[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.