities and innate dispositions. But, by
way of compensation, his predilection for sensationalism leads him
to excellent thoughts on the necessity of beginning with sensible
objects before advancing to intellectual studies, and first of all
to secure an education of the senses.
“I wish nothing to be taught children except facts which are
attested by the eyes, at the age of seven as at the age of thirty.
“The principles for instructing children should be those by which
nature herself instructs them. Nature is the best of teachers.
“Every method which begins with abstract ideas is not made for
children.
“Let children see many objects; let there be a variety of such, and
let them be shown under many aspects and on various occasions. The
memory and the imagination of children cannot be overcharged with
useful facts and ideas of which they can make use in the course of
their lives.”
Such are the principles according to which La Chalotais organizes
his plan of studies.
383. THE NEW SPIRIT IN EDUCATION.--The purpose, then, is to
replace that monastic and ultramontane education (this is the term
employed by La Chalotais), and also that narrow education, and that
repulsive and austere discipline, “which seems made only to abase
the spirit”; that sterile and insipid teaching, “the most usual
effect of which is to make study hated for life”; those scholastic
studies where young men “contract the habit of disputing and
caviling”; and those ascetic regulations “which set neatness and
health at defiance.” The purpose is to initiate children into our
most common and most ordinary affairs, into what forms the conduct
of life and the basis of civil society.
“Most young men know neither the world which they inhabit, the
earth which nourishes them, the men who supply their needs, the
animals which serve them, nor the workmen and citizens whom they
employ. They have not even any desire for this kind of knowledge.
No advantage is taken of their natural curiosity for the purpose
of increasing it. They know how to admire neither the wonders of
nature nor the prodigies of the arts.”
This is equivalent to saying that they should henceforth learn all
that up to this time they had been permitted to be ignorant of.
384. STUDIES OF THE FIRST PERIOD.--Education, according to La
Chalotais, should be divided into two periods: the first from five
to ten, the second from ten to seventeen.
During the first period, we have to do with children who have no
experience because they have seen nothing, who have no power of
attention because they are incapable of any sustained effort,
and no judgment because they have not yet any general ideas; but
who, by way of compensation, have senses, memory, and some power
of reflection. It is necessary, then, to make a careful choice
of the subjects of study which shall be proposed to these tender
intelligences; and La Chalotais decides in favor of history,
geography, natural history, physical and mathematical _recreations_.
“The exercises proposed for the first period,” he says, “are as
follows: learning to read, write, and draw; dancing and music,
which ought to enter into the education of persons above the
commonalty; historical narratives and the lives of illustrious men
of every country, of every age, and of every profession; geography,
mathematical and physical recreations; the fables of La Fontaine,
which, whatever may be said of them, ought not to be removed from
the hands of children, but all of which they should be made to
learn by heart; and besides this, walks, excursions, merriment,
and recreations; I do not propose even the studies except as
amusements.”
385. CRITICISM OF NEGATIVE EDUCATION.--La Chalotais is often right
as against Rousseau. For example, he has abundantly refuted the
utopia of a negative education in which nature is allowed to have
her way, and which considers the toil of the centuries as of no
account. It is good sense itself which speaks in reflections like
these:--
“If man is not taught what is good, he will necessarily become
preoccupied with what is bad. The mind and the heart cannot remain
unoccupied.... On the pretext of affording children an experience
which is their own, they are deprived of the assistance of others’
experience.”
386. HISTORY AVENGED OF THE DISDAIN OF ROUSSEAU.--The sophisms of
Rousseau on history are brilliantly refuted. History is within the
comprehension of the youngest. The child who can understand Tom
Thumb and Blue Beard, can understand the history of Romulus and of
Clovis. Moreover, it is to the history of the most recent times
that La Chalotais attaches the greatest importance, and in this
respect he goes beyond his master Rollin:--
“I would have composed for the use of the child histories of every
nation, of every century, and particularly of the later centuries,
which should be written with greater detail, and which should
be read before those of the more remote centuries. I would have
written the lives of illustrious men of all classes, conditions,
and professions, of celebrated heroes, scholars, women, and
children.”
387. GEOGRAPHY.--La Chalotais does not separate the study of
geography from that of history, and he requires that, without
entering into dry and tedious details, the pupil be made to travel
pleasantly through different countries, and that stress be put “on
what is of chief importance and interest in each country, such as
the most striking facts, the native land of great men, celebrated
battles, and whatever is most notable, either as to manners and
customs, to natural productions, or to arts and commerce.”
388. NATURAL HISTORY.--Another study especially adapted to
children, says La Chalotais with reason, is natural history: “The
principal thing is first to show the different objects just as they
appear to the eyes. A representation of them, with a precise and
exact description, is sufficient.”
“Too great detail must be avoided, and the objects chosen must
be such as are most directly related to us, which are the most
necessary and the most useful.”
“Preference shall be given to domestic animals over those that are
wild, and to native animals over those of other countries. In the
case of plants, preference shall be given to those that serve for
food and for use in medicine.”
As far as possible, the object itself should be shown, so that the
idea shall be the more exact and vivid, and the impression the more
durable.
389. RECREATIONS IN PHYSICS.--La Chalotais explains that he means
by this phrase observations, experiments, and the simplest facts of
nature. Children should early be made acquainted with thermometers,
barometers, with the microscope, etc.
390. RECREATIONS IN MATHEMATICS.--All this is excellent, and La
Chalotais enters resolutely into the domain of modern methods. What
is more debatable is the idea of putting geometry and mathematics
into the programme of children’s studies, under this erroneous
pretext, that “geometry presents nothing but the sensible and the
palpable.” Let us grant, however, that it is easier to conceive
“clear ideas of bodies, lines, and angles that strike the eyes,
than abstract ideas of verbs, declensions, and conjugations, of an
accusative, an ablative, a subjunctive, an infinitive, or of the
omitted _that_.”
391. STUDIES OF THE SECOND PERIOD.--La Chalotais postpones the
study of the classical languages till the second period, the tenth
year. The course of study for this second period will comprise: 1.
French and Latin literature, or the humanities; 2. a continuation
of history, geography, mathematics, and natural history; 3.
criticism, logic, and metaphysics; 4. the art of invention; 5.
ethics.
La Chalotais complains that his contemporaries neglect French
literature, as though we had not admirable models in our national
language. Out of one hundred pupils there are not five who will
find it useful to write in Latin; while there is not one of them
who will have occasion to speak or write in Greek, and to construct
Latin verses. All, on the contrary, ought to know their native
language. Consequently, our author suggests the idea of devoting
the morning session to French, and that of the afternoon to Latin,
so that the pupils who have no need of the ancient languages may
pursue only the courses in French.
392. THE LIVING LANGUAGES.--La Chalotais thinks the knowledge
of two living languages to be necessary, “the English for
science, and the German for war.” German literature had not yet
produced its masterpieces, and it is seen that at this period the
utility of German appears especially with reference to military
affairs. However it may be, let us be grateful to him for having
appreciated, as he has done, the living languages. “It is wrong,”
he says, “to treat them nearly as we treat our contemporaries, with
a sort of indifference. Without the Greek and Latin languages there
is no real and solid erudition; and there is no complete erudition
without the others.”
