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.”