impeded by the State and the Church, was not violated in principle nor
perverted in essence; still at the present day, in Germany, in England,
in the United States, it exists and is developed in accordance with its
nature. It is admitted to be a private enterprise,[6348] the collective
and spontaneous work of several associates voluntarily bound together,
old founders, actual and future benefactors, masters and parents and
even scholars,[6349] each in his place and function, under a statute
and according to tradition, in such a way as to continue functioning
indefinitely, in order to provide, like a gas company on its own
responsibility, at its own risk and expense, a provider of services for
those who want it; in other terms, the school enterprise must, like any
other undertaking, render acceptable what it offers thereby satisfying
the needs of its clients.--Naturally, it adapts itself to these needs;
its directors and those concerned do what is necessary. With hands free,
and grouped around an important interest evidently for a common purpose,
mutually bound and veritable associates not only legally but in feeling,
devoted to a local enterprise and local residents for many years, often
even for life, they strive not to offend the profound repugnance of the
young and of families. They therefore make the necessary arrangements
internally and with the parents.[6350]
That is why, outside of France, the French internat, so artificial,
so forced, so exaggerated, is almost unknown. In Germany, out of one
hundred pupils in the gymnases, which correspond to our lycées, there
are scarcely ten boarders lodged and fed in the gymnase; the rest, even
when their parents do not live near by, remain day-scholars, private
guests in the families that harbor them, often at a very low price and
which take the place of the absent family. No boarders are found in
them except in a few gymnases like Pforta and by virtue of an ancient
endowment. The number, however, by virtue of the same endowment, is
limited; they dine, in groups of eight or ten,[6351] at the same table
with the professors lodged like themselves in the establishment,
while they enjoy for a playground a vast domain of woods, fields and
meadow.--The same in England, at Harrow, Eton and Rugby. Each professor,
here, is keeper of a boarding-house; he has ten, twenty and thirty boys
under his roof, eating at his table or at a table the head of which is
some lady of the house. Thus, the youth goes from the family into the
school, without painful or sudden contrast, and remains under a
system of things which suits his age and which is a continuation, only
enlarged, of domestic life.[6352]
The French college or lycée is quite the opposite. It operates against
the true spirit of the school, and has done so for eighty years being an
enterprise of the State, a local extension of a central enterprise, one
of the hundred branches of the great State university trunk, possessing
no roots of its own and with a directing or teaching staff composed
of functionaries similar to others, that is to say transferable,[6353]
restless and preoccupied with promotion, their principal motive for
doing well being the hope of a higher rank and of getting a better
situation. This almost separate them in advance from the establishment
in which they labor and,[6354] besides that, they are led, pushed on,
and restrained from above, each in his own particular sphere and in
his limited duty. The principal (proviseur) is confined to his
administrative position and the professor to his class, expressly
forbidden to leave it. No professor is "under any pretext to receive in
his house as boarders or day-scholars more than ten pupils."[6355]
No woman is allowed to lodge inside the lycée or college walls,
all,--proviseur, censor, cashier, chaplain, head-masters and assistants,
fitted by art or force to each other like cog-wheels, with no deep
sympathy, with no moral tie, without collective interests, a cleverly
designed machine which, in general, works accurately and smoothly, but
with no soul because, to have a soul, it is of prime necessity to have
a living body. As a machine constructed at Paris according to a unique
pattern and superposed on people and things from Perpignan to Douai and
from Rochelle to Besançon, it does not adapt itself to the requirements
of the public; it subjects its public to the exigencies, rigidity and
uniformity of its play and structure. Now, as it acts mechanically only,
through outward pressure, the human material on which it operates must
be passive, composed, not of diverse persons, but of units all alike;
its pupils must be for it merely numbers and names.--Owing to this our
internats, those huge stone boxes set up and isolated in each large
town, those lycées parceled out to hold three hundred, four hundred,
even eight hundred boarders, with immense dormitories, refectories and
playgrounds, recitation-rooms full to overflowing, and, for eight or ten
years, for one half of our children and youths, an anti-social unnatural
system apart, strict confinement, no going out except to march in
couples under the eyes of a sub-teacher who maintains order in the
ranks, promiscuity and life in common, exact and minute regularity under
equal discipline and constant constraint in order to eat, sleep, study,
play, promenade and the rest,--in short, COMMUNISM.
From the University this system is propagated among its rivals. In
conferring grades and passing examinations, it arranges and overburdens
the school program of study; hence, it incites in others what it
practices at home, the over-training of youth, and a factitious,
hot-house education. On the other hand, the internat is, for those who
decide on that, less troublesome than the day-school;[6356] also,
the more numerous the boarders in any one establishment, the less
the expense; thus, in order to exist in the face of the university
establishments, there must be internats and internats that are full.
Ecclesiastical establishments willingly resign themselves to all this;
they are even inclined that way; the Jesuits were the first ones, under
the old monarchy, who introduced cloistered and crowded boarding-houses.
In its essence, the Catholic church, like the French State, is a Roman
institution, still more exclusive and more governmental, resolved to
seize, hold on to, direct and control man entirely, and, first of all,
the child, head and heart, opinions and impressions, in order to stamp
in him and lastingly the definitive and salutary forms which are for him
the first condition of salvation. Consequently, the ecclesiastical cage
is more strict in its confinement than the secular cage; if the bars are
not so strong and not so rough, the grating, finer and more yielding, is
more secure, closer and better maintained; they do not allow any holes
or relaxation of the meshes; the precautions against worldly and family
interference, against the mistakes and caprices of individual effort,
are innumerable, and form a double or even triple network. For, to
school discipline is added religious discipline, no less compulsory,
just as rigid and more constant--daily pious exercises, ordinary
devotions and extraordinary ceremonies, spiritual guidance, influence of
the confessional and the example and behavior of a staff kept together
around the same work by the same faith. The closer the atmosphere, the
more powerful the action; the chances are that the latter will prove
decisive on the child sequestered, sheltered and brought up in a retort,
and that its intellect, faith and ideas, carefully cultivated, pruned
and always under direction, will exactly reproduce the model aimed
at.--For this reason, in 1876, 33,000 out of 46,000 pupils belonging
to the 309 ecclesiastical establishments of secondary instruction, are
internes,[6357] and the Catholic authorities admit that, in the 86 small
seminaries, no day-scholars, no future lay persons, are necessary.
This conclusion is perhaps reasonable in relation to the 23,000
pupils of the small seminaries, and for the 10,000 pupils in the great
seminaries; it is perhaps reasonable also for the future military
officers formed by the State at La Flèche, Saint-Cyr, Saumur, and on the
Borda.[6358] Whether future soldiers or future priests, their education
fits them for the life they are to lead; what they are to become as
adults, they already are as youths and children; the internat, under a
convent discipline or that of the barracks, qualifies them beforehand
for their profession. Since they must possess the spirit of it they must
contract its habits. Having accepted the form of their pursuit they more
easily accept its constraints and all the more that the constraints
of the regiment will be less for the young officer who recently was at
Saint-Cyr, and for the young ministrant in the rural parish who recently
was in the great seminary.--It is quite the reverse for the 75,000 other
internes of public or private establishments, ecclesiastic or secular,
for the future engineers, doctors, architects, notaries, attorneys,
advocates and other men of the law, functionaries, land-owners, chiefs
and assistants in industry, agriculture and commerce. For them the
internat affords precisely the opposite education required for a
secular and civil career. These carry away from the prolonged internat
a sufficient supply of Latin or of mathematics; but they are lacking
in two acquisitions of capital import: they have been deprived of two
indispensable experiences. On entering society the young man is ignorant
of its two principal personages, man and woman, as they are and as he is
about to meet them in society. He has no idea of them, or rather he has
only a preconceived, arbitrary and false conception of them.--He has
not dined, commonly, with a lady, head of the house, along with her
daughters and often with other ladies; their tone of voice, their
deportment at table, their toilette, their greater reserve, the
attentions they receive, the air of politeness all around, have not
impressed on his imagination the faintest lines of an exact notion;
hence, there is something wanting in him in relation to how he
should demean himself; he does not know how to address them, feels
uncomfortable in their presence; they are strange beings to him, new,
of an unknown species.--In a like situation, at table in the evening,
he has never heard men conversing together: he has not gathered in the
thousand bits of information which a young growing mind derives from
general conversation:
* about careers in life, competition, business, money, the domestic
fireside and expenses;
* about the cost of living which should always depend on income;
* about the gain which nearly always indicates the current rates of
labor and of the social subjection one undergoes;
* about the pressing, powerful, personal interests which are soon to
seize him by the collar and perhaps by the throat;
* about the constant effort required the incessant calculation, the
daily struggle which, in modern society, makes up the life of an
ordinary man.
All means of obtaining knowledge have been denied him, the contact with
living and diverse men, the images which the sensations of his eyes and
ears might have stamped on his brain. These images constitute the sole
materials of a correct, healthy conception; through them, spontaneously
and gradually, without too many deceptions or shocks, he might
have figured social life to himself, such as it is, its conditions,
difficulties, and its opportunities: he has neither the sentiment of it
nor even a premonition. In all matters, that which we call common sense
is never but an involuntary latent summary, the lasting, substantial
and salutary depot left in our minds after many direct impressions.
With reference to social life, he has been deprived of all these direct
impressions and the precious depot has never been formed in him.--e He
has scarcely ever conversed with his professors; their talk with him has
been about impersonal and abstract matters, languages, literature and
mathematics. He has spoken but little with his teachers, except
to contest an injunction or grumble aloud against reproof. Of real
conversation, the acquisition and exchange of ideas, he has enjoyed
none, except with his comrades: if, like him, all are internes, they
can communicate to each other only their ignorance. If day-scholars are
admitted, they are active smugglers or willing agents who bring into the
house and circulate forbidden books and obscene journals, along with
the filthy provocative and foul atmosphere of the streets.--Now, with
excitement of this kind or in this manner, the brains of these captives,
as puberty comes on and deliverance draws near, work actively and we
know in what sense[6359] and in what counter-sense, how remote from
observable and positive truth, how their imagination pictures society,
man and woman, under what simple and coarse appearances, with what
inadequacy and presumption, what appetites of liberated serfs and
juvenile barbarians, how, as concerns women, their precocious and turbid
dreams first become brutal and cynical,[6360] how, as concerns men,
their unballasted and precipitous thought easily becomes chimerical
and revolutionary.[6361] The downhill road is steep on the bad side, so
that, to put on the brake and stop, then to remount the hill, the young
man who takes the management of his life into his own hands, must know
how to use his own will and persevere to the end.
