FOOTNOTES:
[177] Discours préliminaire sur la grammaire, in the Œuvres complètes of Condillac, Tome VI. p. 264.
[178] This is also the main principle in Mr. Spencer’s educational philosophy. “The education of the child must accord both in mode and arrangement with the education of mankind as considered historically; or, in other words, the genesis of knowledge in the individual must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race.”—Education, p. 122. (P.)
[179] The general law of human progress is inheritance supplemented by individual acquisition. Using the symbols i (inheritance) and a (acquisition), the progress of the race from its origin upwards, through successive generations, may be exhibited by this series: i; i + a; i (2a) + a; i (3a) + a; i (4a) + a. If the factor of inheritance could be eliminated, as Condillac and Spencer recommend, the series would take this form: a′; a″; a‴; aiv; av: the successive increments in acquisition being due to successive increments in power gained through heredity. But, happily, the law of inheritance cannot be abrogated, and so philosophers write books in order to save succeeding generations from the fate of Sisyphus. (P.)
[180] Cours d’études, Tome X. Introduction.
[181] See Œuvres complètes of Diderot. Edited by Tourneux, 1876-77. Tomes II. and III.
[182] Œuvres, Tome III. p. 459.
[183] For Comte’s classification of the sciences, see Spencer’s Illustrations of Universal Progress, Chap. III. (P.)
[184] See note, p. 131.
[185] This thought will bear extension as in the following quotation: “The reasoning that I oppose starts from the low and false assumption that instruction serves only for the practical use that is made of it; for example, that he who, by his social position, does not make use of his intellectual culture, has no need of that culture. Literature, from this point of view, is useful only to the man of letters, science only to the scientist, good manners and fine bearing only to men of the world. The poor man should be ignorant, for education and knowledge are useless to him. Blasphemy, Gentlemen! The culture of the mind and the culture of the soul are duties for every man. They are not simple ornaments; they are things as sacred as religion” (Renan, Famille et État, p. 3). This is a sufficient answer to Mr. Spencer’s assumption (Education, p. 84), that the studies that are best for guidance are at the same time the best for discipline. See also Dugald Stewart (Elements, p. 12). (P.)
[186] This thought throws light on a dictum of current pedagogy, “First, the idea, then the term.” It shows that very often, in actual experience, the sequence is from term to idea. The relation between term and idea is the same in kind as that between sentence and thought. Must we then say, “First the thought, then the sentence”? Or, “First the thought, then the chapter or the book”?
The disciplinary value of translation is also well stated. It may be doubted whether the schools furnish a better “intellectual gymnastic.” Three high intellectual attainments are involved in a real translation: 1. The separation of the thought from the original form of words; 2. The seizing or comprehension of the thought as a mental possession; and 3. The embodying of the thought in a new form. A strictly analogous process, of almost equal value in its place, is that variety of reading in which the pupil is required to express the thought of the paragraph in his own language. This exercise involves the three processes above stated, and may be called “the translation of thought from one form into another, in the same language.” (P.)
[187] Marmontel, Mémoires d’un père pour servir à l’instruction de ses enfants, Tome I. p. 19.
[188] Maître d’étude: “He who in a lycée, college, or boarding-school, has oversight of pupils during study hours and recreations.”—Littré.
[189] It is a matter of surprise that in a German Pedagogical Library the very first French work published is the Traité de l’Homme of Helvetius. This is giving the place of honor to what is perhaps of the most ordinary value in French pedagogical literature.
[190] See the French translation of this tract at the end of the volume, published by Monsieur Barni, under the title, Éléments métaphysiques de la doctrine de la vertu. Paris, 1855. The work of Kant appeared in German in 1803.
[191] Extract from Kant’s Fragments posthumes.
[192] Monsieur Compayré seems to give his sanction to the “Discipline of Consequences.” I think that Mr. Fitch has correctly stated its limitations (Lectures, p. 117). Kant doubtless borrowed the idea from Rousseau, who employs it in the government of his imaginary pupil. (See Miss Worthington’s translation of the Émile, p. 66.) This doctrine is the basis of Mr. Spencer’s chapter on Moral Education. (P.)
