CHILDREN OF PARIS IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.
"Every one knows our dreadful college," writes M. Demolins, "with its much too long classes and studies, its recreations far too short and without exercise, its prison walks a monotonous going and coming between high heart-breaking walls, and then every Sunday and Thursday the military promenade in rank, the exercise of old men, not of youth."
The boarder at the lycée, of course, feels the harshness of the régime to a degree that the day-boy never experiences, home hours mitigating the severity of the long working day.
As a whole, it may be said that the ideal of the educational system has been intellectuality rather than that of character building, and in the former France is superior to England, the system producing a higher average of intellectual capacity. If both countries could take to themselves the strong features that each possesses it would be very materially to their advantage. Changes in the right direction are already taking place in France. It is quite probable that the pion will be suppressed before long, and cricket, football, and other manly and health-giving games are beginning to take the place of the old man's stroll under supervision. The fact that the Boy Scout is appearing all over France seems to herald the dawn of a growing sturdiness and manliness in the youth of the nation. At the present day the average boy has an undoubtedly girlish softness in his dress and general appearance. He wears sailor suits at an age which would produce laughter amongst Anglo-Saxon boys. He appears in white socks for several years longer than the English boy would tolerate, and his thinly-soled boots suggest the promenade rather than any form of strenuous game. His clothes do not appear to have been made for any hard wear, and as a rule the knickerbockers of soft thin grey material so generally to be seen are unfit for any rough use whatever. Even the large black leather portfolios in which books and papers are carried to and from school seem to receive as careful handling as though they belonged to a Government official rather than that most destructive of creatures—the schoolboy. In England one is familiar with the sight of four or five books dangling at the end of the strap which secures them, enabling the owner to convert his home-work into a handy weapon of offence, but the soft leather case of French boys and girls, which must be carefully carried under one arm, offers no such fascinating by-purpose.
If parents keep their boys in socks for a longer period than seems rational to the Anglo-Saxon, they frequently go farther with their girls, who often enough may be seen with bare legs until they are nearly as tall as their mothers.
Very much stress is laid on the examinations, which commence at the age of fifteen or sixteen, when the lycée and college training terminates. The system since 1902 has consisted of a period of seven years divided into two parts. At the expiry of the first, which consists of four years, the pupil can choose one of four courses. The first is Latin and Greek, the second Latin and sciences, the third Latin and modern languages, and the fourth sciences and modern languages. Having passed three years on one of these courses, he should be ready for the two examinations by which he can obtain the degree known as the Baccalauréat de l'enseignement. This is the outer gateway to be passed through before the scholar can enter the citadels of any of the great professions, such as law, letters, medicine, or Protestant theology.
The State provides the higher education in its universities and in its specialised higher schools, and since 1875 private individuals and bodies, so long as they are not clerical, have been permitted to take part in the advanced educational work of the country, but the State faculties alone have the power to confer degrees. The five classes of faculties associated with the various universities confer degrees in law, science, medicine, letters, and Protestant theology.