But a faculty is developed only by exercise, and the French internat
is the engine the most effective for hindering the exercise of this
one.--The youth, from the first to the last day of his internat, has
never been able to deliberate on, choose and decide what he should do
at any one hour of his schooldays; except to idle away time in
study-hours, and pay no attention at recitations, he could not exercise
his will. Nearly every act, especially his outward attitudes, postures,
immobility, silence, drill and promenades in rank, is only obedience to
orders. He has lived like a horse in harness, between the shafts of his
cart; this cart itself, kept straight by its two wheels, must not leave
the rectilinear ruts hollowed out and traced for it along the road; it
is impossible for the horse to turn aside. Besides, every morning he is
harnessed at the same hour, and every evening he is unharnessed at the
same hour; every day, at other hours, he has to rest and take his ration
of hay and oats. He has never been under the necessity of thinking about
all this, nor of looking ahead or on either side; from one end of the
year to the other, he has simply had to pull along guided by the bridle
or urged by the whip, his principal motives being only of two kinds: on
the one hand more or less hard guidance and urgings, and on the other
hand his recalcitrance, laziness and fatigue; he has been obliged to
choose between the two. For eight or ten years, his initiative is
reduced to that--no other employment of his free will. The education of
his free will is thus rudimentary or nonexistent.
On the strength of this our (French) system supposes that it is complete
and perfect. We cast the bridle on the young man's neck and hand him
over to his own government. We admit that, by extraordinary grace, the
scholar has suddenly become a man; that he is capable of prescribing and
following his own orders; that he has accustomed himself to weighing the
near and remote consequences of his acts, of imputing them to himself,
of believing himself responsible for them; that his conscience, suddenly
emancipated, and his reason, suddenly adult, will march straight on
athwart temptations and immediately recover from slips. Consequently, he
is set free with an allowance in some great city; he registers himself
under some Faculty and becomes one among ten thousand other students on
the sidewalks of Paris.--Now, in France, there is no university police
force to step in, as at Bonn or Göttingen, at Oxford or Cambridge, to
watch his conduct and punish him in the domicile and in public places.
At the schools of medicine, Law, Pharmacy, Fine-Arts, Charters, and
Oriental Languages, at the Sorbonne and at the École Centrale, his
emancipation is sudden and complete. When he goes from secondary
education to superior education he does not, as in England and in
Germany, pass from restricted liberty to one less restricted, but from a
monastic discipline to compete independence. In a furnished room, in the
promiscuity and incognito of a common hotel, scarcely out of college,
the novice of twenty years finds at hand the innumerable temptations of
the streets, the taverns, the bars, public balls, obscene publications,
chance acquaintances, and the liaisons of the gutter. Against all this
his previous education has disarmed him. Instead of creating a moral
force within him, the long and strict internat has maintained moral
debility. He yields to opportunity, to example; he goes with the
current, he floats without a rudder, he lets himself drift. As far as
hygiene, or money, or sex, is concerned, his mistakes and his follies,
great or small, are almost inevitable, while it is an average chance if,
during his three, four or five years of full license, he does not become
entirely corrupt.
IV. Cramming and Exams Compared to Apprenticeship
Another vice of the system.--Starting-point of superior
instruction in France.--Substitution of special State
schools for free encyclopedic universities.--Effect of this
substitution.--Examinations and competitions.--Intense,
forced and artificial culture.--How it reaches an extreme.
--Excess and prolongation of theoretical studies.
--Insufficiency and tardiness of practical apprenticeship.
--Comparison of this system with others, between France before
1789 and England and the United States.--Lost forces.
--Mistaken use and excessive expenditure of mental energy.--
--The entire body of youth condemned to it after 1889.
Let us now consider another effect of the primitive institution, not
less pernicious. On leaving the lycée after the philosophy class, the
system supposes that a general education is fully obtained; there is not
question of a second one, ulterior and superior, that of universities.
In place of these encyclopedic universities, of which the object is
free teaching and the free progress of knowledge, it establishes special
State schools, separate from each other, each confined to a distinct
branch, each with a view to create, verify and proclaim a useful
capacity, each devoted to leading a young man along, step by step,
through a series of studies and tests up to the title or final diploma
which qualifies him for his profession, a diploma that is indispensable
or, at least, very useful since, without it, in many cases, one has no
right to practice his profession and which, thanks to it, in all cases,
enables one to enter on a career with favor and credit, in fair rank,
and considerably promoted.--On entering most careers called liberal,
a first diploma is exacted, that of bachelor of arts, or bachelor of
sciences, sometimes both, the acquisition of which is now a serious
matter for all French youth, a daily and painful preoccupation. To this
end, when about sixteen, the young man works, or, rather, is worked
upon. For one or two years, he submits to a forced culture, not in
view of learning and of knowing, but to answer questions well at an
examination, or tolerably well, and to obtain a certificate, on proof
or on semblance of proof, that he has received a complete classical
education.--Next after this, at the medical or law school, during the
four prescribed years, sixteen graduated inscriptions, four or five
superposed examinations, two or three terminal verifications, oblige
him to furnish the same proof, or semblance of proof, to verify, as each
year comes round, his assimilation of the lessons of the year, and thus
attest that, at the end of his studies, he possesses about the entire
scope and diversity of knowledge to which he is restricted.
In the schools where the number of pupils is limited, this culture,
carried still farther, becomes intense and constant. In the
École Centrale and in the commercial or agronomic schools, in the
Polytechnique or Normale, he is there all day and all night,--he is
housed in a barracks.--And the pressure on him is twofold--the pressure
of examinations and that of competition. On entering, on leaving, and
during his stay there, not only at the end of each year but every six
or three months, often every six weeks, and even every fortnight, he
is rated according to his compositions, exercises and interrogatories,
getting so many marks for his partial value, so many for his total value
and according to these figures, classed at a certain rank among
his comrades who are his rivals. To descend on the scale would be
disadvantageous and humiliating; to ascend on the scale is advantageous
and glorious. Driven by this motive, so strong in France, his principal
aim is to go up or, at least, not to go down; he devotes all his energy
to this; he expends none of it on either side or beyond; he allows
himself no diversion, he abstains from taking any initiative; his
restrained curiosity never ventures outside of the circle traced for
him; he absorbs only what he is taught and in the order in which it
is taught; he fills himself to the brim, but only to disgorge at the
examination and not to retain and hold on to; he runs the risk of
choking and when relieved, of remaining empty. Such is the régime of our
Grande Ecoles. They are systematic, energetic and prolonged system of
gardening; the State, the gardener-in-chief, receiving or selecting
plants which it undertakes to turn out profitably, each of its kind. To
this end, it separates the species, and ranges each apart on a bed of
earth; and here, all day long, it digs, weeds, rakes, waters, adds
one manure after another, applies its powerful heating apparatus and
accelerates the growth and ripening of the fruit. On certain beds
it plants are kept under glass throughout the year; in this way it
maintains them in a steady, artificial atmosphere, forcing them to more
largely imbibe the nutritive liquids with which it floods the ground,
thus causing them to swell and become hypertrophied, so as to produce
fruits or vegetables for show, and which it exposes and which bring it
credit; for all these productions look well, many of them superb,
while their size seems to attest their excellence; they are weighted
beforehand and the official labels with which they are decorated
announce the authentic weight.
During the first quarter, and even the first half, of the (19th)
century, the system remained almost unobjectionable; it had not yet
pushed things to excess. Down to 1850 and later, all that was demanded
of the young, in their examinations and competitions, was much less
the extent and minutia of knowledge than proofs of intelligence and the
promise of capacity: in a literary direction, the main object was to
verify whether the candidate, familiar with the classics, could write
Latin correctly and French tolerably well; in the sciences, if he
could, without help, accurately and promptly solve a problem; if, again
unaided, he could readily and accurately to the end, state a long series
of theorems and equations without divergence or faltering; in sum, the
object of the test was to verify in him the presence and degree of
the mathematical or literary faculty.--But, since the beginning of the
century, the old subdivided sciences and the new consolidated sciences
have multiplied their discoveries and, necessarily, all discoveries end
in finding their way into public instruction. In Germany, for them to
become installed and obtain chairs, encyclopedic universities are found,
in which free teaching, pliant and many-sided, rises of itself to the
level of knowledge.[6362] With us, for lack of universities, they have
had only special schools[6363]; here only could a place be found for
them and professors obtained. Henceforth, the peculiar character of
these schools has changed: they have ceased to be strictly special
and veritably professional.--Each school, being an individuality, has
developed apart and on its own account; its aim has been to install and
furnish under its own roof all the general, collateral, accessory and
ornamental studies which, far or near, could be of service to its own
pupils. No longer content with turning out competent and practical
men, it has conceived a superior type, the ideal model of the engineer,
physician, jurist, professor or architect. To produce this extraordinary
and desirable professional, it has designed some excessively difficult
impressive lectures.[6364] To be able to make use of these, it has given
the young man the opportunity not only to acquire abstract, multiple,
technical knowledge, and information, but also the complementary culture
and lofty general ideas, which render the specialist a true savant and a
man of a very broad mind.
To this end, it has appealed to the State. The State, the contractor
for public instruction, the founder of every new professional chair,
appoints the occupant, pays the salary and, when in funds, is not
ill-disposed, for it thus gains a good reputation, an increase of
granting power and a new functionary. Such is the why and wherefore, in
each school, of the multiplication of professorships: schools of law, of
medicine, of pharmacy, of charters, of fine arts, polytechnic, normal,
central, agronomic and commercial schools, each becoming, or tending to
become, a sort of university on a small scale, bringing together within
its walls the totality of teachings which, if the student profits by
them, renders him in his profession an accomplished personage.
Naturally, to secure attendance at these lectures, the school, in
concert with the State, adds to the exigencies of its examinations, and
soon, for the average of intellects and for health, the burden imposed
by it becomes too heavy. Particularly, in the schools to which admission
is gained only through competitions the extra load is still more
burdensome, owing to the greater crowd striving to pass; there are now
five, seven and even eleven candidates for one place.[6365] With this
crowd, it has been found necessary to raise and multiply the barriers,
urge the competitors to jump over them, and to open the door only to
those who jump the highest and in the greatest number. There is no other
way to make a selection among them without incurring the charge of
despotism and nepotism. It is their business to have sturdy legs and
make the best of them, then to submit to methodical training, to
practice and train all year and for several years in succession, in
order to pass the final test, without thinking of any but the barriers
in front of them on the race-course at the appointed date, and which
they must spring over to get ahead of their rivals.
At the present day[6366], after the complete course of classical
studies, four years in school no longer suffice for obtaining the
degrees of a doctor in medicine or doctor in law. Five or six years are
necessary. Two years are necessary between the baccalauréat ès-lettres
and the various licenses ès-lettres or sciences, and from these to the
corresponding aggrégations two, three years, and often more. Three years
of preparatory studies in mathematics and of desperate application lead
the young man to the threshold of the École Polytechnique; after that,
after two years in school and of no less sustained effort, the future
engineer passes three not less laborious years at the École des Ponts
et Chaussées or des Mines, which amounts to eight years of professional
preparation.[6367] Elsewhere, in the other schools, it is the same thing
with more or less excess. Observe how days and hours are spent during
this long period.[6368] The young men have attended lecture-courses,
masticated and re-masticated manuals, abbreviated abridgments, learned
by heart mementos and formulae, stored their memories with a vast
multitude of generalities and details. Every sort of preliminary
information, all the theoretical knowledge which, even indirectly,
may serve them in their future profession or which is of service in
neighboring professions, are classified in their brains, ready to come
forth at the first call, and, as proved by the examination, disposable
at a minute; they possess them, but nothing otherwise or beyond. Their
education has all tended to one side; they have undergone no practical
apprenticeship. Never have they taken an active part in or lent a hand
to any professional undertaking either as collaborators or assistants.
