The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

CHAPTER X

[1] The complaints were largely along such lines as that the instruction was confined to a few Latin authors; that instruction in the French language was neglected; that instruction in the history and geography of France should be introduced; that time was wasted "in copying and learning notebooks filled with vain distinctions and frivolous questions"; that training in the use of the French language should be substituted for the disputations in Latin; that in religion the study of the Bible was neglected for books of devotion and propaganda compiled by the members of the Order; that moral casuistry and religious bigotry were taught; and that the discipline was unnecessarily severe and wrong in character.

[2] In 1759 the Jesuits were expelled from Portugal, in 1767 from Spain, and in 1773 the Pope at Rome, "recognizing that the members of this Society have not a little troubled the Christian commonwealth, and that for the welfare of Christendom it were better that the Order should disappear," abolished the Society entirely. Forty years later it was reconstituted in a modernized form.

[3] Little boys wore their hair long and powdered, carried a sword, and had coats with gilded cuffs, while little girls were dressed in imitation of the lady of fashion. Proper deportment was an important part of a child's training.

[4] The iconoclastic nature of Rousseau's volume may be inferred from its opening sentence, in which he says: "Everything is good as it comes from the hand of the author of nature; everything degenerated in the hand of man." In another place he breaks out: "Man is born, lives, and dies in a state of slavery. At his birth he is stitched into swaddling clothes, at his death he is nailed in his coffin; and as long as he preserves the human form he is held captive by our institutions."

[5] "I do not presume to exclude ecclesiastics, but I protest against the exclusion of laymen. I dare claim for the nation an education which depends only on the State, because it belongs essentially to the State; because every State has an inalienable and indefeasible right to instruct its members; because, finally, the children of the State ought to be educated by the members of the State." (La Chalotais.)

[6] "Education cannot be too widely diffused, to the end that there may be no class of citizens who may not be brought to participate in its benefits. It is expedient that each citizen receive the education which is adapted to his needs." (Rolland.)

[7] Condorcet had not been a member of the Constituent Assembly, but for some years had been deeply interested in the idea of public education, and had published five articles on the subject. His Report was a sort of embodiment, in legal form, of his previous thinking on the question.

[8] All the educational aims of the past were now relegated to a second place, and man became a political animal, "brought into the world to know, to love, and to obey the Constitution." The Declaration of the Rights of Man became the new Catechism of childhood.

[9] This was created on a grand and visionary scale. Its purpose was to supply professors for the higher institutions. It opened with a large attendance, and lectures on mathematics, science, politics, and languages were given by the most eminent scholars of the time. A normal school, though, it hardly was, and in 1795 it closed—a virtual failure. In 1808 Napoleon re-created it, on a less pretentious and a more useful scale, and since then it has continued and rendered useful service as a training- school for teachers for the higher secondary schools of France.

[10] A total of 105 of these Central Schools were to be established, five in Paris, and one in each of the one hundred chief towns in the departments. By 1796 there were 40, by 1797 there were 52, by 1798 there were 59, by 1799 there were 86, and by 1800 there were 91 such schools in existence. This, times considered, was a remarkable development.

[11] "The commercial depression of 1740 fell upon a generation of New Englanders whose minds no longer dwelt preeminently upon religious matters, but who were, on the contrary, preeminently commercial in their interests." (Green, M, L., Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut, p, 226.)

[12] Prominent in the Indiana constitutional convention of 1816 were a number of Frenchmen of bearing and ability, then residing in the old territorial capital—Vincennes. How much they influenced the statement of the article on education is not known, but it reads as though French revolutionary ideas had been influential in shaping it.

[13] For the original Bill of 1779 in full, in the original spelling, see the Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Virginia, 1900-01, pp. lxx-lxxv.

[14] Though Jefferson had been Governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War; had repeatedly served in the Virginia legislature and in Congress; and had twice been President of the United States, he counted all these as of less importance than the three services mentioned, and in preparing the inscription to be placed on his tomb he included only these three.