393. OTHER STUDIES.--How many judicious or just reflections we have
still to gather from the _Essay on National Education_, as upon
the teaching of the ancient languages, which La Chalotais, however,
is wrong in restricting to too small a number of years; upon the
necessity of presenting to pupils as subjects for composition, not
puerile amplifications, or dissertations on facts or matters of
which they are ignorant, but things which they know, which have
happened to them, “their occupations, their amusements, or their
troubles”; upon logic or criticism, the study of which should not
be deferred till the end of the course, as is still done in our
day; upon philosophy, which is, he says, “the characteristic of
the eighteenth century, as that of the sixteenth was erudition,
and that of the seventeenth was talent!” La Chalotais reserves
the place of honor to ethics, “which is the most important of all
the sciences, and which is, as much as any other, susceptible of
demonstration.”
394. THE QUESTION OF BOOKS.--In tracing his programme of studies,
so new in many particulars, La Chalotais took into account the
difficulties that would be encountered in assuring, and, so to
speak, in improvising, the execution of it, at a time when there
existed neither competent teachers nor properly constructed books.
Teachers especially, he said, are difficult to train. But, while
waiting for the recruiting of the teaching force, La Chalotais puts
great dependence on elementary books, which might, he thought,
be composed within two years, if the king would encourage the
publication of them, and if the Academies would put them up for
competition.
“These books would be the best instruction which the masters could
give, and would take the place of every other method. Whatever
course we may take, we cannot dispense with new books. These books,
once made, would make trained teachers unnecessary, and there
would then be no longer any occasion for discussion as to their
qualities, whether they should be priests, or married, or single.
All would be good, provided they were religious, moral, and knew
how to read; they would soon train themselves while training their
pupils.”
There is much exaggeration in these words. The book, as we know,
cannot supply the place of teachers. But the language of La
Chalotais was adapted to circumstances as they existed. He spoke in
this way, because, in his impatience to reach his end, he would try
to remedy the educational poverty of his time, and supply the lack
of good teachers by provisional expedients, by means which he found
within his reach.
395. ARISTOCRATIC PREJUDICES.--That which we would expunge from
the book of La Chalotais is his opinion on primary instruction.
Blinded by some unexplained distrust of the people, and dominated
by aristocratic tendencies, he complains of the extension of
instruction. He demands that the knowledge of the poor do not
extend beyond their pursuits. He bitterly criticises the thirst for
knowledge which is beginning to pervade the lower classes of the
nation.
“Even the people can study. Laborers and artisans send their
children to the colleges of the smaller cities.... When these
children have accomplished a summary course of study which has
taught them only to disdain the occupation of their father, they
rush into the cloisters and become ecclesiastics; or they exercise
judicial functions, and often become subjects harmful to society.
The Brethren of the Christian Doctrine (_sic_), who are called
_ignorantins_, have just appeared to complete the general ruin;
they teach people to read and write who ought to learn only to
draw, and to handle the plane and the file, but have no disposition
to do it. They are the rivals or the successors of the Jesuits.”
A singular force of prejudice was necessary to conceive that the
Brethren of the Christian Schools were instructing the people too
highly.
Let it be said, however, towards exonerating La Chalotais, that he
perhaps does not so much attack the instruction in itself, as the
bad way in which it is given. What he censures is instruction that
is badly conceived, that which takes people from their own class.
In some other passages of his book we see that he would be disposed
to disseminate the new education among the ranks of the people.
“It is the State, it is the larger part of the nation, that must
be kept principally in view in education; for twenty millions of
men ought to be held in greater consideration than one million,
and the _peasantry, who are not yet a class_ in France, as
they are in Sweden, _ought not to be neglected in a system of
instruction_. Education is equally solicitous that letters should
be cultivated, and that the fields should be plowed; that all the
sciences and the useful arts should be perfected; that justice
should be administered and that religion should be taught; that
there should be instructed and competent generals, magistrates,
and ecclesiastics, and skillful artists and citizens, all in fit
proportion. It is for the government to make each citizen so
pleased with his condition that he may not be forced to withdraw
from it.”
Let us quote one sentence more, which is almost the formula that
to-day is so dear to the friends of instruction:--
“We do not fear to assert, in general, that in the condition in
which Europe now is, the people that are the most enlightened will
always have the advantage over those who are the less so.”
396. GENERAL CONCLUSION.--Notwithstanding the faults which mar
it, the work of La Chalotais is none the less one of the most
remarkable essays of the earlier French pedagogy. “La Chalotais,”
says Gréard, “belongs to the school of Rousseau; but on more than
one point he departs from the plan traced by the master. He escapes
from the allurements of the paradox. Relatively he has the spirit
of moderation. He is a classic without prejudices, an innovator
without temerity.”
His book is pre-eminently a book of polemics, written with the
ardor of one who is engaged in a fight, and overflowing with a
generous passion. What noble words are the following:--
“Let the young man learn what bread a ploughman, a day laborer, or
an artisan eats. He will see in the sequel how they are deprived
of the bread which they earn with so much difficulty, and how one
portion of men live at the expense of the other.”
In these lines, which breathe a sentiment of profound pity for the
disinherited of this world, we already hear, as it were, the signal
cry announcing the social reclamations of the French Revolution.
379. ROLLAND (1734-1794).--La Chalotais, after having criticised
the old methods, proposed new ones; Rolland attempted to put them
in practice. La Chalotais is a polemic and a theorist; Rolland
is an administrator. President of the Parliament of Paris, he
presented to his colleagues, in 1768, a Report which is a real
system of education.[196] But above all, he gave his personal
attention to the administration of the College Louis-le-Grand. An
ardent and impassioned adversary of the Jesuits, he used every
means to put public instruction in a condition to do without them.
“Noble and wise spirit, patient and courageous reason, who, for
twenty years, even during exile and after the dissolution of his
society, did not abandon for a single moment the work he had
undertaken, but brought it, almost perfected, to the very confines
of the Revolution; a heart divested of every ambition, who, chosen
by popular wish, and by the cabinet of the king, as director of
public instruction, obstinately entrenched himself in the peace
of his studious retreat.” This is the judgment of a member of the
University, in the nineteenth century, Dubois, director of the
Normal School.
No doubt Rolland is not an original educator. “It is in Rollin’s
_Traité des études_,” he says, “that every teacher will find
the true rules for education.” Besides, he borrowed ideas from
La Chalotais, and also from the _Mémoires_ which the University
of Paris drew up in 1763 and 1764 at the request of Parliament;
so that the interest in his work is less, perhaps, in its
personal views than in the indications it furnishes relative
to the situation of the University and its tendency towards
self-reformation.
398. INSTRUCTION WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL.--At least on one point
Rolland is superior to La Chalotais; he takes a bold stand for
the necessity of primary instruction, and for the progress and
diffusion of human knowledge.
“Education cannot be too widely diffused, to the end that there
may be no class of citizens who may not be brought to participate
in its benefits. It is expedient that _each citizen receive the
education_ which is adapted to his needs.”[197]
It is true that Rolland joins in the wish expressed by the
University, which demanded a reduction in the number of colleges.
But only colleges for the higher studies were in question,
and Rolland thought less of restricting instruction than of
proportioning and adapting it to the needs of the different classes
of society.
“_Each one ought to have the opportunity to receive the education_
which is adapted to his needs.... Now each soil,” adds Rolland,
“is not susceptible of the same culture and the same product.