* The future professor, a new aggrégé at twenty-four years of age, who
issues from the École Normale, has not yet taught a class, except for a
fortnight in a Paris lycée.
* The future engineer who, at twenty-four or twenty-five years of age
leaves the École Centrale, or the École des Ponts, or École des Mines,
has never assisted in the working of a mine, in the heating of a blast
furnace, in the piercing of a tunnel, in the laying-out of a dike, of
a bridge or of a roadway. He is ignorant of the cost and has never
commanded a squad of workmen.
* If the future advocate or magistrate to be has put up with being a
notary's or lawyer's clerk, he will at twenty-five years of age, even
if he is a doctor of law with his insignia of three "white balls,"
know nothing of the business; he merely knows his codes; he has never
examined pleadings, conducted a case, drawn up an act or liquidated an
estate.
* From eighteen to thirty, the future architect who competes for a
prix de Rome may stay in the École des Beaux-Arts, draw plan after plan
there, and then, if he obtains the prix, pass five years at Rome, make
designs without end, multiply plans and restorations on paper, and at
last, at thirty-five years of age, return to Paris with the highest
titles, architect of the government, and with the aspiration to erect
edifices without having taken even a second or third part in the actual
construction of one single house.--
None of these men so full of knowledge know their trade and each, at
this late hour, is expected to act as an expert, improvising,[6369] in
haste and too fast, encountering many drawbacks at his own expense and
at the expense of others, along with serious risks for the first tasks
he undertakes.
Before 1789, says a witness of both the ancient and the modern régime,
[6370] young Frenchmen did not thus pass their early life. Instead
of dancing attendance so long on the threshold of a career, they were
inducted into it very early in life and at once began the race. With
very light baggage and readily obtained "they entered the army at
sixteen, and even fifteen years of age, at fourteen in the navy, and
a little later in special branches, artillery or engineering. In the
magistracy, at nineteen, the son of a conseiller-maître in parliament
was made a conseiller-adjoint without a vote until he reached
twenty-five; meanwhile, he was busy, active and sometimes was made a
reporter of a case. No less precocious were the admissions to the Cour
des Comptes, to the Cour des Aides, to inferior jurisdictions and into
the bureaus of all the financial administrations." Here, as elsewhere,
if any rank in law was exacted the delay that ensured was not apparent;
the Faculty examinations were only for forms sake; for a sum of money,
and after a more or less grave ceremonial, a needed diploma was obtained
almost without study.[6371]--Accordingly, it was not in school, but in
the profession, that professional instruction was acquired; strictly
speaking, the young man for six or seven years, instead of being a
student was an apprentice, that is to say a working novice under several
master-workmen, in their workshop, working along with them and learning
by doing, which is the best way of obtaining instruction. Struggling
with the difficulties of the work he at once became aware of his
incompetence;[6372] he became modest and was attentive; with his
masters, he kept silent, and listened, which is the only way to
understand. If he was intelligent he himself discovered what he lacked;
as he found this out he felt the need of supplying what he needed; he
sought, set his wits to work, and made choice of the various means;
freely and self-initiating he helped himself in his general or special
education. If he read books, it was not resignedly and for a recitation,
but with avidity and to comprehend them. If he followed lecture-courses
it was not because he was obliged to, but voluntarily, because he was
interested and because he profited by it.--Chancellor Pasquier was
magistrate at seventeen (in 1784), attended at the lycée the lectures of
Garat, La Harpe, Fourcroy and Duparcieux and, daily, at table or in the
evening, listened to his father and his friends discussing matters
which, in the morning, had been argued in the Palais de Justice or in
the Grand-Chambre. He imbibed a taste for his profession. Along with two
or three prominent advocates and other young magistrates like himself,
he inscribed his name for lectures at the house of the first president
of the first court of inquiry. Meanwhile, he went every evening into
society; he saw there with his own eyes the ways and interests of men
and women. On the other hand, at the Palais de Justice, a conseiller-
écoutant he sat for five years, alongside of the conseiller-juges and
often, the reporter of a case, he gave his opinion. After such a
novitiate, he was competent to form a judgment in civil or criminal
cases with experience, competency and authority. From the age of
twenty-five, he was prepared for and capable of serious duties. He had
only to live and perfect himself to become an administrator, deputy or
minister, a dignitary as we see under the first Empire, under the
Restoration, under the July monarchy, that is to say the best informed,
well-balanced, judicious political character and, at length, the man of
highest consideration of his epoch.[6373]
Such is also the process which, still at the present day (1890),
in England and in America secures future ability in the various
professions. In the hospital, in the mine, in factories, with the
architect, with the lawyer, the pupil, taken very young, goes through
his apprenticeship and subsequent stages about the same as a clerk
with us in an office or an art-student in the studio. Preliminarily and
before entering it, he has attended some general seminary lecture which
serves him as a ready-made basis for the observations he is about to
make. Meanwhile, there are very often technical courses within reach,
which he may attend at his leisure in order to give shape to his daily
experiences as these happen to accumulate. Under a régime of this stamp
practical capacity grows and develops of itself, just to that degree
which the faculties of the pupil warrant, and in the direction which his
future aims require, through the special work to which he wishes for the
time being to adapt himself. In this way, in England and in the United
States, the young man soon succeeds in developing all he is good for.
From the age of twenty-five and much sooner, if the substance and
bottom are not wanting, he is not only a useful subordinate, but again a
spontaneous creator, not merely a wheel but besides this a motor force.
In France, where the inverse process has prevailed and become more and
more Chinese at each generation, the total of the force lost is immense.
The most productive period of human life extends from fifteen or sixteen
up to twenty-five or twenty-six; here are seven or eight years of
growing energy and of constant production, buds, flowers and fruit;
during this period the young man sketches out his original ideas. But,
that these ideas may be born in him, sprout, and flourish they must,
at this age, profit by the stimulating or repressive influence of the
atmosphere in which they are to live later on; here only are they formed
in their natural and normal environment; their germs depend for their
growth on the innumerable impressions due to the young man's sensations,
daily, in the workshop, in the mine, in the court-room, in the studio,
on the scaffolding of a building, in the hospital, on seeing tools,
materials and operations, in talking with clients and workmen, in doing
work, good or bad, costly or remunerative; such are the minute and
special perceptions of the eyes and the ears, of touch and even smell
which, involuntarily gathered in and silently elaborated, work together
in him and suggest, sooner or later, this or that new combination,
economy, perfection or invention.[6374] The young Frenchman, just at
this fecund age, is deprived of all these precious contacts, of all
these assimilating and indispensable elements. During seven or eight
years, he is shut up in school, remote from the direct and personal
experience which might have given him an exact and vivifying notion of
men and things, and of the various ways of handling them. All this time
his inventive faculties are deliberately sterilized; he can be nothing
but a passive recipient; whatever he might have produced under the other
system he cannot produce under this one; the balance of debit and
credit is utter loss.--Meanwhile, the cost has been great. Whilst the
apprentice, the clerk busy with his papers in his office, the interne
with his apron standing by the bedside of the patient in the hospital,
pays by his services, at first for his instruction, then for his
breakfast, and ends in gaining something besides, at least his
pocket-money, the student under the Faculty, or the pupil in a special
school is educated and lives at the expense of his family or of the
State; he gives back in exchange not work that is useful to mankind,
none that is worth anything on the market; his actual consumption is not
compensated for by his actual production. Undoubtedly, he cherishes the
hope that some day or other he will obtain compensation, that we will
refund later and largely both capital and interest, and all the advances
made; in other words, his future services are discounted and, as far as
he is concerned, he speculates on a long credit.--It remains to be seen
whether the speculation is a good one; whether, at last, the receipts
will cover the expenses, in short, what will be the net or average
returns on the man thus fashioned.[6375]
Now, among the forces expended, the most important to take into account
is the time and attention of the pupil, the sum of his efforts, this or
that quantity of mental energy; he has only a limited provision of
this, and, not only is the proportion of this which the system consumes
excessive, but, again, the application of it which the system enforces
is not remunerative. The provision is exhausted and by a wrong use of
it, with scarcely any profit.--In our lycées, the pupil sits at his task
more than eleven hours a day; in a certain ecclesiastical college it is
twelve hours, and, from the age of twelve years, through the necessity
of being first in competition as well as for securing the greatest
number of admissions through various examinations.--At the end of this
secondary education there is a graduated scale of successive test, and
first the baccalauréat. Fifty out of one hundred candidates fail and
the examiners are indulgent.[6376] This proves, first of all, that the
rejected have profited by their studies; but it likewise proves that the
program of the examination is not adapted to the general run of minds,
nor to the native faculties of the human majority; that many young men
capable of learning by the opposite method learn nothing by this one;
that education, such as it is, with the kind and greatness of the mental
labor it imposes, with its abstract and theoretical style, is beyond
the capacity of the average mind.--Particularly, during the last year
of classical studies, the pupils have had to follow the philosophy
lectures: in the time of M. Laromiquière, this might be useful to them;
in the time of M. Cousin, the course, so far, did but little harm; at
the present day, impregnated with neo-Kantism, it injects into minds of
eighteen, seventeen, and even sixteen years, a metaphysical muddle as
cumbersome as the scholasticism of the fourteenth century, terribly
indigestible and unhealthy for the stomachs of novices; the swallow
even to bursting and throw it off at the examination just as it comes,
entirely raw for lack of the capacity to assimilate it.--Often, after
failure at the baccalauréat, or on entering the preparatory or Grande
Écoles, the young people go into, or are put into, what they call "a
box" or an "oven" a preparatory internat, similar to the boxes in which
silkworms are raised and to the ovens where the eggs are hatched. In
more exact language it is a mechanical "gaveuse"[6377] in which they
are daily crammed; through this constant, forced feeding, their
real knowledge is not increased, nor their mental vigor; they are
superficially fattened and, at the end of the year, or in eighteen
months, they present themselves on the appointed day, with the
artificial and momentary volume they need for that day, with the bulk,
surface, polish and all the requisite externals, because these externals
are the only ones that the examination verifies and imposes.[6378] Less
harshly, but in the same manner and with the same object, operate
the special education services which, inside our colleges and lycées,
prepare young men for the École de Saint-Cyr and for the polytechnic,
naval, central, normal, agricultural, commercial and forestry schools;
in these too, the studies are cramming machines which prepare the pupil
for examination purposes. In the like manner, above secondary education,
all our special schools are public cramming machines;[6379] alongside of
them are private schools advertised and puffed in the newspapers and by
posters of the walls, preparing young men for the license degree in Law
and for the third or fourth examinations in Medicine. Some day or other,
others will probably exist to prepare them for Treasury inspectors, for
the "Cour des Comptes," for diplomacy, by competition, the same as for
the medical profession, for a hospital surgeon and for aggregation in
law, medicine, letters or sciences.