[193] Helvetius, but poorly qualified for teaching moral questions, had had the idea of a Catéchisme de probité. Saint Lambert published, in 1798, a Catéchisme universel.
[CHAPTER XV.]
THE ORIGIN OF LAY AND NATIONAL INSTRUCTION.—LA CHALOTAIS AND ROLLAND.
JESUITS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS; EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS (1764); GENERAL COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE EDUCATION OF THE JESUITS; EFFORTS MADE TO REPLACE THEM; LA CHALOTAIS (1701-1785); HIS ESSAY ON NATIONAL EDUCATION (1763); SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION; PRACTICAL END OF INSTRUCTION; NEW SPIRIT IN EDUCATION; INTUITIVE AND NATURAL INSTRUCTION; STUDIES OF THE EARLIEST PERIOD; CRITICISM OF NEGATIVE EDUCATION; HISTORY AVENGED OF THE DISDAIN OF ROUSSEAU; GEOGRAPHY; NATURAL HISTORY; PHYSICAL RECREATIONS; MATHEMATICAL RECREATIONS; STUDIES OF THE SECOND PERIOD; THE LIVING LANGUAGES; OTHER STUDIES; THE QUESTION OF BOOKS; ARISTOCRATIC PREJUDICES; INSTRUCTION WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL; NORMAL SCHOOLS; SPIRIT OF CENTRALIZATION; TURGOT (1727-1781); ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
374. Jesuits and Parliamentarians.—Of the educators of the eighteenth century of whom we have been speaking up to the present time, no one has been called to exercise an immediate and direct action on the destinies of public education; no one of them had the power to apply the doctrines which were so dear to him to college education; so that, so far, we have studied the theory and not the practice of education in the eighteenth century.
On the contrary, the members of the French Parliaments, after having solicited and obtained from the king the expulsion of the Jesuits, made memorable efforts, from 1762 up to the eve of the Revolution, to supply the places of the teachers whom they had driven away, to correct the faults of the ancient education, and to give effect to the idea, cherished by the most of the great spirits of that time, of a national education adapted to the needs of civil society. They were the practical organizers of instruction; they prepared the foundation of the French University of the nineteenth century; they resumed, not without lustre, the struggle too often interrupted, which the Jansenists had sustained against the Jesuits.
375. Expulsion of the Jesuits (1764).—The causes of the expulsion of the Jesuits were doubtless complex, and, above all else, political. In attacking the Company of Jesus, the Parliaments desired especially to defend the interests of the State, compromised by a powerful society which tended to dominate all Christian nations. But reasons of an educational character had also some influence on the condemnation pronounced against the Jesuits by all the Parliaments of France. From all quarters, in the reports which were drawn up by the municipal or royal officers of all the cities where the Jesuits had colleges, complaint is made of the scholastic methods and usages of the Company. Reforms were demanded which they were incapable of realizing.
And it is not in France alone that the faults in the education of the Jesuits were vigorously announced. In the edict of 1759, by which the king of Portugal expelled the Jesuits from his kingdom, it was said: “The study of the humanities has declined in the kingdom, and the Jesuits are evidently the cause of the decadence into which the Greek and Latin tongues have fallen.” Some years later, in 1768, the king of Portugal congratulated himself on having banished “the moral corruption, the superstition, the fanaticism, and the ignorance, which had been introduced by the Society of Jesus.”
376. General Complaints against the Education of the Jesuits.—Even in the middle of the eighteenth century the Jesuits were still addicted to their old routine, and even their faults were aggravated with the times.
At Auxerre, complaint is made that pupils study in their schools only a few Latin authors, and that they leave them without ever receiving into their hands a single French author.
At Moulins, a request is made that at least one hour a week be devoted to the history of France, which proves that the Society of Jesus, always enslaved to its immobile formalism, did not grant even this little concession to the teaching of history.
At Orleans, the necessity of teaching children the French language is insisted on.
At Montbrison, the wish is expressed that pupils be taught a smattering of geography, especially of their own country.
At Auxerre, it is proved that in the teaching of philosophy the time is employed “in copying and learning note-books filled with vain distinctions and frivolous questions.”
At Montbrison, the request is made “that the rules of reasoning be explained in French, and that there be a disuse of debates which train only disputants and not philosophers.”