Each mind does not demand the same degree of culture. All men
have neither the same needs nor the same talents; and it is in
proportion to these talents and these needs that public education
ought to be regulated.”
Rolland shared the prejudices of La Chalotais against “the new
Order founded by La Salle”; but none the less on this account did
he demand instruction for all.
“The knowledge of reading and writing, which is the key to all the
other sciences, ought to be universally diffused. Without this
the teachings of the clergy are useless, for the memory is rarely
faithful enough; and reading alone can impress in a durable manner
what it is important never to forget.” Would it be granted by every
one to-day, affected by prejudices that are ever re-appearing, that
“the laborer who has received some sort of instruction is but the
more diligent and the more skillful by reason of it”?
399. THE NORMAL SCHOOL.--We shall not dwell upon the methods
and schemes of study proposed by Rolland. Save very urgent
recommendations relative to the study of the national history and
of the French language, we shall find nothing very new in them.
What deserve to be pointed out, by way of compensation, are the
important innovations which he wished to introduce into the general
organization of public instruction.
First there was the idea of a higher normal school, of a seminary
for professors. The University had already expressed the wish that
such an establishment should be founded. To be convinced how much
this pedagogical seminary, conceived as far back as 1763, resembled
our actual Normal School, it suffices to note the following
details. The establishment was to be governed by professors drawn
from the different faculties, according to the different subjects
of instruction. The young men received on competitive examination
were to be divided into three classes, corresponding to the three
grades of admission. Within the establishment they were to take
part in a series of discussions, after a given time to submit to
the tests for graduation, and finally to be placed in the colleges.
Is it not true that there was no important addition to be made to
this scheme? Rolland also required that pedagogics have a place
among the studies of these future professors, and that definite and
systematic instruction be given in this art, so important to the
teachers of youth.
Rolland does not stop even there. He provides for inspectors, or
_visitors_, who are to examine all the colleges each year. Finally,
he subjects all scholastic establishments to one single authority,
to a council of the government, to which he applies the rather odd
title, the “Bureau of Correspondence.”
400. SPIRIT OF CENTRALIZATION.--Whatever opinion may be formed of
absolute centralization, which, in our century, has become the
law of public instruction, and has caused the disappearance of
provincial franchises, it is certain that the parliamentarians of
the eighteenth century were the first to conceive it and desire it,
if not to realize it. Paris, in Rolland’s plan, becomes the centre
of public instruction. The universities distributed through the
provinces are co-ordinated and made dependent on that of Paris.
“Is it not desirable,” said Rolland, “that the good taste which
everything concurs to produce in the capital, be diffused to the
very extremities of the kingdom; that every Frenchman participate
in the treasures of knowledge which are there accumulating from
day to day; that the young men who have the same country, who
are destined to serve the same prince and to fulfill the same
functions, receive the same lessons and be imbued with the same
maxims; that one part of France be not under the clouds of
ignorance while letters shed the purest light in another; in a
word, that the time come when a young man educated in a province
cannot be distinguished from one who has been trained in the
capital?” And he adds that “the only means for attaining an end so
desirable is to make Paris the centre of public instruction.”
Besides the gain that will thus accrue to instruction, Rolland sees
this other advantage, that, through uniformity in instruction,
there will be secured a uniformity in manners and in laws. By means
of a uniform education, “the young men of all the provinces will
divest themselves of all their prejudices of birth; they will form
the same ideas of virtue and justice; they will demand uniform
laws, which would have offended their fathers.”
By this means, finally, there will be developed a national spirit,
a national character, and a national jurisprudence, “the only means
of recreating love of country.” Is it not true that the great
magistrates of the close of the eighteenth century deserve also to
be counted among the founders of French unity?
401. TURGOT (1727-1781).--In his _Mémoires_ to the king (1775),
Turgot set forth analogous ideas, and also demanded the formation
of a council of public instruction. He made an eloquent plea for
the establishment of a civil and national education which should be
extended to the country at large.
“Your kingdom, Sir, is of this world. Without opposing any obstacle
to the instructions whose object is higher, and which already
have their rules and their expounders, I think I can propose to
you nothing of more advantage to your people than to cause to be
given to all your subjects an instruction which shows them the
obligations they owe to society and to your power which protects
them, the duties which those obligations impose on them, and the
interest which they have in fulfilling those duties for the public
good and their own. This moral and social instruction requires
books expressly prepared, by competition, and with great care, and
a schoolmaster in each parish to teach them to children, along
with the art of writing, reading, counting, measuring, and the
principles of mechanics.”
“The study of the duty of citizenship ought to be the foundation of
all the other studies.”
“There are methods and establishments for training geometricians,
physicists, and painters, but there are none for training citizens.”
In a word, La Chalotais, Rolland, Turgot, and some of their
contemporaries, were real precursors of the French Revolution
in the matter of education. At the date of 1762 the scholastic
revolution began, at least so far as secondary instruction is
concerned. The Parliaments of that period conceived the plan of the
University of the nineteenth century, and prepared for the work of
Napoleon I. But they left to the men of the Revolution the honor of
being the first to organize primary instruction.
[402. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. This study exhibits the evils
brought upon a country by an education controlled and
administered by a dominant Church for the attainment of its
own ends; and also the efforts of a nation to save itself from
imminent disaster by making the State the great public educator.
2. The right of the State to self-preservation is the vindication
of its right to control and direct public education. The State
thus becomes the patron of the public school; the product it
requires is good citizenship; and for the sake of securing this
product the State endows the school, wholly or in part.
3. The situation in France, as described in this study, is
an aggravated case of what may occur whenever education is
administered by a class having special interests and ambitions;
and under some form there must be the intervention of the State
as a means of protecting its own interests.
4. When education is administered in the main by the literary
class, there is some danger that the instruction may not be that
which is best adapted to the needs of other classes.]
FOOTNOTES:
[194] See the pamphlet published in 1764 entitled: _Mémoires
historiques sur l’orbilianisme et les correcteurs des Jésuites_.
[195] Duclos, _Considérations sur les mœurs de ce siècle_. Ch. II.
_Sur l’éducation et les préjugés_.
[196] See the _Recueil_ of the works of President Rolland, printed
in 1783, by order of the executive committee of the College
Louis-le-Grand.
[197] _Recueil_, etc., p. 25.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.--MIRABEAU, TALLEYRAND, CONDORCET.
