The History of Pedagogy

by Gabriel Compayré

Party writers who are bound to gainsay the work of the French Revolution in the matter of education, generally put under contribution, to serve their political prejudices, the old communal archives. They cite imaginary statistics which prove, for example, that in the diocese of Rouen, in 1718, there were 855 schools for boys, and 306 schools for girls, for a territory of 1159 parishes.

It is first necessary to verify these statistics, whose accuracy has not been demonstrated, and whose figures were evidently obtained only by counting a school wherever the rector of the parish gave lessons in reading and in the catechism to three or four children.

But there are other replies to make to the traducers of the Revolution who tax their ingenuity to prove that instruction was flourishing under the old régime, and that the Revolution destroyed more than it created. With this assumed efflorescence of schools of which we hear, it is necessary to contrast the results as shown by authentic statistics of the number of illiterates. In 1790 there was 53 per cent of men and 73 per cent of women who could not sign their names to their marriage contracts.

Besides, we must inquire what was taught in these pretended schools, how many children attended them, and what was the material and moral condition of the teachers who directed them.

407. What was taught in the Schools.—Instruction was reduced to the catechism, to reading and writing. On this point there can be no dispute. The official programme of the Brethren of the Christian Schools did not go beyond this. The ordinance of Louis XIV., dated in 1698, has been pompously quoted.

“We would have appointed,” it is there said, “as far as it shall be possible, masters and mistresses in all the parishes where there are none, to instruct all children, and in particular those whose parents have made profession of the pretended reformed religion, in the catechism and the prayers which are necessary; to take them to mass on every work day; and also to teach reading and writing to those who will need this knowledge.”

But does not this very text support those who maintain that the Monarchy and the Church have never encouraged primary instruction except as required by the necessities of the struggle against heresy, and that primary instruction under the old régime was scarcely more than an instrument of religious domination?

Most often the school was simply a place to which parents sent their children for temporary care. Writing was not always taught in it. A school-mistress of Haute-Marne was forbidden to teach writing “for fear her pupils might employ their knowledge in writing love-letters.”

408. Discipline.—Corporal punishments were more than ever the order of the day. The bishop of Montpellier, at the end of the seventeenth century, forbids, it is true, beating with sticks, kicks, and raps on the head; but he authorizes the ferule and the rod, on the condition that the patient be not completely exposed.

409. Condition of the Teachers.—That which is graver still is that the teachers themselves (I speak of lay teachers, who, it is true, were not numerous) lived in a wretched condition, without material independence and without moral dignity. In general, there were no fixed salaries. Wages varied from 40 to 200 francs, arbitrarily fixed by the vestry-board or by the community, in return for a great number of services the most various and the least exalted. The school-masters were far less teachers than sextons, choristers, beadles, bell-ringers, clock-makers, and even grave-diggers. “Attendance at marriages and at burials was counted at the rate of 15 sols and dinner for marriages, and 20 sols for burials.” And Albert Duruy concludes that in this there were substantial advantages to the school-masters;[201]—advantages dearly bought in every case, and repudiated by those who were interested in them. “The more services we render the community,” said the teachers of Bourgogne in their complaints in 1789, “the more we are degraded.”[202] The school-masters were scarcely more than the domestics of the curé.