It would be interesting to pursue this study, and to collect from these reports of 1762,—real memorials of a scholastic revolution,—all the complaints of public opinion against the Jesuits. Even in religion, the Company of Jesus is charged with substituting for the sacred texts, books of devotion composed by the Fathers. At Poitiers, a demand is made in favor of the Old and the New Testaments, the study of which was wholly neglected. From time to time the Jesuits were accused of continually mixing religious questions with classical studies and of catechising at every turn. “The masters of the fifth and sixth forms in the College of Auxerre dogmatize in the themes which they dictate to the children.” Finally, the Company of Jesus maintained in the schools the teaching of moral casuistry; it encouraged bigotry and superstition; it relaxed nothing from the severity of its discipline, and provoked violent recriminations among some of its former pupils who had preserved a painful recollection of corrections received in its colleges.[194]
377. Efforts made to displace the Jesuits.—The Parliaments, then, did nothing more, so to speak, than register the verdict of public opinion everywhere excited against the Jesuits. But while they heartily joined in the general reprobation, they undertook to determine the laws of the new education. “It is of little use to destroy,” they said, “if we do not intend to build. The public good and the honor of the nation require that we should establish a civil education which shall prepare each new generation for filling with success the different employments of the State.” It is not just to say with Michel Bréal, that “once delivered from the Jesuits, the University installed itself in their establishments and continued their instruction.” Earnest attempts were made to reform programmes and methods. La Chalotais, Guyton de Morveau, Rolland, and still others attempted by their writings, and, when they could, by their acts, to establish a system of education which, while inspired by Rollin and the Jansenists, attempted to do still better.
378. La Chalotais (1701-1785).—Of all the parliamentarians who distinguished themselves in the campaign undertaken towards the middle of the eighteenth century against the pedagogy of the Jesuits, the most celebrated, and the most worthy of being such, is undoubtedly the solicitor-general of the Parliament of Bretagne, René de la Chalotais. A man of courage and character, he was arrested and imprisoned in the citadel of Saint Malo for having upheld the franchise of the province of Bretagne; and it was in his prison, in 1765, that he drew up for his defence an eloquent and impassioned memorial, of which Voltaire said, “Woe to every sensitive soul that does not feel the quivering of a fever in reading it!”
379. His Essay on National Education.—The Essai of La Chalotais appeared in 1763, one year after the Émile. Coming after the ambitious theories of a philosopher who, scorning polemics and the dissensions of his time, had written only for humanity and the future, this was a modest and opportune work, the effort of a practical man who attempted to respond to the aspirations and the needs of his time. Translated into several languages, the Essai d’éducation nationale obtained the enthusiastic approval of Diderot, and also of Voltaire, who said, “It is a terrible book against the Jesuits, all the more so because it is written with moderation.” Grimm carried his admiration so far as to write, “It would be difficult to present in a hundred and fifty pages more reflections that are wise, profound, useful, and truly worthy of a magistrate, of a philosopher, of a statesman.” Too completely forgotten to-day, this little composition of La Chalotais deserves to be republished. Notwithstanding some prejudices that mar it, it is already wholly penetrated with the spirit of the Revolution.
380. Secularization of Education.—As a matter of fact, the whole pedagogy of the eighteenth century is dominated by the idea of the necessary secularization of instruction. Thorough-going Gallicans like La Chalotais or Rolland, dauntless free-thinkers like Diderot or Helvetius, all believe and assert that public instruction is a civil affair, a “government undertaking,” as Voltaire expressed it. All wish to substitute lay teachers for religious teachers, and to open civil schools upon the ruins of monastic schools.
“Who will be persuaded,” says Rolland in his report of 1708, “that fathers who feel an emotion that an ecclesiastic never should have known, will be less capable than he of educating children?”
La Chalotais also demands these citizen teachers. He objects to those instructors who, from interest as well as from principle, give the preference in their affections to the supernatural world over one’s native land.