CONTRADICTORY JUDGMENTS ON THE WORK OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION;
GENERAL CHARACTER OF THAT WORK; THE STATE OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION;
WHAT WAS TAUGHT IN THE SCHOOLS; DISCIPLINE; THE SITUATION OF
TEACHERS; THE RECRUITMENT OF TEACHERS; WHAT THE SCHOOL ITSELF
WAS; THE PECULIAR WORK OF THE REVOLUTION; THE CAHIERS OF 1789;
MIRABEAU (1749-1791) AND HIS TRAVAIL SUR L’INSTRUCTION PUBLIQUE;
DANGERS OF IGNORANCE; LIBERTY OF TEACHING; THE CONSTITUENT
ASSEMBLY AND THE RAPPORT OF TALLEYRAND; TALLEYRAND (1758-1838);
POLITICAL PRINCIPLES OF UNIVERSAL INSTRUCTION; FOUR GRADES OF
INSTRUCTION; POLITICAL CATECHISM; INDEPENDENT MORALITY; THE
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY AND THE RAPPORT OF CONDORCET; CONDORCET
(1743-1794); GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON EDUCATION; INSTRUCTION
AND MORALITY; INSTRUCTION AND PROGRESS; LIBERALITY OF CONDORCET;
FIVE GRADES OF INSTRUCTION; PURPOSE AND PROGRAMME OF PRIMARY
INSTRUCTION; IDEA OF COURSES FOR ADULTS; THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN;
PREJUDICES; FINAL JUDGMENT; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
404. CONTRADICTORY JUDGMENTS ON THE WORK OF THE REVOLUTION.--An
historian of education in France, Théry, opens his chapter on the
Revolution with these contemptuous words, “One does not study
a void, one does not analyze a negation.”[198] A more recent
historian of public instruction during the Revolution, Albert
Duruy, arriving at the work of Condorcet, certainly the most
important undertaking of the pedagogy of the Revolution, does not
hesitate to record this absolute and summary judgment: “We are now
no longer in the real and in the possible; we are travelling in the
land of chimeras; we are soaring in space at heights which admit of
only ideal attainment.”[199]
How easy it is to say this! To believe these facile judges, one
who would estimate the efforts of the Revolution in the matter of
public instruction would have to choose between a nothing and a
chimera. The men of the Revolution have done nothing, say some;
they are dreamers and idealists, say others.
These assertions do not bear examination. For every impartial
observer it is certain that the Revolution opened a new era in
education, and the proof of this is to be found in the very
documents that our opponents so triflingly condemn, and the
practical spirit of which they misconceive.
405. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THAT WORK.--It is not that the men of
the Revolution were educators in the strict sense of the term.
The science of education is not indebted to them for new methods.
They have not completed the work of Locke, of Rousseau, and of
La Chalotais; but they were the first to attempt a legislative
organization of a vast system of public instruction. It is just to
place them in the front rank of the men who might be called “the
politicians of education.” Doubtless they lacked time for applying
their ideas, but they had at least the merit of having conceived
these ideas, and of having embodied them in legislative acts. The
principles which we proclaim to-day, they formulated. The solutions
which we attempt to put in practice after a century of waiting,
were decreed by them. The reader who will follow the long series of
reports and decrees which constitutes the pedagogical work of the
Revolution will have witnessed the genesis of popular instruction
in France.
406. THE STATE OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--In order to form a proper
appreciation of the merits of the men of the Revolution, it is
first necessary to consider in what a deplorable state they found
primary instruction. What a contrast between that which they hoped
to do and the actual situation in 1789! I very well know that
fancy sketches have been drawn of the old régime. A very showy
enumeration has been made of the number of colleges; but we have
not been told how many of these colleges had no professors, and
how many had no pupils. And so of the schools; they are found
everywhere, but it remains to be shown what was taught in them, and
whether anything was taught in them.[200]
Party writers who are bound to gainsay the work of the French
Revolution in the matter of education, generally put under
contribution, to serve their political prejudices, the old communal
archives. They cite imaginary statistics which prove, for example,
that in the diocese of Rouen, in 1718, there were 855 schools for
boys, and 306 schools for girls, for a territory of 1159 parishes.
It is first necessary to verify these statistics, whose accuracy
has not been demonstrated, and whose figures were evidently
obtained only by counting a school wherever the rector of the
parish gave lessons in reading and in the catechism to three or
four children.
But there are other replies to make to the traducers of the
Revolution who tax their ingenuity to prove that instruction
was flourishing under the old régime, and that the Revolution
destroyed more than it created. With this assumed efflorescence of
schools of which we hear, it is necessary to contrast the results
as shown by authentic statistics of the number of illiterates. In
1790 there was 53 per cent of men and 73 per cent of women who
could not sign their names to their marriage contracts.
Besides, we must inquire what was taught in these pretended
schools, how many children attended them, and what was the material
and moral condition of the teachers who directed them.
407. WHAT WAS TAUGHT IN THE SCHOOLS.--Instruction was reduced to
the catechism, to reading and writing. On this point there can be
no dispute. The official programme of the Brethren of the Christian
Schools did not go beyond this. The ordinance of Louis XIV., dated
in 1698, has been pompously quoted.
“We would have appointed,” it is there said, “as far as it shall be
possible, masters and mistresses in all the parishes where there
are none, to instruct all children, and _in particular those whose
parents have made profession of the pretended reformed religion_,
in the catechism and the prayers which are necessary; to take them
to mass on every work day; and also to teach reading and writing
_to those who will need this knowledge_.”
But does not this very text support those who maintain that the
Monarchy and the Church have never encouraged primary instruction
except as required by the necessities of the struggle against
heresy, and that primary instruction under the old régime was
scarcely more than an instrument of religious domination?
Most often the school was simply a place to which parents sent
their children for temporary care. Writing was not always taught
in it. A school-mistress of Haute-Marne was forbidden to teach
writing “for fear her pupils might employ their knowledge in
writing love-letters.”
408. DISCIPLINE.--Corporal punishments were more than ever the
order of the day. The bishop of Montpellier, at the end of the
seventeenth century, forbids, it is true, beating with sticks,
kicks, and raps on the head; but he authorizes the ferule and the
rod, on the condition that the patient be not completely exposed.
409. CONDITION OF THE TEACHERS.--That which is graver still is that
the teachers themselves (I speak of lay teachers, who, it is true,
were not numerous) lived in a wretched condition, without material
independence and without moral dignity. In general, there were no
fixed salaries. Wages varied from 40 to 200 francs, arbitrarily
fixed by the vestry-board or by the community, in return for a
great number of services the most various and the least exalted.
The school-masters were far less teachers than sextons, choristers,
beadles, bell-ringers, clock-makers, and even grave-diggers.
“Attendance at marriages and at burials was counted at the rate
of 15 sols and dinner for marriages, and 20 sols for burials.”
And Albert Duruy concludes that in this there were _substantial
advantages_ to the school-masters;[201]--advantages dearly bought
in every case, and repudiated by those who were interested in
them. “The more services we render the community,” said the
teachers of Bourgogne in their complaints in 1789, “the more we
are degraded.”[202] The school-masters were scarcely more than the
domestics of the _curé_.
In order to live, they were not only obliged to accept these church
services, but they also became shoemakers, tailors, innkeepers,
millers, etc. The teacher of the commune of Angles, in the High
Alps, was a “barbers’ surgeon.”
Thus there was no assured salary, and consequently no moral
consideration. “In the communes, teachers were regarded as
strangers and not as citizens; like tramps and vagrants, they were
not admitted to the assemblies of the commune.”
410. THE RECRUITMENT OF TEACHERS.--Nowhere were there normal
schools for the training of teachers. The schools were entrusted
to the first comer. The bishop granted his approbation, or
permission to teach, after an examination of the most summary kind.
The duties of teaching were the means of subsistence which were
accepted without call and without serious preparation. In Provence,
school-masters attended kinds of “teachers’ fairs” for the purpose
of being hired. In the Alps, teachers were numerous, but only in
winter. They tarried in the plain and in the valleys only during
the inclement season. They returned home for the labors of the
summer.