Undoubtedly, some minds, very active and very robust, withstand this
régime; all they have been made to swallow is absorbed and digested.
After leaving school and having passed through all grades they preserve
the faculty of learning, investigating and inventing intact, and compose
the small élite of scholars, litterateurs, artists, engineers and
physicians who, in the international exposition of superior talent,
maintain France in its ancient rank.[6380]--But the rest, in very great
majority, nine out of ten at least, have lost their time and trouble,
many years of their life and years that are useful, important and even
decisive: take at once one-half or two-thirds of those who present
themselves at the examinations, I mean the rejected, and then, among the
admitted who get diplomas, another half or two-thirds that is to say,
the overworked. Too much has been required of them by exacting that, on
such a day, seated or before the blackboard, for two entire hours, they
should be living repertories of all human knowledge; in effect, such
they are, or nearly so, that day, for two hours; but, a month later,
they are so no longer; they could not undergo the same examination;
their acquisitions, too numerous and too burdensome, constantly drop of
their minds and they make no new ones. Their mental vigor has given way,
the fecund sap has dried up; the finished man appears, often a finished
man content to be put away, to be married, and plod along indefinitely
in the same circle, entrenched in his restricted vocation and doing his
duty, but nothing more. Such are the average returns--assuredly, the
profits do not make up for the expenses. In England and in America
where, as before 1789 in France, the inverse method is followed, the
returns are equal or superior,[6381] and they are obtained with greater
facility, with more certainty, at an age less tardy, without imposing
such great and unhealthy efforts on the young man, such large
expenditure by the State, and such long delays and sacrifices on
families.[6382]
Now, in the four Faculties of Law, Medicine, Science and Letters, there
are this year 22,000 students; add to these the pupils of the special
schools and those who study with the hope of entering them, in all
probably 30,000. But there is no need of counting them; since the
suppression of the one-year voluntariat, the entire body of youths
capable of study, who wish to remain only one year in barracks and not
remain there to get brutalized during three years, flocks to the benches
of the lycée or to those of a Faculty.[6383] The sole object of the
young man is not, as before, to reach the baccalauréat; it is essential
that he should be admitted, after a competition, into one of the
special schools, or obtain the highest grades or diplomas in one of the
Faculties; in all cases he is bound to successfully undergo difficult
and multiplied examinations. At present time (1890), there is no place
in France for an education in the inverse sense, nor for any other of a
different type. Henceforth, no young man, without condemning himself to
three years of barrack life, can travel at an early age for any length
of time, or form his mind at home by free and original studies, stay
in Germany and follow speculative studies in the universities, or go to
England or to America to derive practical instruction from factory or
farm. Captured by our system, he is forced to surrender himself to the
mechanical routine which fills his mind with fictitious tools, with
useless and cumbersome acquisitions that impose on him in exchange
an exorbitant expenditure of mental energy and which is very like to
convert him into a mandarin.
V. Public instruction in 1890.
Public instruction since 1870.--Agreement between the
Napoleonic and Jacobin conception.--Extension and
aggravation of the system.--The deductive process of the
Jacobin mind.--Its consequences.--In superior and in
secondary instruction.--In primary instruction.--Gratuitous,
obligatory and secular instruction.
Such is the singular and final result brought about by the institution
of the year X (or 1801), due to the intervention of the grossly leveling
Jacobin spirit.[6384] Indeed, since 1871, and especially since 1879,
this spirit, through Napoleonic forms, has given breath, impulse and
direction, and these forms suit it. On the principle that education
belongs to the State, Napoleon and the old Jacobins were in accord;
what he in fact established they had proclaimed as a dogma; hence the
structure of his university-organisation was not objectionable to them;
on the contrary, it conformed to their instincts. Hence, the reason why
the new Jacobins, inheritors of both instinct and dogma, immediately
adopted the existing system; none was more convenient, better calculated
to meet their views, better adapted in advance to do their work.
Consequently, under the third Republic,[6385] as under anterior
governments, the school machinery continues to turn and grind in the
same rut. Through the same working of its mechanism, under the same
impulse of its unique and central motor, conforming to the same
Napoleonic and Jacobin idea of the teaching State, it is a formidable
concept which, more intrusive every year, more widely and more
rigorously applied, more and more excludes the opposite concept. This
would be the remission of education to those interested in it, to those
who possess rights, to parents, to free and private enterprises which
depend only on personal exertions and on families, to permanent,
special, local corporations, proprietary and organized under status,
governed, managed, and supported by themselves. On this model, a few
men of intelligence and sensibility, enlightened by what is accomplished
abroad, try to organize regional universities in our great academic
centers. The State might, perhaps, allow, if not the enterprise itself,
then at least something like it, but nothing more. Through its right
of public administration, through the powers of its Council of State,
through its fiscal legislation, through the immemorial prejudices of
its jurists, through the routine of its bureaus, it is hostile to
a corporate personality. Never can such a project be considered a
veritable civil personage; if the State consents to endow a group of
individuals with civil powers, it is always on condition that they be
subject to its narrow tutelage and be treated as minors and children.
--Besides, these universities, even of age, are to remain as they are,
so many dispensaries of diplomas. They are no longer to serve as an
intellectual refuge, an oasis at the end of secondary instruction, a
station for three or four years for free curiosity and disinterested
self-culture. Since the abolition of the volontariat for one year, a
young Frenchman no longer enjoys the leisure to cultivate himself in
this way; free curiosity is interdicted; he is too much harassed by
a too positive interest, by the necessity of obtaining grades and
diplomas, by the preoccupations of examinations, by the limitations of
age; he has no time to lose in experiments, in mental excursions, in
pure speculations. Henceforth, our system allows him only the régime to
which we see him subject, namely the rush, the puffing and blowing, the
gallop without stopping on a race-course, the perilous jumps at regular
distances over previously arranged and numbered obstacles. Instead of
being restricted and attenuated, the disadvantages of the Napoleonic
institution spread and grow worse, and this is due to the way in which
our rulers comprehend it, the original, hereditary way of the Jacobin
spirit.
When Napoleon built his University he did it as a statesman and a man
of business, with the foresight of a contractor and a practical man,
calculating outlay and receipts, means and resources, so as to produce
at once and with the least expense, the military and civil tools which
he lacked and of which he always had too few because he consumed too
many: to this precise, definite purpose he subjected and subordinated
all the rest, including the theory of the educational State; she was for
him simply a résumé, a formula, a setting. On the contrary, for the
old Jacobins, she was an axiom, a principle, an article in the Social
Contract; by this contract, the State had charge of public education;
it had the right and its duty was to undertake this and manage it. The
principle being laid down, as convinced theorists and blindly following
the deductive method, the derived consequences from it and rushed ahead,
with eyes shut, into practical operation, with as much haste as vigor,
without concerning themselves with the nature of human materials, of
surrounding realities, of available resources, of collateral effects,
nor of the total and final effect. Likewise with the new Jacobins of the
present day, according to them, since instruction is a good thing,[6386]
the broader and deeper it is the better; since broad and deep
instruction is very good, the State should, with all its energy and by
every means in its power, inculcate it on the greatest possible number
of children, boys and adolescents. Such, henceforth, is the word of
command from on high, transmitted down to the three stages of superior,
secondary and primary instruction.[6387]
Consequently, from 1876 to 1890,[6388] the State expends for superior
instruction, in buildings alone, 99,000,000 francs. Formerly, the
receipts of the Faculties about covered their expenses; at the present
day, the State allows them annually 6,000,000 francs more than their
receipts. It has founded and supports 221 new (professional) chairs, 168
complementary courses of lectures, 129 conférences and, to supply
the attendants, it provides, since 1877, 300 scholarships for those
preparing for the license and, since 1881, 200 scholarships for those
preparing for the aggrégation. Similarly, in secondary instruction,
instead of 81 lycées in 1876, it has 100 in 1887[6389]; instead of
3,820 scholarships in 1876, it distributes, in 1887, 10,528; instead
of 2,200,000 francs expended for this branch of instruction in 1857, it
expends 18,000,000 in 1889.--This overload of teaching caused overloaded
exams: it was necessary to include more science than in the past to
curriculum of the grades delivered and determined by the State. "This
was what was then done whenever possible."[6390] Naturally, and through
contagion, the obligation of possessing more knowledge descended to
secondary instruction. In effect, after this date, we see neo-Kantian
philosophy descending like hail from the highest metaphysical ether
down upon the pupils in the terminal class of the lycées, to the lasting
injury of the seventeen-year old brains. Again, after this date, we see
in the class of special mathematics[6391] an abundance of complicated,
confusing problems so that, today, the candidate for the Polytechnic
School must, to gain admission, expound theorems that were only mastered
by his father after he got there.--Hence, "boxes" and "ovens", private
internats, the preparatory secular or ecclesiastical schools and other
"scholastic cramming-machines"; hence, the prolonged mechanical effort
to introduce into each intellectual sponge all the scientific fluid it
can contain, even to saturation, and maintain it in this extreme state
of perfection if only for two hours during an examination, after which
it may rapidly subside and shrink. Hence, that mistaken use, that
inordinate expenditure, that precocious waste of mental energy, and that
entire pernicious system which overburden for a substantial period the
young, not for their advantage, but, on reaching maturity, to their
intellectual detriment.
To reach the uncultivated masses, to address popular intellect and
imagination, one must use absolute, simple slogans. In the matter of
primary instruction, the simplest and most absolute slogan is that
which promises and offers it to all children, boys and girls, not merely
universal, but again, complete and gratuitous. To this end, from 1878
to 1891,[6392] the State has expended for school buildings and
installations 582,000,000 francs; for salaries and other expenses it
furnished the latter year 131,000,000. Somebody pays for all this, and
it is the tax-payer, and by force; aided by gendarmes, the collector
puts his hand forcibly into all pockets, even those containing only
sous, and withdraws these millions. Gratuitous instruction sounds well
and seems to designate a veritable gift, a present from the great vague
personage called the State, and whom the general public dimly sees
on the distant horizon as a superior, independent being, and hence a
possible benefactor. In reality, his presents are made with our money,
while his generosity consists in the fine name with which he here gilds
his fiscal exactions, a new constraint added to so many others which he
imposes on us and which we endure.[6393]--Besides, through instinct and
tradition, the State is naturally inclined to multiply constraints, and
this time there is no concealment. From six to thirteen years of age,
primary instruction becomes obligatory.[6394] The father is required to
prove that his children receive it, if not at the public school at least
in a private school or at home. During these seven years it continues,
and ten months are devoted to it each year. The school takes and keeps
the child three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon;
it pours into these little heads all that is possible in such a length
of time, all that they can hold and more too,--spelling, syntax,
grammatical and logical analysis, rules of composition and of
style, history, geography, arithmetic, geometry, drawing, notions of
literature, politics, law, and finally a complete moral system, "civic
morality."