“I do not presume to exclude ecclesiastics,” he said, “but I protest against the exclusion of laymen. I dare claim for the nation an education which depends only on the State, because it belongs essentially to the State; because every State has an inalienable and indefeasible right to instruct its members; because, finally, the children of the State ought to be educated by the members of the State.” This does not mean that La Chalotais is irreligious; but he desires a national religion which does not subordinate the interests of the country to a foreign power. What he wants especially is, that the Church, reserving to herself the teaching of divine truth, abandon to the State the teaching of morals, and the control of purely human studies. He is of the same opinion as his friend Duclos, who said:—
“It is certain that in the education which was given at Sparta, the prime purpose was to train Spartans. It is thus that in every State the purpose should be to enkindle the spirit of citizenship; and, in our case, to train Frenchmen, and in order to make Frenchmen, to labor to make men of them.”[195]
381. Practical Purpose of Instruction.—The particular charge brought by La Chalotais against the education of his time, against that of the University as well as against that of the Jesuits, is, that it does not prepare children for real life, for life in the State. “A stranger who should visit our colleges might conclude that in France we think only of peopling the seminaries, the cloisters, and the Latin colonies.” How are we to imagine that the study of a dead language, and a monastic discipline, are the appointed means for training soldiers, magistrates, and heads of families?
“The greatest vice of education, and perhaps the most inevitable, while it shall be entrusted to persons who have renounced the world, is the absolute lack of instruction on the moral and political virtues. Our education does not affect our habits, like that of the ancients. After having endured all the fatigues and irksomeness of the college, the young find themselves in the need of learning in what consist the duties common to all men. They have learned no principle for judging actions, evils, opinions, customs. They have everything to learn on matters that are so important. They are inspired with a devotion which is but an imitation of religion, and with practices which take the place of virtue, and are but the shadow of it.”
382. Intuitive and Natural Instruction.—A pupil of the sensational school, a disciple of Locke and of Condillac, La Chalotais is too much inclined to misconceive, in the development of the individual, the play of natural activities and innate dispositions. But, by way of compensation, his predilection for sensationalism leads him to excellent thoughts on the necessity of beginning with sensible objects before advancing to intellectual studies, and first of all to secure an education of the senses.
“I wish nothing to be taught children except facts which are attested by the eyes, at the age of seven as at the age of thirty.
“The principles for instructing children should be those by which nature herself instructs them. Nature is the best of teachers.
“Every method which begins with abstract ideas is not made for children.
“Let children see many objects; let there be a variety of such, and let them be shown under many aspects and on various occasions. The memory and the imagination of children cannot be overcharged with useful facts and ideas of which they can make use in the course of their lives.”
Such are the principles according to which La Chalotais organizes his plan of studies.
383. The New Spirit in Education.—The purpose, then, is to replace that monastic and ultramontane education (this is the term employed by La Chalotais), and also that narrow education, and that repulsive and austere discipline, “which seems made only to abase the spirit”; that sterile and insipid teaching, “the most usual effect of which is to make study hated for life”; those scholastic studies where young men “contract the habit of disputing and caviling”; and those ascetic regulations “which set neatness and health at defiance.” The purpose is to initiate children into our most common and most ordinary affairs, into what forms the conduct of life and the basis of civil society.
“Most young men know neither the world which they inhabit, the earth which nourishes them, the men who supply their needs, the animals which serve them, nor the workmen and citizens whom they employ. They have not even any desire for this kind of knowledge. No advantage is taken of their natural curiosity for the purpose of increasing it. They know how to admire neither the wonders of nature nor the prodigies of the arts.”
This is equivalent to saying that they should henceforth learn all that up to this time they had been permitted to be ignorant of.
384. Studies of the First Period.—Education, according to La Chalotais, should be divided into two periods: the first from five to ten, the second from ten to seventeen.
During the first period, we have to do with children who have no experience because they have seen nothing, who have no power of attention because they are incapable of any sustained effort, and no judgment because they have not yet any general ideas; but who, by way of compensation, have senses, memory, and some power of reflection. It is necessary, then, to make a careful choice of the subjects of study which shall be proposed to these tender intelligences; and La Chalotais decides in favor of history, geography, natural history, physical and mathematical recreations.
“The exercises proposed for the first period,” he says, “are as follows: learning to read, write, and draw; dancing and music, which ought to enter into the education of persons above the commonalty; historical narratives and the lives of illustrious men of every country, of every age, and of every profession; geography, mathematical and physical recreations; the fables of La Fontaine, which, whatever may be said of them, ought not to be removed from the hands of children, but all of which they should be made to learn by heart; and besides this, walks, excursions, merriment, and recreations; I do not propose even the studies except as amusements.”
