[CHAPTER XVI.]
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.—MIRABEAU, TALLEYRAND, CONDORCET.
CONTRADICTORY JUDGMENTS ON THE WORK OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION; GENERAL CHARACTER OF THAT WORK; THE STATE OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION; WHAT WAS TAUGHT IN THE SCHOOLS; DISCIPLINE; THE SITUATION OF TEACHERS; THE RECRUITMENT OF TEACHERS; WHAT THE SCHOOL ITSELF WAS; THE PECULIAR WORK OF THE REVOLUTION; THE CAHIERS OF 1789; MIRABEAU (1749-1791) AND HIS TRAVAIL SUR L’INSTRUCTION PUBLIQUE; DANGERS OF IGNORANCE; LIBERTY OF TEACHING; THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AND THE RAPPORT OF TALLEYRAND; TALLEYRAND (1758-1838); POLITICAL PRINCIPLES OF UNIVERSAL INSTRUCTION; FOUR GRADES OF INSTRUCTION; POLITICAL CATECHISM; INDEPENDENT MORALITY; THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY AND THE RAPPORT OF CONDORCET; CONDORCET (1743-1794); GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON EDUCATION; INSTRUCTION AND MORALITY; INSTRUCTION AND PROGRESS; LIBERALITY OF CONDORCET; FIVE GRADES OF INSTRUCTION; PURPOSE AND PROGRAMME OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION; IDEA OF COURSES FOR ADULTS; THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN; PREJUDICES; FINAL JUDGMENT; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
404. Contradictory Judgments on the Work of the Revolution.—An historian of education in France, Théry, opens his chapter on the Revolution with these contemptuous words, “One does not study a void, one does not analyze a negation.”[198] A more recent historian of public instruction during the Revolution, Albert Duruy, arriving at the work of Condorcet, certainly the most important undertaking of the pedagogy of the Revolution, does not hesitate to record this absolute and summary judgment: “We are now no longer in the real and in the possible; we are travelling in the land of chimeras; we are soaring in space at heights which admit of only ideal attainment.”[199]
How easy it is to say this! To believe these facile judges, one who would estimate the efforts of the Revolution in the matter of public instruction would have to choose between a nothing and a chimera. The men of the Revolution have done nothing, say some; they are dreamers and idealists, say others.
These assertions do not bear examination. For every impartial observer it is certain that the Revolution opened a new era in education, and the proof of this is to be found in the very documents that our opponents so triflingly condemn, and the practical spirit of which they misconceive.
405. General Character of that Work.—It is not that the men of the Revolution were educators in the strict sense of the term. The science of education is not indebted to them for new methods. They have not completed the work of Locke, of Rousseau, and of La Chalotais; but they were the first to attempt a legislative organization of a vast system of public instruction. It is just to place them in the front rank of the men who might be called “the politicians of education.” Doubtless they lacked time for applying their ideas, but they had at least the merit of having conceived these ideas, and of having embodied them in legislative acts. The principles which we proclaim to-day, they formulated. The solutions which we attempt to put in practice after a century of waiting, were decreed by them. The reader who will follow the long series of reports and decrees which constitutes the pedagogical work of the Revolution will have witnessed the genesis of popular instruction in France.
406. The State of Primary Instruction.—In order to form a proper appreciation of the merits of the men of the Revolution, it is first necessary to consider in what a deplorable state they found primary instruction. What a contrast between that which they hoped to do and the actual situation in 1789! I very well know that fancy sketches have been drawn of the old régime. A very showy enumeration has been made of the number of colleges; but we have not been told how many of these colleges had no professors, and how many had no pupils. And so of the schools; they are found everywhere, but it remains to be shown what was taught in them, and whether anything was taught in them.[200]