The History of Pedagogy

by Gabriel Compayré

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.