385. Criticism of Negative Education.—La Chalotais is often right as against Rousseau. For example, he has abundantly refuted the utopia of a negative education in which nature is allowed to have her way, and which considers the toil of the centuries as of no account. It is good sense itself which speaks in reflections like these:—
“If man is not taught what is good, he will necessarily become preoccupied with what is bad. The mind and the heart cannot remain unoccupied.... On the pretext of affording children an experience which is their own, they are deprived of the assistance of others’ experience.”
386. History avenged of the Disdain of Rousseau.—The sophisms of Rousseau on history are brilliantly refuted. History is within the comprehension of the youngest. The child who can understand Tom Thumb and Blue Beard, can understand the history of Romulus and of Clovis. Moreover, it is to the history of the most recent times that La Chalotais attaches the greatest importance, and in this respect he goes beyond his master Rollin:—
“I would have composed for the use of the child histories of every nation, of every century, and particularly of the later centuries, which should be written with greater detail, and which should be read before those of the more remote centuries. I would have written the lives of illustrious men of all classes, conditions, and professions, of celebrated heroes, scholars, women, and children.”
387. Geography.—La Chalotais does not separate the study of geography from that of history, and he requires that, without entering into dry and tedious details, the pupil be made to travel pleasantly through different countries, and that stress be put “on what is of chief importance and interest in each country, such as the most striking facts, the native land of great men, celebrated battles, and whatever is most notable, either as to manners and customs, to natural productions, or to arts and commerce.”
388. Natural History.—Another study especially adapted to children, says La Chalotais with reason, is natural history: “The principal thing is first to show the different objects just as they appear to the eyes. A representation of them, with a precise and exact description, is sufficient.”
“Too great detail must be avoided, and the objects chosen must be such as are most directly related to us, which are the most necessary and the most useful.”
“Preference shall be given to domestic animals over those that are wild, and to native animals over those of other countries. In the case of plants, preference shall be given to those that serve for food and for use in medicine.”
As far as possible, the object itself should be shown, so that the idea shall be the more exact and vivid, and the impression the more durable.
389. Recreations in Physics.—La Chalotais explains that he means by this phrase observations, experiments, and the simplest facts of nature. Children should early be made acquainted with thermometers, barometers, with the microscope, etc.
390. Recreations in Mathematics.—All this is excellent, and La Chalotais enters resolutely into the domain of modern methods. What is more debatable is the idea of putting geometry and mathematics into the programme of children’s studies, under this erroneous pretext, that “geometry presents nothing but the sensible and the palpable.” Let us grant, however, that it is easier to conceive “clear ideas of bodies, lines, and angles that strike the eyes, than abstract ideas of verbs, declensions, and conjugations, of an accusative, an ablative, a subjunctive, an infinitive, or of the omitted that.”
391. Studies of the Second Period.—La Chalotais postpones the study of the classical languages till the second period, the tenth year. The course of study for this second period will comprise: 1. French and Latin literature, or the humanities; 2. a continuation of history, geography, mathematics, and natural history; 3. criticism, logic, and metaphysics; 4. the art of invention; 5. ethics.
La Chalotais complains that his contemporaries neglect French literature, as though we had not admirable models in our national language. Out of one hundred pupils there are not five who will find it useful to write in Latin; while there is not one of them who will have occasion to speak or write in Greek, and to construct Latin verses. All, on the contrary, ought to know their native language. Consequently, our author suggests the idea of devoting the morning session to French, and that of the afternoon to Latin, so that the pupils who have no need of the ancient languages may pursue only the courses in French.
392. The Living Languages.—La Chalotais thinks the knowledge of two living languages to be necessary, “the English for science, and the German for war.” German literature had not yet produced its masterpieces, and it is seen that at this period the utility of German appears especially with reference to military affairs. However it may be, let us be grateful to him for having appreciated, as he has done, the living languages. “It is wrong,” he says, “to treat them nearly as we treat our contemporaries, with a sort of indifference. Without the Greek and Latin languages there is no real and solid erudition; and there is no complete erudition without the others.”