Consequently, most of the schools existed only in name. “The
schools,” we are told,[203] “were in vacation for four or five
months.” For a half of the year, the school-masters were free
to follow another trade, or, rather, to devote themselves more
completely to their ordinary trade, which their school duties did
not always interrupt.
411. WHAT THE SCHOOL ITSELF WAS.--School-houses were most
frequently merely wretched huts, wooden cots, and narrow
ground-floors, badly lighted, which served at the same time as a
domicile for the school-master and his family, and as a class-room
for pupils. Benches and tables were things rarely seen, and pupils
wrote while standing.
In a word, the state of primary instruction, when the
States-General opened in 1789, was as follows: schools few in
number and poorly attended; few lay teachers, trained no one
knows how, without thorough instruction, and, as they themselves
said, “degraded” by their inferior position; few or no elementary
books; gratuity only partial; finally, a general indifference
for elementary instruction, which philosophers like Voltaire,
and Rousseau, and Parliamentarians like La Chalotais, themselves
lightly esteemed.
412. THE PROPER WORK OF THE REVOLUTION.--I do not say that the
Revolution accomplished all that there was to be attempted in order
to bring instruction up to the needs of the new society; but it
purposed to do this. Every time a liberal ministry has decided
to work for the promotion of instruction, it has revived its
plans; and it is these same plans that by a vigorous effort public
authority has attempted to realize in recent times.
413. THE REPORTS OF 1789.--Already, in the reports of 1789, public
opinion vigorously pronounced itself in favor of educational
reforms. “The _cahiers_ of 1789, even those of the clergy and
the nobility, demand the reorganization of public instruction on
a comprehensive plan. The _cahiers_ of the clergy of Rodez and
of Saumur demand ‘that there may be formed a plan of _national
education_ for the young’; those of Lyons, that education be
restricted ‘to a teaching body whose members may not be removable
except for negligence, misconduct, or incapacity; that it may no
longer be conducted according to arbitrary principles, and that all
public instructors be obliged to conform to a uniform plan adopted
by the States-General.’ The _cahiers_ of the nobility of Lyons
insist that ‘a national character’ be impressed on the education
of both sexes. Those of Paris demand ‘that public education be
perfected, and extended to all classes of citizens.’ Those of
Blois, ‘that there be established a council composed of the most
enlightened scholars of the capital and of the provinces and of
the citizens of the different orders, to form a plan of national
education, for the use of all the classes of society, and to edit
elementary treatises.’”[204]
414. MIRABEAU (1749-1791).--From the first days of the Revolution,
pedagogical literature abounds, and gives evidence of the
ever-growing interest which public opinion attaches to educational
questions. The Oratorians, of whom La Chalotais said, “that they
were free from the prejudices of the school and of the cloister,
and that they were citizens,” present to the National Assembly
a series of scholastic plans. On its part, the Assembly sets
itself at work; Talleyrand prepares his great report, and Mirabeau
embodies his own reflections in four eloquent discourses.
Mirabeau’s discourses, published after his death through the good
offices of his friend Cabanis, had the following titles: 1. _Draft
of a Law for the Organization of the Teaching Body_; 2. _Public and
Military Festivals_; 3. _Organization of a National Lycée_; 4. _The
Education of the Heir Presumptive of the Crown_.
415. THE DANGERS OF IGNORANCE.--With what brilliancy the
illustrious orator made appear the advantages and the necessity of
instruction!
“Those who desire that the peasant may not know how to _read or
write_, have doubtless made a patrimony of his ignorance, and
their motives are not difficult to appreciate; but they do not
know that when they have made a wild beast of a man, they expose
themselves to the momentary danger of seeing him transformed into
a savage beast. Without intelligence there is no morality. But
on whom, then, is it important to bestow intelligence, if it is
not upon the rich? Is not the safeguard of their enjoyments the
morality of the people? Through the influence of the laws, through
that of a wise administration, through the efforts to which each
one should be inspired by the hope of ameliorating the condition
of his fellows, exert yourselves, public and private citizens, to
diffuse in all quarters the noble fruits of knowledge. Believe
that in dissipating one single error, in propagating one single
wholesome truth, you will do something for the happiness of the
human race; and whoever you are, do not have the least doubt that
it is only by this means that you can assure your own happiness.”
But through some inexplicable spirit of timidity, Mirabeau did not
draw from these principles the consequences that they permit. He
does not admit that the State can impose the obligation to attend
school.
“Society,” he says, “has not the right to prescribe instruction as
a duty.... Public authority has not the right, with respect to the
members of the social body, to go beyond the limits of watchfulness
against injustice and of protection against violence....”
“Society,” he adds, “can exact of each one only the sacrifices
necessary for the maintenance of the liberty and the safety of all.”
Mirabeau forgets that the obligation to send children to school is
exactly one of those necessary sacrifices which the State has the
right to impose on parents.
Hostile to obligation, Mirabeau feels no greater partisanship for
gratuity:--
“Gratuitous education,” he said, “is paid for by everybody, while
its fruits are immediately gathered by only a small number of
individuals.”
416. LIBERTY OF TEACHING.--Like so many other generous spirits,
Mirabeau cherished the dream of the most complete liberty of
teaching.[205]
“Your single purpose,” he said to the members, “is to give to man
the use of all his faculties, to make him enjoy all his rights, to
develop the corporate life out of all the individual lives freely
developed, and the will of the whole out of all personal wills.”
417. DISTRIBUTION OF STUDIES.--In Mirabeau’s plan, public and
national instruction depends, not on the executive power, but on
“the magistrates who truly represent the people, that is to say,
who are elected and often renewed by the people,”--in other terms,
the officers of departments or districts. Establishments for
instruction ought not to form a consolidated body.
Let us observe, finally, that by the side of the primary schools
Mirabeau established a college of literature for each department,
and at Paris, a single National Lycée, “designed to secure to
a select number of French youth the means of finishing their
education.” In this he established a chair of _method_, which, he
said, ought to be the basis of instruction.
In conclusion, the work of Mirabeau is but a very imperfect sketch,
and a sort of graduated transition between the old and the new
régime.
We do not yet find in it the grand ideas which are to impassion
men, and it is the _Rapport_ of Talleyrand which constitutes the
real introduction to the educational work of the Revolution.
418. THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AND TALLEYRAND.--The constitution of
Sept. 4, 1791, announced the following provision:--
“There shall be created and organized a system of public
instruction, common to all citizens, and gratuitous with respect to
those branches of instruction which are indispensable for all men.”
It was to put in force the decree of the Constitution that
Talleyrand drew up his _Rapport_ and presented it to the Assembly
at the sessions of September 10 and 11. The entire bill contained
not less than 208 articles. Having reached the term of its
troubled existence, the Assembly did not find the time to discuss
it, and, while regretting “not having established the bases of
the regeneration of education,” it referred the examination of
Talleyrand’s work to the Legislative Assembly.
The Legislative Assembly showed but little anxiety to accept the
legacy of its predecessor. Another report, that of Condorcet, was
prepared, so that the bill of Talleyrand never had the honor of a
parliamentary discussion.