It is obviously very useful for every adult to be able to read, write
and reckon. Who, then, can criticize a Government because it insists
that all children be taught these basic skills? But for the same reason
and on the same principle, provision could be made for swimming-schools
in every village and town on the sea-coast, or on the streams and
rivers; every boy should be obliged to learn how to swim.--That it may
be useful for every boy and girl in the United States to pass through
the entire system of primary instruction is peculiar to the United
States and is comprehensible in an extensive and new country where
multiplied and diverse pursuits present themselves on all sides;[6395]
where every career may lead to the highest pinnacle; where a
rail-splitter may become president of the republic; where the adult
often changes his career and, to afford him the means for improvising a
competency at each change, he must possess the elements of every kind of
knowledge; where the wife, being for the man an object of luxury, does
not use her arms in the fields and scarcely ever uses her hands in the
household.[6396]--It is not the same in France. Nine out of ten pupils
in the primary school are sons or daughters of peasants or of workmen
and will remain in the condition of their parents; the girl, adult, will
do washing and cooking all her life at home or abroad; the son, adult,
confined to his occupation will work all his life in a shop or on
his own or another's field. Between this destiny of the adult and the
plenitude of his primary instruction, the disproportion is enormous; it
is evident that his education does not prepare him for the life he has
to lead; but for another life, less monotonous, under less restraint,
more cerebral, and of which a faint glimpse disgusts him with his
own;[6397] at least, it will disgust him for a long time and frequently,
until the day comes when his school acquisitions, wholly superficial,
shall have evaporated in contact with the ambient atmosphere and
no longer appear to him other than empty phrases; in France, for an
ordinary peasant or workman, so much the better if this day comes
early.[6398]
At the very least, three quarters of these acquisitions are for him
superfluous. He derives no advantage from them, neither for inward
satisfaction or for getting ahead in the world; and yet they must all be
gone through with. In vain would the father of a family like to curtail
his children's mental stores to useful knowledge, to reading, writing
and arithmetic, to giving to these just the necessary time, at the
right season, three months for two or three winters, to keep his
twelve-year-old daughter at home to help her mother and take care of the
other children, to keep his boy of ten years for pasturing cattle or for
goading on the oxen at the plow.[6399] In relation to his children and
their interests as well as for his own necessities, he is suspect, he is
not a good judge; the State has more light and better intentions than he
has. Consequently, the State has the right to constrain him and in fact,
from above, from Paris, the State does this. Legislators, as formerly in
1793, have acted according to Jacobin procedure, as despotic theorists.
They have formed in their minds a uniform, universal, simple type, that
of a child from six to thirteen years as they want to see it, without
adjusting the instruction they impose on it to its prospective
condition, making abstraction of his positive and personal interest, of
his near and certain future, setting the father aside, the natural
judge and competent measurer of the education suitable to his son and
daughter, the sole authorized arbiter for determining the quality,
duration, circumstances and counterpoise of the mental and moral
manipulation to which these young lives, inseparable from his own, are
going to be subject away from home.--Never, since the Revolution,
has the State so vigorously affirmed its omnipotence, nor pushed in
encroachments on and intrusion into the proper domain of the individual
so far, even to the very center of domestic life. Note that in 1793
and 1794 the plans of Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau and of Saint-Just
remained on paper; the latter for ten years have been in practical
operation.[63100]
At bottom, the Jacobin is a sectarian, propagator of his own faith, and
hostile to the faith of others. Instead of admitting that that people's
conceptions are different and rejoicing that there are so many of them,
each adapted to the human group which believes in it, and essential to
believers to help them along, he admits but one, his own, and he
uses power to force it upon adherents. He also has his own creed,
his catechism, his imperative formula, and he imposes them.--
Henceforth,[63101] education shall be not only free and obligatory but
again secular and nothing but secular. Thus far, the great majority of
parents, most of the fathers and all of the mothers, were desirous that
it should at the same time be religious. Without speaking of professing
Christians, many heads of families, even lukewarm, indifferent or
skeptical, judge that this mixture of the two is better for children,
and especially for girls. According to them, knowledge and faith should
not enter into these young minds separate, but combined and as one
aliment; at least, in the particular case in which they were concerned,
this, in their view, was better for the child, for themselves, for the
internal discipline of the household, for good order at home for which
they were responsible, for the maintenance of respect, and for the
preservation of morals. For this reason, the municipal councils,
previous to the laws of 1882 and 1886, still free to choose instruction
and teachers as they pleased, often entrusted their school to the
Christian Brethren or Sisters under contract for a number of years, at
a fixed price, and all the more willingly because this price was very
low.[63102] Hence, in 1886, there were in the public schools 10,029
teachers of the Christian Brethren and 39,125 of the Sisters. Now, since
1886, the law insists that public instruction shall be not only secular,
but that lay teachers only shall teach; the communal schools, in
particular, shall be all secularized, and, to complete this operation,
the legislator fixes the term of delay; after that, no member of a
congregation, monk or nun, shall teach in any public school.
Meanwhile, each year, by virtue of the law, the communal schools are
secularized by hundreds, by fair means or foul; although this is by
right a local matter, the municipal councils are not consulted; the
heads of families have no voice in this private, domestic interest which
touches them to the quick, and such a sensitive point. And likewise, in
the cost of the operation their part is officially imposed them; at the
present day,[63103] in the sum-total of 131,000,000 francs which primary
instruction costs annually, the communes contribute 50,000,000 francs;
from 1878 to 1891, in the sum-total of 582,000,000 francs expended
on school buildings, they contributed 312,000,000 francs.--If certain
parents are not pleased with this system they have only to subscribe
amongst themselves, build a private school at their own expense, and
support Christian Brothers or Sisters in these as teachers. That is
their affair; they will not pay one cent less to the commune, to the
department or to the State, so that their tax will be double and they
will pay twice, first for the primary instruction which they dislike,
and next for the primary instruction which suits them.--Thousands of
private schools are founded on these conditions. In 1887,[63104] these
had 1,091,810 pupils, about one fifth of all children inscribed in
all the primary schools. Thus one fifth of the parents do not want the
secular system for their children; at least, they prefer the other
when the other is offered to them; but, to offer it to them, very large
donations, a multitude of voluntary subscriptions, are necessary. The
distrust and aversion which this system, imposed from above excites can
be measured by the number of parents and children and by the greatness
of the donations and subscriptions. Note, moreover, that in many of
the other communes, in all places where the resources, the common
understanding and the generosity of individual founders and donators
are not sufficient, the parents, even distrustful and hostile, are now
constrained to send their children to the school which is repugnant
to them.--In order to be more precise, imagine an official and daily
journal entitled Secular journal, obligatory and gratuitous for children
from six to thirteen, founded and supported by the State, at an average
cost of 582,000,000 francs to set it agoing, and 131,0000,000 francs
of annual expenditure, the whole taken from the purses of taxpayers,
willingly or not; take it for granted that the 6,000,000 children, girls
and boys, from six to thirteen, are forced subscribers to this journal,
that they get it every day except Sundays, that, every day, they are
bound to read the paper for six hours. The State, through toleration,
allows the parents who do not like the official sheet to take another
which suits them; but, that another may be within reach, it is necessary
that local benefactors, associated together and taxed by themselves,
should be willing to establish and support it; otherwise, the father
of a family is constrained to read the secular journal to his
children, which he deems badly composed and marred by superfluities and
shortcomings, in brief edited in an objectionable spirit. Such is the
way in which the Jacobin State respects the liberty of the individual.
On the other hand, through this operation, it has extended and fortified
itself; it has multiplied the institutions it directs and the persons
whom it controls. To direct, inspect, augment and diffuse its primary
instruction, the State has maintained 173 normal schools for teachers,
male and female, 736 schools and courses of lectures in primary,
superior and professional instruction, 66,784 elementary schools, 3,597
maternal schools, and about 115,000 functionaries, men and women.[63105]
Through these 115,000 officials, representatives and megaphones,
Secular Reason, which is enthroned at Paris, sends its voice even to
the smallest and most remote villages. It is this Reason, as our rulers
define it, with the inclinations, limitations and prejudices they have
need of, the near-sighted and half-domesticated grand-daughter of that
other formidable sightless, brutal and mad grandmother, who, in 1793
and 1794, sat under the same name and in the same place. With less of
violence and blundering, but by virtue of the same instinct and with
the same one-sidedness, the latter employs the same propaganda. She
too wants to seize the new generations, and through her programs and
manuals, her insinuations and summaries of the Ancient Régime, the
Revolution and the Empire, by her perceptions of recent or contemporary
matters, through her formulae and suggestions in relation to moral,
social and political affairs, it is of her and she alone, that she
preaches and glorifies.
VI. Summary.
Total and actual effect of the system.--Increasing
unsuitableness between early education and adult life.
--Change for the worse in the mental and moral balance of
contemporary youth.
In this manner does the education by the State end. (in 1890) When a
matter is taken out of the hands of those who are concerned and handed
over to a third and differently motivated party, it cannot end well;
sooner or later, this basic defect will dominate and lead to unexpected
results. In this case a growing disparity between education and life.
On the three levels of instruction, infancy, adolescence and youth, the
actual theoretical and direct instruction is extended and overloaded
with the examination, the grade, the diploma and the certificate in view
only. To this end any and all means is used; through the application of
an unnatural and anti-social system competition, through excessive delay
in practical apprenticeship, through the internat, through artificial
stimulation and mechanical cramming, and through overwork. There is no
consideration of the future, of the adult epoch and the duties of the
complete man. The real world in which the young man is about to enter,
the state of society to which he must adapt or resign himself, the human
struggle in which he must defend himself or keep erect is left out. For
this new life he is neither armed, equipped, drilled and hardened.
That solid common sense, that determination and those steady nerves,
indispensable tools in life, are not dispensed by our schools; quite the
contrary; far from qualifying him for his approaching independence the
schools disqualify him for it. Accordingly, his entrance into the world
and his first steps on the field of practical life are generally a
series of painful failures; as a consequence he remains bruised, often
for a long time, offended sometimes permanently crippled. This is a rude
and dangerous ordeal; the moral and mental balance is altered and
risks never being restored; his illusions vanish too suddenly and too
completely. His deceptions have been too great and his disappointment
too severe. Sometimes, among close friends, embittered and worn out like
himself, he is tempted to tell us:
"Through your education you have led us to believe, or you have let us
believe, that the world is made in a certain fashion. You have deceived
us. It is much uglier, more dull, dirtier, sadder and harder, at least
in our opinion and to our imagination: you judge us as overexcited and
disordered; if so, it is your fault. For this reason, we curse and scoff
at your world and reject your pretended truths which, for us, are lies,
including those elementary and primordial verities which you declare
are evident to common sense, and on which you base your laws, your
institutions, your society, your philosophy, your sciences and your
arts."