393. Other Studies.—How many judicious or just reflections we have still to gather from the Essay on National Education, as upon the teaching of the ancient languages, which La Chalotais, however, is wrong in restricting to too small a number of years; upon the necessity of presenting to pupils as subjects for composition, not puerile amplifications, or dissertations on facts or matters of which they are ignorant, but things which they know, which have happened to them, “their occupations, their amusements, or their troubles”; upon logic or criticism, the study of which should not be deferred till the end of the course, as is still done in our day; upon philosophy, which is, he says, “the characteristic of the eighteenth century, as that of the sixteenth was erudition, and that of the seventeenth was talent!” La Chalotais reserves the place of honor to ethics, “which is the most important of all the sciences, and which is, as much as any other, susceptible of demonstration.”
394. The Question of Books.—In tracing his programme of studies, so new in many particulars, La Chalotais took into account the difficulties that would be encountered in assuring, and, so to speak, in improvising, the execution of it, at a time when there existed neither competent teachers nor properly constructed books. Teachers especially, he said, are difficult to train. But, while waiting for the recruiting of the teaching force, La Chalotais puts great dependence on elementary books, which might, he thought, be composed within two years, if the king would encourage the publication of them, and if the Academies would put them up for competition.
“These books would be the best instruction which the masters could give, and would take the place of every other method. Whatever course we may take, we cannot dispense with new books. These books, once made, would make trained teachers unnecessary, and there would then be no longer any occasion for discussion as to their qualities, whether they should be priests, or married, or single. All would be good, provided they were religious, moral, and knew how to read; they would soon train themselves while training their pupils.”
There is much exaggeration in these words. The book, as we know, cannot supply the place of teachers. But the language of La Chalotais was adapted to circumstances as they existed. He spoke in this way, because, in his impatience to reach his end, he would try to remedy the educational poverty of his time, and supply the lack of good teachers by provisional expedients, by means which he found within his reach.
395. Aristocratic Prejudices.—That which we would expunge from the book of La Chalotais is his opinion on primary instruction. Blinded by some unexplained distrust of the people, and dominated by aristocratic tendencies, he complains of the extension of instruction. He demands that the knowledge of the poor do not extend beyond their pursuits. He bitterly criticises the thirst for knowledge which is beginning to pervade the lower classes of the nation.
“Even the people can study. Laborers and artisans send their children to the colleges of the smaller cities.... When these children have accomplished a summary course of study which has taught them only to disdain the occupation of their father, they rush into the cloisters and become ecclesiastics; or they exercise judicial functions, and often become subjects harmful to society. The Brethren of the Christian Doctrine (sic), who are called ignorantins, have just appeared to complete the general ruin; they teach people to read and write who ought to learn only to draw, and to handle the plane and the file, but have no disposition to do it. They are the rivals or the successors of the Jesuits.”
A singular force of prejudice was necessary to conceive that the Brethren of the Christian Schools were instructing the people too highly.
Let it be said, however, towards exonerating La Chalotais, that he perhaps does not so much attack the instruction in itself, as the bad way in which it is given. What he censures is instruction that is badly conceived, that which takes people from their own class. In some other passages of his book we see that he would be disposed to disseminate the new education among the ranks of the people.
“It is the State, it is the larger part of the nation, that must be kept principally in view in education; for twenty millions of men ought to be held in greater consideration than one million, and the peasantry, who are not yet a class in France, as they are in Sweden, ought not to be neglected in a system of instruction. Education is equally solicitous that letters should be cultivated, and that the fields should be plowed; that all the sciences and the useful arts should be perfected; that justice should be administered and that religion should be taught; that there should be instructed and competent generals, magistrates, and ecclesiastics, and skillful artists and citizens, all in fit proportion. It is for the government to make each citizen so pleased with his condition that he may not be forced to withdraw from it.”
Let us quote one sentence more, which is almost the formula that to-day is so dear to the friends of instruction:—
“We do not fear to assert, in general, that in the condition in which Europe now is, the people that are the most enlightened will always have the advantage over those who are the less so.”
