[202] Doléances presented to the States-General by the teachers of the smaller cities, hamlets, and villages of Bourgogne.
[203] A. Duruy, op. cit., p. 10.
[204] See the Dictionnaire de Pédagogie, Article France.
[205] What is meant by “liberty of teaching” will be better understood from the following quotations from the Dictionnaire de Pédagogie, Première Partie, p. 1575 et seq.:—
“Liberty of teaching, in a country which has proclaimed obligatory instruction, is the equal right of all to give that instruction, or the prohibition of every monopoly which would put that instruction into the hands either of privileged individuals, or of corporations, or even of the State, to the exclusion of every other teaching body.”
“Under the old régime, the education of the masses was committed to the hands of the Church; the colleges, directed by a body of men who were all ecclesiastics, gave ‘a vain pretence of an education, where the memory alone was exercised, and where the reason was insulted in the forms of reasoning.’”
“The purpose of the men of the Revolution was, then, above all else, to emancipate science, and to guarantee the right of free inquiry; and while rescuing instruction from the tyranny of the Church, to assure to citizens in general the opportunity to acquire the knowledge that is essential to man. On the one hand, they would take precautions against the abuse of power by a government which had always shown itself hostile to free thought ...; on the other, in opposition to the old doctrine which condemned the people to ignorance, they proclaimed the duty of the State to create a system of public instruction, common to all citizens.”
“It is at this point of view that we must place ourselves in order to gain a correct notion of the plans that were submitted to the Constituent Convention and the Legislative Assembly. What Talleyrand and Condorcet desired was, first, to organize, under the form of a public service, a system of national education in which all might participate; and in the second place, to take precautions against the Church and the royal authority, and so prevent despotic power from attempting to prevent the development of new truths and the teaching of theories which it judged contrary to its policy and interests. For them, liberty of teaching is the demand of philosophic liberty against ecclesiastical and secular authority.” (P.)
[206] Public instruction as now organized in France is of three grades, as follows:—
“Primary instruction, which gives the elements of knowledge, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Secondary instruction, embracing the study of the ancient languages, of rhetoric, and the first elements of the mathematical and physical sciences, and of philosophy. This is given in the lycées and colleges, as well as in the smaller seminaries. Superior instruction, designed to teach in all their completeness letters, the languages, the sciences, and philosophy. This is given in the Faculties, in the College of France, and in the larger seminaries.”—Littré. (P.)