This is what our contemporary youth, through their tastes, opinions,
vague desires in letters, arts and life, have loudly proclaimed for the
past fifteen years.[63106] (Written in 1890.)
*****
POSTSCRIPT:
It is only fair to the French to note that they have, since the law
called Debré in 1959 allowed the Catholic schools to operate freely with
teachers paid by the state provided they,
* use qualified teachers,
* have a contract with the government submitting to inspection of their
buildings etc.,
* submit to government study programs,
* regular accepted hours etc. (SR.)
*****
[Footnote 6301: Ordinance of Oct. 4, 1814.]
[Footnote 6302: Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur pendant la
Restauration." (Rev. des deux Mondes, number for Feb.15, 1892.) Decree
of April 8, 1814.]
[Footnote 6303: Ordinance of April 17, 1815 (to suppress the
university pay and separate the sole University into seventeen regional
universities.) This ordinance, dating from the last days of the first
Restoration, is repealed the first days of the second Restoration, Aug.
15, 1815.]
[Footnote 6304: "The Modern Régime," p.316. (Laff. II 581-582.)]
[Footnote 6305: Basset, censor of studies in the Charlemagne college,
"Coup d'oeil général sur l'Éducation et l'Instruction publique en France"
(1816), p. 21. (State of the University in 1815.)]
[Footnote 6306: Today, in year 2000, the educational machinery in France
employs more than 1 million teachers and, as all children are in school
from the age of 3 to at least 16 years of age, there are more than 12
million children and students under the tutelage of the state. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6307: Political party terms.]
[Footnote 6308: Ordinance of Feb.21, 1821, article 13, and Report by M.
de Corbières: "The youth clamour for a religious and moral direction..
.. The religious direction belongs by right to the highest pastors:
it is proper to ask from them for these establishments (the university
colleges) for constant supervision and to legally call on them to
suggest all measures that they may deem necessary."]
[Footnote 6309: Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur," 840 (Speech by
Benjamin Constant in the Chamber of Députés, May 18th, 1827).]
[Footnote 6310: Ordinances of Novem. 21, 1822, article I, and Feb. 2,
1823, article II.]
[Footnote 6311: Ordinances of Sep. 6, 1822, and of Feb. 21st, 1821,
title VI, with report by M. de Corbières.]
[Footnote 6312: Liard, ibid., p. 840. (Circular addressed to the rectors
by Monseigneur Freyssinous immediately after his installation:)
"In summoning a man of sacerdotal character to the head of public
instruction, His Majesty has made all France well aware of his great
desire to have the youth of his kingdom brought up in monarchical and
religious sentiments.... Whoever has the misfortune to live without
religion, or not to be devoted to the reigning family, ought to be
sensible of what he lacks in becoming a worthy instructor of youth. He
is to be pitied and is even culpable."--"Ambroise Rendu," by Eug. Rendu,
p. III (circular to rectors in 1817). "Make it known to the MM. the
bishops and to all ecclesiastics that, in the work of education, you are
simply auxiliaries, and that the object of primary instruction is above
all to fortify religious instruction."]
[Footnote 6313: De Riancey, "Histoire de l'instruction publique,"
II.,312. (Apropos of the lectures by Guizot and Cousin, stopped by Mgr.
de Freyssinous:) "He did not believe that a Protestant and a philosopher
could treat the most delicate questions of history and science with
impartiality, and through a fatal effect of the monopoly he found
himself placed between his conscience and the law. On this occasion he
sacrificed the law."]
[Footnote 6314: Liard, ibid., p.837. After 1820, "a series of measures
are passed which, little by little, give back its primitive constitution
to the University and even end in incorporating it more closely with
power than under the Empire."]
[Footnote 6315: Here Taine describes the very principle of democratic
government in a welfare state. "Do not worry, demand and we supply,
the rich will pay!!!" Taine understood and foresaw the riches which the
industrial society could be made to produce but neither he nor anyone
else could foresee that Human Rights should include central heating,
housing, running hot and cold water, television, free health care, a car
and worldwide tourism..(SR.)]
[Footnote 6316: See "The Modern Régime," I., pp.183, 202.]
[Footnote 6317: Maggiolo, "des Ecoles en Lorraine." (Details on several
communal schools.) 3rd part, pp. 9-50.--Cf. Jourdain, "le Budget de
l'Instruction publique," 1857, passim. (Appropriation by the State for
primary instruction in 1829, 100,000 francs; in 1832, 1,000,000 francs;
in 1847, 2,400,000 francs;--for secondary instruction, in 1830, 920,000
francs; in 1848, 1,500,000 francs; in 1854, 1,549,241 francs. (The towns
support their own communal colleges.)--Liard," Universités et Facultés,"
p. II. In 1829, the budget of Faculties does not reach 1,000,000 francs;
in 1848, it is 2,876,000 francs.]
[Footnote 6318: Law of Floreal 11, year X, article 4.--"Rapport sur
la statistique comparée de l'enseignement primaire," 1880, vol. II.,p.
133;--31 per cent of the pupils in the public schools were gratuitously
admitted in 1837; 57 per cent in 1876-77. The congregationists admit
about two thirds of their scholars gratuitously and one third for pay.]
[Footnote 6319: Cf. Jourdain, Ibid., pp. 22, 143, 161.]
[Footnote 6320: Cf. Jourdain, Ibid., p.287. (The fixed salary and
examination-fees are included in the above figures.) In 1850, the
regular salary of the professor in the Paris Medical Faculty is reduced
from 7000 to 6000 francs. In 1849, the maximum of all the salaries of
the Law professors is limited to 12,000 francs.]
[Footnote 6321: Read, among other biographies, "Ambroise Rendu," by Eug.
Rendu.]
[Footnote 6322: This, in France, lasted until the Communists in 1946
insisted as a price for their participation in governing France that
the right to strike for civil servants be inserted in the French
Constitution. In this way Stalin was sure to trouble France a great
deal. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6323: "Rapport sur la statistique comparée de l'enseignement
primaire," 1880, vol. II.,pp.8, 110, 206.--Law of March 15, 1850,
"Exposé des motifs," by M. Beugnot.]
[Footnote 6324: "Revue des Deux Mondes," number of Aug.15, 1869, pp.
909, 911. (Article by M. Boissier.)]
[Footnote 6325: Act of Nov. 9, 1818. (Down to 1850 and after, the
University so arranged its teaching (in high school) as not to come
in conflict with the clergy on the debatable grounds of history. For
example, at the end of the 8th grade the history of the Roman Empire
after Augustus was rapidly passed over and then, in the 9th grade,
they began again with the invasion of the barbarians. The origins of
Christianity and the entire primitive history of the Christian Church
were thus avoided. For the same reason, modern history ended in 1789.]
[Footnote 6326: M. Guizot, "Mémoires," vol. II.]
[Footnote 6327: An eminent university personage, a political character
and man of the world, said to me in 1850: "Pedagogy does not exist.
There are only personal methods which each finds out for himself and
eloquent phrases for effect on the public."--Bréal, "Quelques mots sur
l'instruction publique" (1872), p. 300: "France produces more works on
sericiculture than on the direction of colleges; rules and a few works
already ancient suffice for us."]
[Footnote 6328: On this day the monarchy of King Louis-Phillippe
collapsed and the Republic was declared. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6329: "L'Église et l'État sous la monarchie de juillet," by
Thureau-Dangin, 481-483.]
[Footnote 6330: Law of March 15, 1850 (Report by M. Beugnot).]
[Footnote 6331: Law of March 15, 1850, art. 21.]
[Footnote 6332: Law of March 15, 1850, article 21.]
[Footnote 6333: "Ambroise Rendu et l'Université de France," by E. Rendu,
p.128 (January, 1850). The discretionary power given to the prefects to
punish "the promoters of socialism" among the teachers in the primary
schools.--Six hundred and eleven teachers revoked.--There was no less
repression and oppression in the secondary and higher departments of
instruction.]
[Footnote 6334: Kingdom of July, (Louis-Philippe from 1830 to
24-2-1848.) (SR.)]
[Footnote 6335: De Riancey, ibid., II.., 476. (Words of M. Saint-Marc
Girardin.) "We instruct, we do not bring up (children); we cultivate
and develop the mind, not the heart."--Similar evidence, as for instance
that of M. Dubois, director of the Ecole Normale and of M. Guizot,
minister of public instruction. "Education is not up to the level of
instruction." (Exposition of the intent of the law of 1836.)]
[Footnote 6336: De Riancey, ibid., II., 401, 475.--Thureau-Dangin,
ibid., 145 and 146.--(Words of a fervent Catholic, M. de Montalembert, on
the trial of the Free School, Sept.29, 1831.) "It is with a heart still
distressed with these souvenirs (personal) that I here declare that,
were I a father, I would rather see my children crawl their whole life
in ignorance and idleness than expose them to the horrible risk I ran
myself of obtaining a little knowledge at the cost of their father's
faith, at the price of everything that is pure and fresh in their soul
and of honor and virtue in their breast."--(Testimony of a zealous
Protestant, M. de Gasparin.) "Religious education does not really
exist in the colleges. I remember with horror how I was on finishing
my national education. Were we good citizens? I do not know. But it
is certain that we were not Christians."--Testimony of a free-thinker,
Sainte-Beuve.) "In mass, the professors of the University, without being
hostile to religion, are not religious. The pupils feel this, and they
leave this atmosphere, not fed on irreligion, but indifferent.... One
goes away from the University but little of a Christian."]
[Footnote 6337: Boissier, ibid., p.712]
[Footnote 6338: In my youth, I was able to talk with some of those who
lived during the Consulate. All agreed in opinion. One, an admirer of
Condillac and founder of a boarding-school, had written for his pupils a
number of small elementary treatises, which I still possess.]
[Footnote 6339: Charles Hamel, "Histoire de Juilly," pp. 413, 419
(1818).--Ibid., 532, 665 (April 15, 1846.) The Tontine Association
replaced by a limited association (40 years) with a capital of 500,000
francs in 1000 shares of 500 francs each, etc.]
[Footnote 6340: For example, "Monge," the "École Alsacienne," the "École
libre des Sciences Politiques." Competent jurists recommend the founders
of a private school to organize it under the form of a commercial
association, with profit for its aim and not the public good. If the
founders of the school wish to maintain the free management of it they
must avoid declaring it "of public utility."]
