465. The Bouquier Law (Dec. 19, 1793).—Bouquier was a man of letters, deputy from Dordogne, and belonged to the Jacobinic party. He spoke of his bill as follows:—
“It is a simple and natural scheme, and one easy to execute; a plan which forever proscribes all idea of an academic body, of a scientific society, of an educational hierarchy; a plan, finally, whose bases are the same as those of the constitution, liberty, equality, and simplicity.”
The Bouquier bill was adopted December 19, and remained in force till it was superseded by the Lakanal law.
These are its principal provisions:—
“The right to teach is open to all.” “Citizens, men and women, who would use the liberty to teach, shall be required to produce a certificate of citizenship and good morals, and to fulfill certain formalities.” “They shall be designated as instituteurs and institutrices.” They shall be placed “under the immediate supervision of the municipality, of parents, and of all the citizens.” “They are forbidden to teach anything contrary to the laws and to republican morality.” On the other hand, parents are required to send their children to the primary schools. Parents who do not obey this order are sentenced, for the first offence, to pay a fine equal to a fourth of their school tax. In case of a second offence, the fine is to be doubled and the children to be suspended for ten years from their rights as citizens. Finally, young people who, on leaving the primary schools, “do not busy themselves with the cultivation of the soil, shall be required to learn a trade useful to society.”
Enforced school attendance, and what is an entirely different thing, the obligation of citizens to work, were thus established by the Bouquier law.
Let us add that the author of this bill, which, like so many others, was not executed, had strange notions on the sciences and on instruction.
“The speculative sciences,” he says, “detach from society the individuals who cultivate them.... Free nations have no need of speculative scholars, whose minds are constantly travelling over desert paths.”
Hence, no scientific instruction. The real schools, “the noblest, the most useful, the most simple, are the meetings of committees. The Revolution, in establishing national holidays, in creating popular associations and clubs, has placed in all quarters inexhaustible sources of instruction. Then let us not go and substitute for this organization, as simple and sublime as the people that creates it, an artificial organization, based on academic statutes which should no longer infect a regenerated nation.”