396. General Conclusion.—Notwithstanding the faults which mar it, the work of La Chalotais is none the less one of the most remarkable essays of the earlier French pedagogy. “La Chalotais,” says Gréard, “belongs to the school of Rousseau; but on more than one point he departs from the plan traced by the master. He escapes from the allurements of the paradox. Relatively he has the spirit of moderation. He is a classic without prejudices, an innovator without temerity.”
His book is pre-eminently a book of polemics, written with the ardor of one who is engaged in a fight, and overflowing with a generous passion. What noble words are the following:—
“Let the young man learn what bread a ploughman, a day laborer, or an artisan eats. He will see in the sequel how they are deprived of the bread which they earn with so much difficulty, and how one portion of men live at the expense of the other.”
In these lines, which breathe a sentiment of profound pity for the disinherited of this world, we already hear, as it were, the signal cry announcing the social reclamations of the French Revolution.
379. Rolland (1734-1794).—La Chalotais, after having criticised the old methods, proposed new ones; Rolland attempted to put them in practice. La Chalotais is a polemic and a theorist; Rolland is an administrator. President of the Parliament of Paris, he presented to his colleagues, in 1768, a Report which is a real system of education.[196] But above all, he gave his personal attention to the administration of the College Louis-le-Grand. An ardent and impassioned adversary of the Jesuits, he used every means to put public instruction in a condition to do without them. “Noble and wise spirit, patient and courageous reason, who, for twenty years, even during exile and after the dissolution of his society, did not abandon for a single moment the work he had undertaken, but brought it, almost perfected, to the very confines of the Revolution; a heart divested of every ambition, who, chosen by popular wish, and by the cabinet of the king, as director of public instruction, obstinately entrenched himself in the peace of his studious retreat.” This is the judgment of a member of the University, in the nineteenth century, Dubois, director of the Normal School.
No doubt Rolland is not an original educator. “It is in Rollin’s Traité des études,” he says, “that every teacher will find the true rules for education.” Besides, he borrowed ideas from La Chalotais, and also from the Mémoires which the University of Paris drew up in 1763 and 1764 at the request of Parliament; so that the interest in his work is less, perhaps, in its personal views than in the indications it furnishes relative to the situation of the University and its tendency towards self-reformation.
398. Instruction within the Reach of All.—At least on one point Rolland is superior to La Chalotais; he takes a bold stand for the necessity of primary instruction, and for the progress and diffusion of human knowledge.
“Education cannot be too widely diffused, to the end that there may be no class of citizens who may not be brought to participate in its benefits. It is expedient that each citizen receive the education which is adapted to his needs.”[197]
It is true that Rolland joins in the wish expressed by the University, which demanded a reduction in the number of colleges. But only colleges for the higher studies were in question, and Rolland thought less of restricting instruction than of proportioning and adapting it to the needs of the different classes of society.
“Each one ought to have the opportunity to receive the education which is adapted to his needs.... Now each soil,” adds Rolland, “is not susceptible of the same culture and the same product. Each mind does not demand the same degree of culture. All men have neither the same needs nor the same talents; and it is in proportion to these talents and these needs that public education ought to be regulated.”
Rolland shared the prejudices of La Chalotais against “the new Order founded by La Salle”; but none the less on this account did he demand instruction for all.
“The knowledge of reading and writing, which is the key to all the other sciences, ought to be universally diffused. Without this the teachings of the clergy are useless, for the memory is rarely faithful enough; and reading alone can impress in a durable manner what it is important never to forget.” Would it be granted by every one to-day, affected by prejudices that are ever re-appearing, that “the laborer who has received some sort of instruction is but the more diligent and the more skillful by reason of it”?
399. The Normal School.—We shall not dwell upon the methods and schemes of study proposed by Rolland. Save very urgent recommendations relative to the study of the national history and of the French language, we shall find nothing very new in them. What deserve to be pointed out, by way of compensation, are the important innovations which he wished to introduce into the general organization of public instruction.
First there was the idea of a higher normal school, of a seminary for professors. The University had already expressed the wish that such an establishment should be founded. To be convinced how much this pedagogical seminary, conceived as far back as 1763, resembled our actual Normal School, it suffices to note the following details. The establishment was to be governed by professors drawn from the different faculties, according to the different subjects of instruction. The young men received on competitive examination were to be divided into three classes, corresponding to the three grades of admission. Within the establishment they were to take part in a series of discussions, after a given time to submit to the tests for graduation, and finally to be placed in the colleges. Is it not true that there was no important addition to be made to this scheme? Rolland also required that pedagogics have a place among the studies of these future professors, and that definite and systematic instruction be given in this art, so important to the teachers of youth.