419. TALLEYRAND (1758-1838).--The ex-bishop of Autun, having
become a revolutionist of 1789, before being the chamberlain of
Napoleon I. and the minister of Louis XVIII., scarcely deserves by
his character the esteem of history; he too often gave a striking
example of political versatility. But at least, by his supple
and acute intelligence, and by the abundance of his ideas, he
has always risen to the height of the various tasks that he has
undertaken, and his _Rapport_ is a remarkable work.
420. GENERAL PRINCIPLES.--As Montesquieu has said, “the laws of
education ought to be relative to the principles of government.”
It is by this truth that Talleyrand is inspired in the long
considerations that serve as a preamble to his bill.
What was to be done in the presence of a constitution which,
limiting the powers of the king, called the entire people to
participate in political life? That constitution would have
remained sterile, would have been but a dead letter, if a suitable
education had not come to vivify it by causing it to pass, so to
speak, into the blood of the nation. In what did the new régime
consist? You have separated, said Talleyrand to the members, you
have separated the will of the whole, or the power of making the
laws, from the executive power, which you have reserved to the
king. But that general will must be upright, and, in order to
be upright, it must be enlightened and instructed. After having
given power to the people, you ought to teach them wisdom. Of what
use would it be to enfranchise brutal and unconscious forces, to
turn them over to their own keeping? Instruction is the necessary
counterpoise of liberty. The law, which is henceforth the work of
the people, ought not to be at the mercy of the tumultuous opinions
of an ignorant multitude.
421. EDUCATION AS RELATED TO LIBERTY AND EQUALITY.--Talleyrand
is pleased with his thought, and, considering in turn the two
fundamental ideas of the Revolution, the idea of equality and the
idea of liberty, he shows, not without some length of analysis,
that instruction is necessary, on the one hand, to create free
individuals, by giving to them a conscience and a reason, and on
the other, to draw men together by diminishing the inequality of
intelligences.
422. RULES FOR PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.--Instruction is due to all.
There must be schools in the villages as in the cities. Instruction
ought to be given by all; there ought to be no privilege in
instruction. Finally, instruction ought to extend to all subjects;
everything shall be taught which can be taught:--
“In a well organized society, though no one can attain to universal
knowledge, it should nevertheless be possible to learn everything.”
423. POLITICAL EDUCATION.--At the basis of every educational
system there is always a dominant and essential thought. In the
Middle Age--and the Middle Age is continued in the schools of the
Jesuits--it is the idea of salvation, it is the preparation of
the soul for the future life. In the seventeenth century it is the
conception of a perfect justness of spirit joined to uprightness of
heart; such was the ideal of the solitaries of Port Royal. In 1792
politics became the almost exclusive preoccupation of the educators
of youth. Everything else--religion, accuracy of judgment, nobility
of heart--is relegated to the second place: man is nothing more
than a political animal, brought into the world to know, to love,
and to obey the constitution.
The _Declaration of the Rights of Man_ became, in the system of
Talleyrand, the catechism of childhood. It is necessary that the
future citizen learn to know, to love, to obey, and finally to
perfect the constitution. We cannot help thinking that Talleyrand
himself showed a marvellous aptitude for loving and obeying the
constitution. Unfortunately this has not always been the case!
424. UNIVERSAL MORALITY.--One of the most beautiful pages of
Talleyrand’s work is certainly that in which he recommends the
teaching of universal morality, and claims the autonomy of natural
laws, distinct from all positive religion.
“We must learn to infuse ourselves with morality, which is the
first need of all constitutions.... Morality must be taught as
a real science, whose principles will be demonstrated to the
reason of all men, and to that of all ages. It is only in this
way that it will resist all trials. It has long been a matter of
lamentation to see men of all nations and of all religions make
it depend exclusively on that multitude of opinions which divide
them. From this have resulted great evils; for abandoning morality
to uncertainty, and often to absurdity, it has necessarily been
compromised; it has been made versatile and unsettled. It is
time to establish it upon its own bases, and to show men that if
baneful divisions separate them, they at least have in morality a
common meeting place where they all ought to take refuge and unite
for protection. It is necessary, then, to detach it in some sort
from everything else, in order to reunite it at once to that which
merits our approval and our homage.... This change is simple and
injures nothing; above all, it is possible. How is it possible not
to see, in fact, that abstraction being made of every system and of
every opinion, and by considering in men only their relations with
other men, they can be taught what is good and just, made to love
it, and made to find happiness in virtuous actions and wretchedness
in those which are not so?”
425. FOUR GRADES OF INSTRUCTION.--The organization of instruction,
in Talleyrand’s bill, was “to be combined with that of the
government,” and to be modeled after the division of administrative
functions. The _Rapport_ established four grades of instruction.
There was a school for each _canton_, corresponding to each
primary assembly. Then came intermediate or secondary instruction,
intended, if not for all, at least for the greater number, and
given in the principal town of the district, or _arrondissement_.
In the third place, special schools, scattered over the territory
of the kingdom, in the principal towns of the departments, prepare
young men for the different professions. Finally, the select
intelligences find at Paris, in the National Institute, all that
constitutes the higher instruction.
The great novelty of this system was the creation of cantonal
schools, open to peasants and to workmen, to those whom, up to this
time, improvidence or the purpose of the great sent off to their
plows or to their planes.
426. GRATUITY OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--Talleyrand did not desire
compulsory education any more than Mirabeau; but, in accordance
with the constitution of 1791, he demands the gratuity of primary
instruction. Society is under obligations to give elementary
instruction, but not intermediate and secondary instruction, and
still less, special and higher instruction. Gratuitous for the
lowest grade, and in case of that elementary knowledge which
constitutes for every civilized man a real moral necessity,
instruction ought not to be free to young men who aspire to a
liberal profession, because they have leisure, and who have leisure
because they have wealth. However, Talleyrand admits exceptions in
the case of talent. By the creation of national scholarships, the
doors of all the schools will be opened to select intelligences
whom the lowness of their condition would condemn to remain obscure
and unappreciated, did not society lend to them a helping hand.
427. PROGRAMME OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--Primary instruction should
comprise the principles of the national language, the elementary
rules of calculation and mensuration; the elements of religion, the
principles of morals, the principles of the constitution; finally,
the development of the physical, intellectual, and moral powers.
428. MEANS OF INSTRUCTION.--We shall not insist on the details of
the organization of the different parts of that which Talleyrand
himself called his “immense machine.” Let us notice only the last
part of his work, where he discusses a certain number of general
questions under this arbitrary and unjustifiable title: _Des
moyens d’instruction_. The professors, carefully chosen, shall
be elected by the king. Talleyrand does not determine that they
shall be irremovable, but he requires that their situation shall
be surrounded by all possible guarantees. Prizes, and rewards of
every kind, shall encourage the teachers of youth to redouble
their zeal and to find new methods. Talleyrand counts on dramatic
representations and on national holidays to hasten the progress of
instruction. Finally, let it be added that he entrusts the supreme
direction of public instruction to six commissioners, chosen by the
king and obliged to make an annual report.
429. THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.--Talleyrand, in his proposal, has not
wholly forgotten women, and what he has said of them is just and
sensible. He discusses the question of their political rights,
and, in accord with tradition and good sense, he concludes that
the happiness of women, their own interests, their nature and
their proper destination, ought to forbid them from entering the
political arena. What is particularly fit for them is a domestic
education, which, received in the family, prepares them for living
there. Like Mirabeau, he wishes woman to remain a woman. Her
function, said the great orator, is to perpetuate the species, to
watch with solicitude over the perilous periods of early youth,
and “to enchain to her feet all the energies of the husband by the
irresistible power of her weakness.” Without being as gallant in
his expressions, Talleyrand’s thought is the same. He thought it
necessary, however, in order to respond to certain proprieties,
that the State should establish institutions of public education
destined to replace the convents.
This desire sets right whatever was unreasonable in this passage of
his proposed law:--
“Girls shall not be admitted to the primary schools after the age
of eight. After that age the National Assembly advises parents to
entrust the education of their daughters only to themselves, and
reminds them that this is their first duty.”
430. THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY AND CONDORCET.--Of all the
educational undertakings of the Revolution, the most remarkable
is that of Condorcet. His _Rapport_ presented to the Legislative
Assembly, in behalf of the committee on public instruction, April
20 and 21, 1792, reprinted in 1793 by order of the Convention,
did not directly have the honor of a public discussion; but
it contained principles and solutions which are found in the
deliberations and legislative acts of his successors. It remained,
during the whole duration of the Convention, the widely accessible
source whence the legislators of that time, like Romme, Bouquier,
and Lakanal, drew their inspiration.
431. CONDORCET (1743-1794).--Condorcet was admirably qualified for
the task which the Legislative Assembly imposed on him, in charging
him with the organization of public instruction. During the first
years of the Revolution he had employed his leisure (he was not
a member of the Constituent Assembly) in writing five _Mémoires_
on instruction, which appeared in a periodical called the
_Bibliothèque de l’homme public_. The _Rapport_ which he submitted
to the Assembly was a sort of résumé of his long reflections.
Condorcet brought to this work, not the indiscreet imagination of
an improvised educator, but the authority of a competent thinker,
who, if he had no personal experience in teaching, had at least
reflected much on these topics and was conscious of all their
difficulties. Besides, he devoted himself to his work with the
ardor of an enthusiastic nature, and with the serious convictions
of a mind that had carried farther than any one else the religion
of progress and zeal for the public good.
432. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS UPON INSTRUCTION.--All the
Revolutionists have sung the praises of instruction, of which they
were the passionate admirers. Condorcet is its reflective partisan.
He did not love it more than the others, but he comprehended it
better, and better stated why it should be loved. He first takes
up the ideas of Talleyrand, and shows that without instruction,
liberty and equality would be chimeras:--
“A free constitution which should not be correspondent to the
universal instruction of citizens, would come to destruction after
a few conflicts, and would degenerate into one of those forms of
government which cannot preserve the peace among an ignorant and
corrupt people.”
Anarchy or despotism, such is the future of peoples who have become
free before having been enlightened.
As to equality, without falling into the chimeras of an instruction
which should be the same for all, and which should reduce all men
to the same level, Condorcet desires to realize it so far as it is
possible. He desires that the poorest and the humblest shall be
sufficiently instructed to belong to himself, and not to be at the
mercy of the first charlatan who comes along, and also to be able
to fulfill his civil duties, to be an elector, a juror, etc.
433. INSTRUCTION AND MORALITY.--The instrument of liberty and
equality, instruction, in the opinion of Condorcet, is, in
addition, the real source of public morality and of human progress.
If it were not correspondent to the advances in knowledge, a free
and impartial constitution would be hostile rather than favorable
to good morals.
“Instruction alone can give the assurance that the principle of
justice which the equality of rights ordains, shall not be in
contradiction with this other principle, which prescribes that
only those rights shall be accorded to men which they can exercise
without danger to society.”
But it is moral reasons still more than political motives that make
instruction the condition of virtue. Condorcet has shrewdly seen
that the vices of the people come chiefly from their intellectual
impotency.
“These vices come,” he says, “from the need of escaping from
_ennui_ in moments of leisure, and in escaping from it through
sensations and not through ideas.”
These are notable words which should never be lost sight of by the
teachers and moralists of the people.
To cause gross natures to pass from the life of the senses to the
intellectual life; to make study agreeable to the end that the
higher pleasures of the spirit may struggle successfully against
the appetites for material pleasures; to put the book in the place
of the wine bottle; to substitute the library for the saloon; in
a word, _to replace sensation by idea_,--such is the fundamental
problem of popular education.
434. INSTRUCTION AND PROGRESS.--Condorcet was a fanatic on the
subject of progress. Up to the last moment of his life he dreamed
of progress, its conditions, and its laws. Now the most potent
means of hastening progress is to instruct men; and here is the
final reason why instruction is so dear to him.
These are grand words:--
“If the indefinite improvement of our species is, as I believe, a
general law of nature, man ought no longer to regard himself as a
being limited to a transitory and isolated existence, destined to
vanish after an alternative of happiness or of misery for himself,
and of good and evil for those whom chance has placed near him; but
he becomes an active part of the grand whole, and a fellow-laborer
in a work that is eternal. In an existence of a moment, and upon a
point in space, he can, by his works, compass all places, relate
himself to all the centuries, and continue to act long centuries
after his memory has disappeared from the earth.” And further on:
“For a long time I have considered these views as dreams which were
to be realized only in an indefinite future, and for a world where
I should not exist. A happy event has suddenly opened an immense
career to the hopes of the human race; a single instant has put a
century of distance between the man of to-day and him of to-morrow.”
435. THE LIBERALITY OF CONDORCET.--Wrongly credited with a despotic
and absolute habit of mind, Condorcet is, on the contrary, full
of scruples and penetrated with respect as regards the liberty
of individual opinions. In fact, he carefully distinguishes
instruction from education. Instruction has to do with positive
and certain knowledge, the truths of fact and of calculation;
education, with political and religious beliefs. Now, if the State
is the natural dispenser of instruction, it ought, on the contrary,
in the matter of education, to forbear, and to declare itself
incompetent. In other words, the State ought not to abuse its power
by imposing by force on its citizens such or such a religious
_Credo_, such or such a political dogma.
“Public authority cannot establish a body of doctrine which is to
be exclusively taught. No public power ought to have the authority,
or even the permission, to prevent the development of new truths,
or the teaching of theories contrary to its particular policy or to
its momentary interests.”
436. FIVE GRADES OF INSTRUCTION.--Condorcet distinguishes five
grades of instruction: 1. Primary schools proper; 2. Secondary
schools, that is, such as we now call higher primary schools; 3.
_Institutes_, or colleges of secondary instruction; 4. _Lycées_,
or institutions of higher instruction; 5. The _National Society of
Sciences and Arts_, which corresponds to our Institute.
Two things are especially to be noted: first, Condorcet establishes
for the first time higher primary schools, and demands one for
each district, and in addition one for each town of four thousand
inhabitants; then, for primary schools proper, he takes the
population as a basis for their establishment, and requires one for
each four hundred inhabitants.[206]
437. PURPOSE AND PLAN OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--Condorcet has
admirably defined the purpose of primary instruction:--
“In the primary schools there is taught that which is necessary for
each individual in order to direct his own conduct and to enjoy the
plenitude of his own rights.”
The programme comprised reading, writing, some notions on grammar,
the rules of arithmetic, simple methods of measuring a field and a
building with exactness; a simple description of the productions
of the country, of the processes in agriculture and the arts; the
development of the first moral ideas and the rules for conduct
derived from them; finally, such of the principles of social order
as can be put within the comprehension of children.
