272. Conclusion.—We shall not dwell on the other precepts of Rollin. The text must be consulted for his reflections on plays, recreations, the means of making study attractive, and on the necessity of appealing to the child’s reason betimes, and of explaining to him why one does this or that. In this last part of the Treatise on Studies there is a complete infant psychology which is lacking neither in keenness nor in penetration. In particular, there is a code of moral discipline which cannot be too highly commended to educators, and to all those who desire, in the words of Rollin, “to train at once the heart and the mind” of the young. Rollin has worked for virtue even more than for science. His works are less literary productions than works on morals, and the author himself is the perfect expression of what can be done for the education of the young by the Christian spirit allied to the university spirit.
[273. Analytical Summary.—1. The characteristic fact disclosed by this study is the very slow rate at which progress in education takes place. There is also an enforcement of the lesson which has reappeared from time to time, that education follows in the wake of new and general movements in human thought.
2. A more specific fact is the extreme conservatism of universities, or the tenacity with which they hold to traditions. The question is suggested whether, after all, the conservative habit of the university does not best befit its judicial functions.
3. In the elbowing of the classics by history and French, we see the rise of innovations which have become embodied in the modern university.
4. A new factor in the higher education is the intervention of the State, as opposed to the historical domination of the Church. In the reform of the University of Paris the State became an educator.
5. There is evidence of some progress in the historical struggle towards the conception that woman has equal rights with man in the benefits of education.]
FOOTNOTES:
[151] “Formerly secondary schools were schools in which was given a more advanced instruction then in the primary schools; and they were distinguished into communal secondary schools, or communal colleges, and into private secondary schools or institutions.... To-day, secondary instruction includes the colleges and lycées in which are taught the ancient languages, modern languages, history, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and philosophy. Public instruction is divided into primary, secondary, and superior instruction.”—Littré.
[152] This refers to the University of Paris, which must be distinguished from the Napoleonic University. “The latter was founded by a decree of Napoleon I., March 17, 1808. It was first called the Imperial University, and then the University of France. It comprises: 1. The faculties;[153] 2. the lycées or colleges of the State; 3. the communal colleges; 4. the primary schools. All these are under the direction of a central administration.”—Littré.
[153] There are now five Faculties or institutions for special instruction,—the Faculties of the Sciences, of Letters, of Medicine, of Law, and of Theology. (P.)