[253] Essai sur l’instruction des femmes. Tours, 1841.
[254] The first edition is dated 1834. The ninth was published in 1873.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EDUCATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
THE PEDAGOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY; VOTES OF THE COUNCILS-GENERAL (1801); FOURCROY AND THE LAW OF 1802; FOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY (1806); ORGANIZATION OF THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY; INTENTIONS OF THE DYNASTY; PRIMARY INSTRUCTION NEGLECTED; ORIGIN OF MUTUAL INSTRUCTION; BELL AND LANCASTER; SUCCESS OF MUTUAL INSTRUCTION IN FRANCE; MORAL ADVANTAGES; ECONOMICAL ADVANTAGES; ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS ON THE MUTUAL SYSTEM; VICES OF THIS SYSTEM; STATE OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION; GUIZOT AND THE LAW OF 1833; HIGHER PRIMARY SCHOOLS; CIRCULAR OF GUIZOT; PROGRESS IN POPULAR INSTRUCTION; PROGRAMMES OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION; THE THEORISTS OF EDUCATION; JACOTOT (1770-1840); THE PARADOXES OF JACOTOT; ALL IS IN ALL; THE SAINT-SIMONIANS AND THE PHALANSTERIANS; FOURIER (1772-1837); AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857) AND THE POSITIVISTS; DUPANLOUP (1802-1878); ANALYSIS OF THE TREATISE ON EDUCATION; ERRORS AND PREJUDICES; THE SPIRITUALISTIC SCHOOL AND THE UNIVERSITY MEN; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
597. The Pedagogy of the Nineteenth Century.—An effort more and more marked to organize education in accordance with the data of psychology and on a scientific basis, and to co-ordinate pedagogical methods in accordance with a rational plan; a manifest tendency to take the control of education from the hands of the Church in order to restore it to the State and to lay society; a larger part accorded the family in the management of children; a faith more and more sanguine in the efficacy of instruction, and an ever-growing purpose to have every member of the human family participate in its benefits,—such are some of the characteristics of the pedagogy of the nineteenth century. Education tends more and more to become a social problem; it is to be an affair of universal interest. It is no longer to be merely a question of regulating select studies for the use of a few who are the favorites of birth and fortune; but science must be placed within the reach of all, and through the simplification of methods and the universal distribution of knowledge, it must be adapted to the democratic spirit of the new society.
We have no intention to follow in this place, in all its details, and in the diversity of its currents, this educational movement of a century which has not yet said its last word; but we must limit ourselves to calling attention to the points which seem to us essential.
598. Laws of the Councils-General of 1801.—Notwithstanding the efforts of the Revolution, public instruction in France, during the first part of the nineteenth century, was far from being flourishing. There was urgent need of introducing reforms. The Councils-General were summoned in 1801 to give their advice on the organization of studies. That which is very noticeable in the State papers of the Councils-General of 1801, is that the departmental assemblies agree in demanding the establishment of a National University. The Councils-General complain that the professors, being no longer united by the ties of solidarity, as were the members of the religious teaching congregations of the old régime, march at random, without unity, without concerted direction. They solicit, then, a uniform organization of instruction. They even conceive the idea of an official instruction administered exclusively by the State.