438. THE IDEA OF COURSES FOR ADULTS.--Condorcet was strongly
impressed with the necessity of continuing the instruction of the
workman and of the peasant after withdrawal from school:--
“We have observed that instruction ought not to abandon individuals
the moment they leave the schools; that it ought to embrace all
ages; that there is no period of life when it is not useful and
possible to learn, and that this supplementary instruction is so
much the more necessary as that of infancy has been contracted to
the narrowest limits. Here is one of the principal causes of the
ignorance in which the poor classes of society are to-day plunged;
they lacked not nearly so much the possibility of receiving an
elementary instruction as that of preserving its advantages.”
Consequently, Condorcet proposed, if not courses of instruction for
adults, at least something very like them,--weekly lectures, given
each Sunday by the village teachers, a kind of lay sermons.
“Each Sunday the teacher shall give a public lecture which citizens
of all ages will attend. In this arrangement we have seen a means
of giving to young people those necessary parts of knowledge,
which, however, did not form a part of their primary education.”
439. PROFESSIONAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION.--But Condorcet does
not think his duty to the people done when he has given them
intellectual emancipation. He is very anxious to give in addition
to the sons of peasants or workmen the means of struggling against
misery, by diffusing more and more among the masses of the
people a technical knowledge of the arts and trades. He deserves
to be counted among the adepts in professional instruction and
in industrial education. He asks that there be placed in the
schools “models of machines or of trades”; and in all grades of
instruction, he recommends with a special solicitude the teaching
of the practical arts.
We fancy we are doing something new to-day when we establish
school museums. “Each school,” says Condorcet, “shall have a
small library, and a small cabinet in which shall be placed some
meteorological instruments or some specimens of natural history.”
440. THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.--Condorcet may be regarded as one
of the most ardent apostles of the education of women. He wishes
education to be common and equal. He is evidently wrong when he
dreams of a perfect identity of instruction for the two sexes, when
he forgets the particular destination of women, and the special
character of their education. But we have found so many educators
disposed to depreciate the abilities of woman, that we are happy to
find at last one voice that exalts them, even beyond measure.
Let us recall, however, the excellent reasons which he gives in
support of his thesis on the equality of education. It is necessary
that women should be instructed: 1. in order that they may be
able to bring up their children, of whom they are the natural
instructors; 2. in order that they may be the worthy companions,
the equals of their husbands, that they may feel an interest in
their pursuits, share in their preoccupations, and, finally,
participate in their life, such being the condition of conjugal
happiness; 3. in order, further, by an analogous reason, that they
may not quench, by their ignorance, that inspiration of heart and
mind which previous studies have developed in their husbands, but
that they may nourish this flame by conversation and reading in
common; 4. finally, because this is just,--because the two sexes
have an equal right to instruction.
441. RESERVATIONS TO BE MADE.--All is not equally worthy of
commendation in the work of Condorcet. Some faults and some
omissions mar this fine piece of political pedagogy. The faults
are, first, the exaggerated idea of liberty and of equality.
From Condorcet’s ardors for liberty there issues, in his plan for
education, a grave error,--the idea of making of the teaching
body a sort of State within the State, an independent authority,
a fourth power, released from all exterior authority, governing
itself and administering its own affairs, the State intervening
only as treasurer to pay for the services which it neither
regulates nor supervises. The liberal Daunou, while explaining
the system of our author, has criticised it on this point.[207]
“Condorcet,” he said, “the enemy of corporations, has sanctioned
one in his scheme of national instruction; he established, as it
were, an academic church. This is because Condorcet, the enemy of
kings, would add in the balance of public powers one counterbalance
more to that royal power whose monstrous existence, in a free
constitution, is sufficiently attested by the alarms and fears of
all the friends of liberty.”
The passion for equality led Condorcet into another chimera,--that
of the absolute gratuity of instruction of all grades.
Finally, in his dreams of infinite perfectibility, Condorcet allows
himself to be carried so far away as to imagine for man, and to
expect from instruction, results that are utterly unattainable.
Instruction, according to him, ought to be so complete “as to cause
the disappearance of every inequality which induces dependence.”
442. PREJUDICES OF THE MATHEMATICIAN.--From another point of view,
Condorcet was led astray by his predilection for the sciences. He
so far forgot that he was a member of the French Academy as to obey
only his tendencies, a little too exclusive, as a mathematician
and a member of the Academy of Sciences. By a reaction, natural
enough, against those long centuries in which an abuse was made
of literary culture, Condorcet is too prompt to underrate the
influence of letters in education, and to invest the sciences with
the place of honor. The reasons which he invokes to justify his
preference are not all conclusive.
443. OMISSIONS.--The idea of obligatory instruction is still
wanting in the scheme we are examining. We shall be surprised,
perhaps, that Condorcet, who has so clearly proclaimed the
necessity of universal instruction, did not think to impose
obligatory attendance, which is the only means of establishing it.
This is because the early revolutionists, in the ardor of their
enthusiasm, did not suspect the opposition to the accomplishment of
their plans that was to come from the indifference of the greater
number, and from the prejudices of those who, as Condorcet has
eloquently said, “thought they were obeying God while betraying
their country.” It seemed to them that when centres of light
had been made to glow over the whole surface of the country,
citizens would hasten after them, impelled by a natural appetite,
spontaneously thirsting for enlightenment. They were deceived.
These hopes, a little artless, were destined to be disproved by
facts; and it was to triumph over the neglect of some, and the
resistance of others, that the Convention, supplying one of the
rare defects in Condorcet’s plan, decreed, on several occasions,
instruction “imperative and forced,” as was then said.
On still another point, Condorcet remained inferior to his
successors; in his report there was no mention made of the
organization of normal schools. In this grave and fundamental
question of the education of the teaching body, Condorcet contented
himself with a provisional expedient, which consisted in entrusting
to the professors of the grade immediately higher the care of
preparing teachers for the grade lower.
444. FINAL CONCLUSION.--But even with these reservations, the
work of Condorcet deserves scarcely anything but praise. We have
commended its new and exalted conceptions. Its beautiful and exact
arrangement and its masterly style also deserve praise. Condorcet’s
periods are symmetrical in their fullness, and the expression is
precise and vigorous. Doubtless there is some monotony and some
frigidity in that style so concise and strong. But at intervals
there are outbursts of passion. The man whom his contemporaries
compared to “an enraged lamb,” or to a “volcano covered with snow,”
is painted to the life in his writings. His _Rapport_ is like a
beautiful and finished statue of marble, cold to the touch, but
upon which the hand might feel beating in places a vein warm with
life.
[445. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The more important lessons to be
derived from this study are the following: the necessity of
making instruction universal and of having it administered by the
State; the need of making instruction obligatory, and, in certain
grades, gratuitous; the value of intellectual culture as a moral
safeguard.
2. The right of the State to self-preservation carries with it
the right to ordain the establishment of schools for giving a
certain kind and degree of instruction. This constitutes the
first form of compulsion.
3. When there is not a voluntary and general attendance on
the schools ordained by the State, it may avail itself of
the supplementary right to make attendance obligatory. This
constitutes the second form of compulsion.