On this point her thought was the same as that of Miss Edgeworth, whose father, in 1799, in the Irish Parliament, had caused the adoption of the first law on primary instruction.
569. Madame Campan (1752-1822).—Twenty-five years’ experience, either at the court of Louis XV., or in the school at Saint-Germain, which she founded under the Revolution, or finally in the institution at Écouen, the direction of which was entrusted to her by Napoleon I., in 1807,—such are the claims which at once assure to Madame Campan some authority on pedagogical questions.[242] Let us add that good sense, a methodical and prudent mind,—in a word, qualities which were reasonable rather than brilliant,—directed that long personal experience.
“First I saw,” she said, “then I reflected, and finally I wrote.”
570. Eulogy on Home Education.—From a teacher, from the directress of a school, we would expect prejudices in favor of public education in boarding-schools. That which secures our ready confidence, is that Madame Campan, on the contrary, appreciates better than any one else the advantages of maternal education:—
“To create mothers,” she said, “this is the whole education of women.” Nothing seems to her superior to a mother governess “who does not keep late hours, who rises betimes,” who, finally, devotes herself resolutely to the important duty with which she is charged.
“There is no boarding-school, however well it may be conducted, there is no convent, however pious its government may be, which can give an education comparable to that which a young girl receives from a mother who is educated, and who finds her sweetest occupation and her true glory in the education of her daughter.”
Madame Campan, moreover, reminds mothers who would be the teachers of their own daughters, of all the obligations which are involved in such a charge. Too often the mother who jealously keeps her daughter near her, is not capable of educating her. In this case there is only the appearance of home education, and as Madame Campan wittily says, “this is no longer maternal education; it is but education at home.”
571. Progress in Instruction.—Fénelon was Madame Campan’s favorite author. On the other hand, there was some resemblance between the rules of the school at Écouen and those of Saint Cyr. The spirit of the seventeenth century lives again in the educational institutions of the nineteenth, and Madame Campan continues the work of Madame de Maintenon.
However, there is progress in more than one respect, and the instruction is more solid and more complete.