[Footnote 6341: The "École Alsacienne" has been supported for some years
mainly by a subsidy of 40,000 francs allotted by the State. This year
the State furnishes, "Monge" and "Sainte-Barbe" with subsidies of
130,000 and 150,000 francs, without which they would become bankrupt and
close their doors. The State probably thus supports them so as to have
a field of pedagogic experiences alongside of its lycées, or to prevent
their being bought by some Catholic corporation.]
[Footnote 6342: Even when the masters are conciliatory or reserved
the two institutions face each other and the pupils are aware of the
antagonism; hence, they turn a cold shoulder to the pupils, education
and ideas of the rival institution. In 1852, and on four circular
journeys from 1863 to 1866, I was able to observe these sentiments which
are now very manifest.]
[Footnote 6343: The period of the annual school examinations in
France.--Tr.]
[Footnote 6344: This word means something more than an ordinary
"boarding-school," as the reader will see by the text, and is therefore
retained as untranslatable.--Tr.]
[Footnote 6345: Expositione universelle of 1889, "Rapport du jury,"
group II., 1st part, P.492.--Documents collected in the bureaus of
public instruction for 1887. (To the internes here enumerated must
be added those of private secular establishments, 8958 out of 20,174
pupils.)--Bréal, "Excursions pedagogiques," pp.293, 298.]
[Footnote 6346: All these figures are today in 1998, 100 years later,
no longer valid, they are only included in order to understand Taine's
insights into human nature and education in general. In 1994-5 there
were, in the State lycées and colleges over 4 millions students and
only those whose parents live too far from the schools, or some 9%, are
boarders. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6347: Today, in 1998, the number of pupils living on French
school premises amount to approximatively 10%, mostly because the
parents live too far away from the school. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6348: Bréal, ibid., pp. 10, 13. Id., "Quelques mots sur
l'instruction publique," p. 286. "The internat is nearly unknown in
Germany.... The director (of the gymnase) informs parents where families
can be found willing to receive boarders and he must satisfy himself
that their hospitality is unobjectionable.... In the new gymnases
there is no room for boarders."--Demogeot et Montucci, "Rapport sur
l'enseignement secondaire en Angleterre et en Ecosse," 1865.--(I
venture also to refer the reader to my "Notes sur l'Angleterre," for a
description of Harrow-on-the-Hill and another school at Oxford, made on
the spot.)]
[Footnote 6349: Taine, "Notes sur l'Angleterre," P.139. The pupils of
the superior class (sixth form), especially the first fifteen of the
class (monitors), the first pupil in particular, have to maintain order,
insure respect for the rules and, taking it all together, take the place
of our maitres d'étude.]
[Footnote 6350: Bréal, "Quelques mots, etc.," pp.281, 282. The same
in France, "before the Revolution,... except in two or three large
establishments in Paris, the number of pupils was generally sufficiently
limited.... At Port-Royal the number of boarders was never over fifty
at one time."--"Before 1764, most of the colleges were day-schools with
from 15 to 80 pupils," besides the scholarships. and peasant boarders,
not very numerous.--"An army of boarders, comprising more than one half
of our bourgeois class, under a drill regulated and overlooked by the
State, buildings holding from seven to eight hundred boarders--such
is what one would vainly try to find anywhere else, and which is
essentially peculiar to contemporary France."]
[Footnote 6351: Bréal, ibid., 287, id., "Excursions pedagogiques," p.
10. "I took part (with these pupils) in a supper full of gayety in the
room of the celebrated Latinist, Corssen, and I remember the thought
that passed through my mind when recurring to the meal we silently
partook of at Metz, two hundred of us, under the eye of the censor
and general superintendent, and menaced with punishment, in our cold,
monastic refectory."]
[Footnote 6352: Even though Taine had visited Eton and other English
schools, he appears to have a somewhat rosy picture of life inside these
institutions. I have been 9 years to a similar school and can assure the
reader that the headmaster's wife is no suitable substitute for a real
mother and her table does not replace one's own home. The rector of my
school once stated that boarding schools should only be resorted to when
one could not remain at home. It was my impression that this school had
two effects upon me: the first that I wanted, in spite of good grades,
to stop my studies and get a job and the second that I became, like
Taine, an opponent to the system. Later on in life I should come to
appreciate all the useful things like languages, literature, math and
physics which I had learned in this well-organized school. I also came
to understand that much worse than harsh discipline is no discipline and
no learning at all, something which happened to my children when they
attended, for one year only, the American School in Bangkok. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6353: Pelet de la Lozère, "Opinions de Napoleon au Conseil
d'État," p.172. (Session of April 7, 1807:) "The professors are to be
transferred from place to place in the Empire according to necessity."
--Decree of May 1, 1802, article 21: "The three functionaries in
charge of the administration and the professors of the lycées may be
transferred from the weakest to the strongest lycées and from inferior
to superior places according to the talent and zeal they show in their
functions."]
[Footnote 6354: A splendid description which also fits the international
civil servants working for the United Nations. I know this because I
was one for 32 years of my life. I suspect it also fits members of the
police forces, secret or not. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6355: Act of Jan. 11, 1811.--Decree of March 17, 1808,
articles 101 and 102.]
[Footnote 6356: Boissier ("Revue du Deux Mondes," Aug. 15, 1869, p.
919): "The externe lycées cost and the interne lycées bring in."]
[Footnote 6357: "Statistique de l'enseigncnient secondaire" (46,816
pupils, of which 33,092 internes and 13,724 externes).--Abbé Bougaud,
"Le Grand Péril de l'Eglise du France," p. 135.--"Moniteur," March 14,
1865, Speech of Cardinal Bonnechose in the Senate.]
[Footnote 6358: Name of the navy school-ship at Brest.--TR.]
[Footnote 6359: Bréal, "Quelques mots, etc.," p. 308: "We need not be
surprised that our children, once out of the college, resemble horses
just let loose, kicking at every barrier and committing all sorts of
capers. The age of reason has been artificially retarded for them five
or six years."]
[Footnote 6360: On the tone and turn of conversation among boys in
school on this subject in the upper classes and even earlier, I can
do no more than appeal to the souvenirs of the reader.--Likewise,
on another danger of the internat, not less serious, which cannot be
mentioned. (Here Taine undoubtedly refers to homosexuality. (SR.))]
[Footnote 6361: Bréal, "Excursions pédagogiques," pp. 326, 327.
(Testimony of two university graduates.) "The great college virtue is
comradeship, which comprises a bond of union among the pupils and hatred
of the master." (Bessot:) "Punishment irritates those who undergo it and
engenders punishment. The pupils become wearied: they fall into a state
of mute irritability coupled with contempt for the system itself and for
those who apply it. Unruliness furnishes them with the means of avenging
themselves or at least to relax their nerves; they commit disorders
whenever they can commit them with impunity.... The interdiction of an
act by authority is sufficient to excite the glory of committing it."
(A. Adam, "Notes sur l'administration du'un lycée.")--Two independent
and original minds have recounted their impressions on this subject,
one, Maxime Du Camp, who passed through the lycée system, and the other,
George Sand, who would not tolerate if for her son. (Maxime Du Camp,
"Souvenirs littéraires," and George Sand, "Histoire de ma vie.")]
[Footnote 6362: All this was in 1890, a long time ago, and if there was
much to learn then, how much do we not have to learn now? It helped,
however, to reduce the curriculum, that Latin and Greek was removed from
middle and senior high school programs and that international Socialism
through the Politically Correct movement, either forbade or rewrote
history, art and literature. In science, however, the young engineers
and scientists have a lot more to learn today and that in all branches
of science and especially in electronics. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6363: The so-called "Grandes Ecoles" which exist today
and which continue to form the French administrative, commercial
and scientific elite. They cannot be done away with since the French
universities have become accessible for an ever increasing number of
students since nearly 50% of the population pass their "bac" or final
high school exam. The level of this exam has decreased year after year
and only the preparatory schools for the Grande Ecoles continue to
insist on verifying diligence and attention. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6364: Taine expresses this in the following manner: "elle a
imaginé quantité de cours surérogatoires et de luxe,.." (SR.)]
[Footnote 6365: This year (1892) 1750 candidates were entered or 240
vacancies in the École Polytechnique, 230 for 30 places in the École des
Beaux-Arts (section of Architecture) and 266 for 24 places in the École
Normale (section of Literature).]
[Footnote 6366: 1890.]
[Footnote 6367: In France today, in 2000, there are still preparatory
schools which, in two or three years after their baccalaureat, prepare
the young applicants for the various competetive entrance examinations
to the "Grande Ecoles". 4000 specially selected students vie annually
with each other for the 400 places in the École Polytechnique. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6368: I was once, writes Taine, an examiner for admission to
a large special school and speak from experience.. Taine was well placed
to know about the system since he was first in the competetive entrance
exam (concours) to the École Normale Superior, and had also passed all
his other studies with great brilliance. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6369: A practical apprenticeship in the Faculty of Medicine
is less retarded; the future doctors, after the third year of their
studies, enter a hospital for two years, ten months of each year or 284
days of service, including an "obstetrical stage" of one months. Later,
on competing for the title of physician or surgeon in the hospitals and
for the aggrégation of the Faculty, the theoretical preparation is as
onerous as that of other careers.]
[Footnote 6370: "Souvenirs" by Chancellor Pasquier. (Written in 1843).
(Étienne Dennis Pasquier (Paris 1767--id. 1862) was a high official
under Napoleon, and President of the upper house under Louis-Phillippe
and author of "L'Histoire de mon temps", published posthumously in
1893. Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. On page 16 and 17 in volume I he fully
confirms Taine's views. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6371: Idem., Nobody attended the Lectures of the Law faculty
of Paris, except sworn writers who took down the professor's dictation
and sold copies of it. "These were nearly all supported by arguments
communicated beforehand... At Bourges, everything was got through within
five or six months at most."]
[Footnote 6372: "Souvenirs" by Chancellor Pasquier, vol. I. p.
17. Nowadays, "the young man who enters the world at twenty-two,
twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, thinks that he has nothing
more to learn; he commonly starts with absolute confidence in himself
and profound disdain for whoever does not share in the ideas and
opinions that he has adopted. Full of confidence in his own force,
taking himself at his own value, he is governed by one single thought,
that of displaying this force and this estimate himself immediately so
as to demonstrate what he is worth." This must have been written around
1830. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6373: This last quality is given by Sainte-Beuve.]
[Footnote 6374: Dunoyer, "De la liberté du travail" (1845), II.,119. The
extraordinary progress of England in the mechanical arts, according to
English engineers, "depends much less on the theoretical knowledge of
scholars than on the practical skill of the workmen who always succeed
better in overcoming difficulties than cultivated minds." For example,
Watt, Stephenson, Arkwright, Crampton and, in France, Jacquart.]