Rolland does not stop even there. He provides for inspectors, or visitors, who are to examine all the colleges each year. Finally, he subjects all scholastic establishments to one single authority, to a council of the government, to which he applies the rather odd title, the “Bureau of Correspondence.”
400. Spirit of Centralization.—Whatever opinion may be formed of absolute centralization, which, in our century, has become the law of public instruction, and has caused the disappearance of provincial franchises, it is certain that the parliamentarians of the eighteenth century were the first to conceive it and desire it, if not to realize it. Paris, in Rolland’s plan, becomes the centre of public instruction. The universities distributed through the provinces are co-ordinated and made dependent on that of Paris.
“Is it not desirable,” said Rolland, “that the good taste which everything concurs to produce in the capital, be diffused to the very extremities of the kingdom; that every Frenchman participate in the treasures of knowledge which are there accumulating from day to day; that the young men who have the same country, who are destined to serve the same prince and to fulfill the same functions, receive the same lessons and be imbued with the same maxims; that one part of France be not under the clouds of ignorance while letters shed the purest light in another; in a word, that the time come when a young man educated in a province cannot be distinguished from one who has been trained in the capital?” And he adds that “the only means for attaining an end so desirable is to make Paris the centre of public instruction.”
Besides the gain that will thus accrue to instruction, Rolland sees this other advantage, that, through uniformity in instruction, there will be secured a uniformity in manners and in laws. By means of a uniform education, “the young men of all the provinces will divest themselves of all their prejudices of birth; they will form the same ideas of virtue and justice; they will demand uniform laws, which would have offended their fathers.”
By this means, finally, there will be developed a national spirit, a national character, and a national jurisprudence, “the only means of recreating love of country.” Is it not true that the great magistrates of the close of the eighteenth century deserve also to be counted among the founders of French unity?
401. Turgot (1727-1781).—In his Mémoires to the king (1775), Turgot set forth analogous ideas, and also demanded the formation of a council of public instruction. He made an eloquent plea for the establishment of a civil and national education which should be extended to the country at large.
“Your kingdom, Sir, is of this world. Without opposing any obstacle to the instructions whose object is higher, and which already have their rules and their expounders, I think I can propose to you nothing of more advantage to your people than to cause to be given to all your subjects an instruction which shows them the obligations they owe to society and to your power which protects them, the duties which those obligations impose on them, and the interest which they have in fulfilling those duties for the public good and their own. This moral and social instruction requires books expressly prepared, by competition, and with great care, and a schoolmaster in each parish to teach them to children, along with the art of writing, reading, counting, measuring, and the principles of mechanics.”
“The study of the duty of citizenship ought to be the foundation of all the other studies.”
“There are methods and establishments for training geometricians, physicists, and painters, but there are none for training citizens.”
In a word, La Chalotais, Rolland, Turgot, and some of their contemporaries, were real precursors of the French Revolution in the matter of education. At the date of 1762 the scholastic revolution began, at least so far as secondary instruction is concerned. The Parliaments of that period conceived the plan of the University of the nineteenth century, and prepared for the work of Napoleon I. But they left to the men of the Revolution the honor of being the first to organize primary instruction.
[402. Analytical Summary.—1. This study exhibits the evils brought upon a country by an education controlled and administered by a dominant Church for the attainment of its own ends; and also the efforts of a nation to save itself from imminent disaster by making the State the great public educator.
2. The right of the State to self-preservation is the vindication of its right to control and direct public education. The State thus becomes the patron of the public school; the product it requires is good citizenship; and for the sake of securing this product the State endows the school, wholly or in part.
3. The situation in France, as described in this study, is an aggravated case of what may occur whenever education is administered by a class having special interests and ambitions; and under some form there must be the intervention of the State as a means of protecting its own interests.
4. When education is administered in the main by the literary class, there is some danger that the instruction may not be that which is best adapted to the needs of other classes.]