“In the primary schools there is taught that which is necessary for each individual in order to direct his own conduct and to enjoy the plenitude of his own rights.”
The programme comprised reading, writing, some notions on grammar, the rules of arithmetic, simple methods of measuring a field and a building with exactness; a simple description of the productions of the country, of the processes in agriculture and the arts; the development of the first moral ideas and the rules for conduct derived from them; finally, such of the principles of social order as can be put within the comprehension of children.
438. The Idea of Courses for Adults.—Condorcet was strongly impressed with the necessity of continuing the instruction of the workman and of the peasant after withdrawal from school:—
“We have observed that instruction ought not to abandon individuals the moment they leave the schools; that it ought to embrace all ages; that there is no period of life when it is not useful and possible to learn, and that this supplementary instruction is so much the more necessary as that of infancy has been contracted to the narrowest limits. Here is one of the principal causes of the ignorance in which the poor classes of society are to-day plunged; they lacked not nearly so much the possibility of receiving an elementary instruction as that of preserving its advantages.”
Consequently, Condorcet proposed, if not courses of instruction for adults, at least something very like them,—weekly lectures, given each Sunday by the village teachers, a kind of lay sermons.
“Each Sunday the teacher shall give a public lecture which citizens of all ages will attend. In this arrangement we have seen a means of giving to young people those necessary parts of knowledge, which, however, did not form a part of their primary education.”
439. Professional and Technical Education.—But Condorcet does not think his duty to the people done when he has given them intellectual emancipation. He is very anxious to give in addition to the sons of peasants or workmen the means of struggling against misery, by diffusing more and more among the masses of the people a technical knowledge of the arts and trades. He deserves to be counted among the adepts in professional instruction and in industrial education. He asks that there be placed in the schools “models of machines or of trades”; and in all grades of instruction, he recommends with a special solicitude the teaching of the practical arts.
We fancy we are doing something new to-day when we establish school museums. “Each school,” says Condorcet, “shall have a small library, and a small cabinet in which shall be placed some meteorological instruments or some specimens of natural history.”
440. The Education of Women.—Condorcet may be regarded as one of the most ardent apostles of the education of women. He wishes education to be common and equal. He is evidently wrong when he dreams of a perfect identity of instruction for the two sexes, when he forgets the particular destination of women, and the special character of their education. But we have found so many educators disposed to depreciate the abilities of woman, that we are happy to find at last one voice that exalts them, even beyond measure.