[Footnote 6375: Today, in year 2000, the socialist revolutionaries
have, through the Human Rights activities broken the chain between the
generations, forbidden the parents, the teachers and the supervisors
to correct and discipline their children and apprentices. The French
educational system, perfectly equal, still survives and is probably the
best in existence since it insists on teaching the students even if
a lot of the curriculum is a dead loss. The final product is still a
useful citizen and functionary, something which make France tick. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6376: Bréal, "Quelques mots," etc.,, p. 336. (He quotes M.
Cournot, a former rector, inspector-general, etc.:) "The Faculties know
that they would be subject to warnings on the part of the authorities
as well as to comparisons and regrettable desertions on the part of the
pupils if the proportion between candidates and admissions did not
vary between 45 and 50%... When the proportion of postponements reaches
between 50 and 555 the examiners admit with groans, considering the hard
times, candidates of which they would reject at least one half their
hands were not tied." (This was 100 years ago, today less than 30%
on the average, but more than 70% in certain bad areas, fail their
Baccalauréat. The curriculum has, however, been lightened so that about
50% of the population may end up passing their baccalauréat. Democracy
oblige. (SR.))]
[Footnote 6377: A machine for the forced feeding of ducks and geese to
make their liver grow to excessive proportions.]
[Footnote 6378: An old professor, after thirty years of service,
observed to me by way of summing up: "One half, at least, of our pupils
are not fitted to receive the instruction we give them."]
[Footnote 6379: Lately, the director of one of these schools remarked
with great satisfaction and still greater naïveté: "This school is
superior to all others of its kind in Europe, for nowhere else is what
we teach taught in the same number of years."]
[Footnote 6380: But what if Taine was mistaken? What if he, like so
many other highly talented and intelligent men, took his own superb
intelligence and imagination for granted? What if the talent of such
men is inherited? We know from identical twins how many of our
particularities have been given to us at birth. What if most men are
lazy and especially intellectually so, what if we can only be made to
learn and think when under great stress, the stress introduced by fear
of dismissal or hope of promotion or riches? Then the French system is
perhaps hard, perhaps expensive but certainly useful in producing
the great number of hardworking and competent and passively obedient
supervisors and civil servants that any large organization needs. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6381: "Souvenirs", by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc),
chancelier de France, in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Although
pupils were admitted in the preparatory Schools very early, "our navy,
engineer and artillery officers were justly esteemed the best instructed
in Europe, as able practically as theoretically; the position occupied
by artillery and engineer officers from 1792 in the French army
sufficiently attests this truth. And yet they did not know one tenth of
those who now issue from the preparatory schools. Vauban himself would
have been unable to undergo the examination for admission into the
Polytechnic School." There is then in our system "a luxury of science,
very fine in itself, but which is not necessary to insure good service
on land or at sea." The same in civil careers, with the bar, in the
magistracy, in the administration and even in literature and the
sciences. The proof of this is found in the men of great talent who,
after 1789, were prominent in the Constituent Assembly. In the new-born
University there was not one half of the demand for attainments as is
now exacted. There is nothing like our over-loaded baccalauréat, and yet
there issued from it Villemain, Cousin, Hugo, Lamartine, etc. No École
Polytechnique existed, and yet at the end of the eighteenth century in
France, we find the richest constellation of savants, Lagrange, Laplace,
Monge, Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Berthollet, Haüy, and others. (Since the
date of these souvenirs (1843) the defects in the French system have
gotten worse.]
[Footnote 6382: In England and in the United States the architect
and engineer produce more than we do with greater pliancy, fertility,
originality and boldness of invention, with a practical capacity at
least equal and without having passed six, eight or ten years in purely
theoretical studies.--Cf. Des Rousiers, "La Vie Américaine," p. 619:
"Our polytechnicians are scientific erudites.... The American engineer
is not omniscient as they were, he is special." "But, in his specialty
he has profound knowledge; he is always trying to make it more perfect
by additions, and he does more than the polytechnician to advance his
science" or his art. (Since Taine noted this times have changed; I once
put my 3 older sons into the American school in Bangkok (in 1972),
and not only did they not learn anything during their year there, they
actually lost some of their reading and writing skills and I had to
remove them as soon as I could. (SR.)).]
[Footnote 6383: In 1889 a law called Freycinet, France introduced 3
years of military service for all young men. Students and married men
were, subject to certain conditions, released after one year of service.
(SR.)]
[Footnote 6384: To facilitate his or her comprehension the reader
might replace the word Jacobin with the expression Socialist, Marxist,
national-socialist or Communist since they are all heirs to the
heritage left by the French Revolutionaries. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6385: IIIrd Republique lasted from 14-9-1870 until 13-7-1940.
(SR.)]
[Footnote 6386: Instruction is good, not in itself, but through the good
it does, and especially to those who possess or acquire it. If, simply
by raising his finger, a man could enable every French man or woman to
read Virgil readily and demonstrate Newton's binomial theory, this man
would be dangerous and ought to have his hands tied; for, should he
inadvertently raise his finger, manual labor would be repugnant and, in
a year or two, become almost impossible in France.]
[Footnote 6387: And so it happened. After the second world war, when
international Marxism became installed its agents throughout the Western
world, compulsory, unified education was pushed from the age of 14 to
16 and a majority of young remained in school till after their 18th
birthday, an education which successfully made them believe that the
attitudes and values they were taught were the only valid ones. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6388: Liard, "Universités et Facultés," p. 39 and following
pages.--"Rapport sur la statistique comparée de l'instruction," vol.
II. (1888).--"Exposition universelle de 1889" ("Rapport du jury," groupe
II., part I., p.492.)]
[Footnote 6389: In 1994 there were in France 1389 public and 841 private
lycées (SR.)]
[Footnote 6390: Liard, ibid., p. 77.]
[Footnote 6391: Also called the preparatory classes, the so-called
math-sup and math-spe of the preparatory schools attached to the state
lycées and attended by selected 18-20 year-old students. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6392: These figures were obtained in the bureaux of the
direction of primary instruction.--The sum-total of 582,000,000 francs
is composed of 241,000,000, furnished directly by the State, 28,000,000
furnished by the departments, and 312,000, 000 furnished by the
communes. The communes and departments being, in France, appendices of
the State, subscribe only with its permission and under its impulsion.
Hence the three contributions furnish only one.--Cf. Turlin,
"Organisation financière et budget de l'Instruction primaire," p. 61.
(In this study, the accounts are otherwise made up. Certain
expenses being provided for by annuities are carried into the annual
expenditure:) "From June 1, 1878, to Dec. 31, 1887, expenses of first
installation, 528 millions; ordinary expenses in 1887, 173 millions."]
[Footnote 6393: Law of June 16, 1881 (on gratuitous education).]
[Footnote 6394: Law of March 28, 1882 (on obligatory education).]
[Footnote 6395: National temperament must here be taken into
consideration as well as social outlets. Instruction out of proportion
with and superior to condition works differently with different nations.
For the German adult it is rather soothing and a derivative; with the
adult Frenchman it is especially an irritant or even an explosive.]
[Footnote 6396: It might be interesting to note what Mark Twain wrote on
India education about the same period when Taine wrote this text:
"apparently, then, the colleges of India were doing what our high
schools have long been doing--richly over-supplying the market for
highly educated service; and thereby doing a damage to the scholar,
and through him to the country. At home I once made a speech deploring
the injuries inflicted by the High School in making handicrafts
distasteful to boys who would have been willing to make a living at
trades and agriculture if they had but had the good luck to stop with
the common school. But I made no converts. Not one, in a community
overrun with educated idlers who were above following their fathers'
mechanical trades, yet could find no market for their book-knowledge."]
[Footnote 6397: Among the pupils who receive this primary instruction
the most intelligent, who study hardest, push on and pass an examination
by which they obtain the certificate that qualifies them for elementary
teaching. The consequences are as follows. Comparative table of annual
vacancies in the various services of the prefecture of the Seine and of
the candidates registered for these places. ("Débats," Sep. 16, 1890:)
Vacancies for teachers, 42; number of registered candidates, 1,847.
Vacancies for female teachers, 54; number of candidates, 7,139.--7,085
of these young women, educated and with certificates, and who cannot
get these places, must be content to marry some workman, or become
housemaids, and are tempted to become lorettes. (From the church of
Notre Dame de Lorette in Paris in the neighborhood of which many young,
pretty women of easy virtue were to be found. (SR.))]
[Footnote 6398: Taine wrote this when compulsory education in France
kept the children in school until their 13th year. Today in year 2000
they must stay until they are 16 years old but more often continue until
they are 19--23 years old. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6399: In certain cases, the school commission may grant
exemptions. But there art two or three parties in each commune, and the
father of a family must stand well with the dominant party to obtain
them.]
[Footnote 63100: After the second world war the world, helped by the
United Nations, have pushed obligatory education further and further,
and the number of dissatisfied youth have consequently increased and
increased. (SR.)]
[Footnote 63101: Law of March 28, 1882, and Oct. 30, 1886.]
[Footnote 63102: "Journal des Débats," Sep. 1, 1891. Report of the
Commission on Statistics: "In 1878-9 the number of congregationist
schools was 23,625 with 2,301,943 pupils."]
[Footnote 63103: Bureaux of the direction of public instruction, budget
of 1892.]
[Footnote 63104: "Exposition universelle" of 1889. "Rapport général," by
M. Alfred Picard, p. 367. At the same date, the number of pupils in
the public schools was 4,500,119.--"Journal des Débats," Sep. 12, 1891,
Report of the commission of statistics. "From 1878-79 to 1889-90, 5,063
public congregationist schools are transformed into secular schools or
suppressed; at the time of their transformation they enumerated in
all 648,824 pupils.--Following upon this secularization, 2,839 private
congregationist schools are opened as competitors and count in 1889-90,
354,473 pupils."--In ten years public secular instruction gains 12,229
schools and 973,380 pupils; public congregationist instruction
loses 5,218 schools and 550,639 pupils. On the other hand, private
congregationist instruction gains 3,790 schools and 413,979 pupils."]
[Footnote 63105: Turlin, ibid, p. 61. (M. Turlin enumerates "104,765
functionaries," to which must be added the teaching, administrative and
auxiliary staff of teachers of the 173 normal schools and their 3000
pupils, all gratuitous). (In 1994 there were 247 000 primary school
teachers (instituteurs) in public schools in France. Taine could not
foresee that the French schools and universities should become an
enormous industry, the number of teachers and universities multiplied by
ten and the number of government functionaries multiplied by 20 and that
the annual 50 000 vacancies should find more than a million candidates,
the young overeducated persons dreaming of becoming functionaries and
hence "safe" for life. (SR.))]
[Footnote 63106: In this respect, very instructive indications may be
found in the autobiography of Jules Valès, "l'Enfant," "le Bachelier,"
and "l'Insurge." Since 1871, not only in literature do the successful
works of men of talent but, again, the abortive attempts of impotent
innovators and blasted half-talents, converge to this point."]
End of The Modern Regime, Volume 2, End of The Origins of Contemporary
France, Volume 6