On this school world in the way of formation, Napoleon has riveted his uniformity, the rigorous apparatus of his university, his unique system, narrow, inflexible, applied from above. We have seen with what restrictions, with what insistence, with what convergence of means, what prohibitions, what taxes, what application of the university monopoly, and with what systematic hostility to private establishments!—In the towns, and by force, they become branches of the lycée and imitate its classes; in this way Sainte-Barbe is allowed to subsist at Paris and, until the abolition of the monopoly, the principal establishments of Paris, Massin, Jauffrey, Bellaguet, existed only on this condition, that of becoming auxiliaries, subordinates and innkeepers for lycée day-scholars; such is still the case to-day for the lycées Bossuet and Gerson. In the way of education and instruction the little that an institution thus reduced can preserve of originality and of pedagogic virtue is of no account.—In the country, the Oratoriens who have repurchased Juilly are obliged,[6339] in order to establish a free and durable school of "Christian and national education," to turn aside the civil law which interdicts trusts and organize themselves into a "Tontine Society" and thus present their disinterested enterprise in the light of an industrial and commercial speculation, that of a lucrative and well-attended boarding school. Still at the present day similar fictions have to be resorted to for the establishment and duration of like enterprises.[6340]
Naturally, under this prohibitive régime, private establishments are born with difficulty; and afterwards, absorbed, mutilated and strangled, they find no less difficulty in keeping alive and thus degenerate, decline and succumb one by one. And yet, in 1815, not counting the 41 small seminaries with their 5000 scholars, there still remained 1,225 private schools, with 39,000 scholars, confronting the 36 lycées and 368 communal colleges which, together, had only 37,000 scholars. Of these 1,255 private schools there are only 825 in 1854, 622 in 1865, 494 in 1876, and, finally, in 1887, 302 with 20,174 scholars; on the other hand, the State establishments have 89,000 schools, and those of the Church amount to 73,000. It is only after 1850 that the decadence of secular and private institutions is precipitated; in effect, instead of one competitor, they have two, the second as formidable as the first one, both enjoying unlimited credit, possessors of immense capital and determined to spend money without calculation, the State, on one side abstracting millions from the pockets of the taxpayers and, on the other side, the Church deriving its millions from the purses of the faithful: the struggle between isolated individuals and these two great organized powers who give instruction at a discount or gratis is too unequal.[6341]
Such is the actual and final effect of the first Napoleonic monopoly: the enterprise of the State has, by a counter-stroke, incited the enterprise of the clergy; both now complete the ruin of the others, private, different in kind and independent, which, supported wholly by family approbation, have no other object in view than to render families content. On the contrary, along with this purpose, the two survivors have another object, each its own, a superior and doctrinal object, due to its own particular interest and antagonism to the opposite interest; it is in view of this object, in view of a political or religious purpose, that each in its own domicile directs education and instruction like Napoleon, each inculcates on, or insinuates into, young minds its social and moral opinions which are clear-cut and become cutting. Now, the majority of parents, who prefer peace to war, desire that their children should entertain moderate and not bellicose opinions. They would like to see them respectful and intelligent, and nothing more. But neither of the two rival institutions thus limits itself; each works beyond and aside,[6342] and when the father, at the end of July,[6343] goes for his son at the ecclesiastical college or secular institution, he risks finding in the young man of seventeen the militant prejudices, the hasty and violent conclusions and the uncompromising rigidity of either a "laïcisant" or a "clérical."
III. Internal Vices
The internal vices of the system.—Barrack or convent
discipline of the boarding-school.—Number and proportions
of scholars in State and Church establishments.—Starting
point of the French boarding-school.—The school community
viewed not as a distinct organ of the State but as a
mechanism wielded by the State.—Effects of these two
conceptions.—Why the boarding-school entered into and
strengthened ecclesiastical establishments.—Effects of the
boarding-school on the young man.—Gaps in his experience,
errors of judgment, no education of his will.—The evil
aggravated by the French system of special and higher
schools.
Meanwhile, the innate vices of the primitive system have lasted and, and, among others, the worst of all, the internat[6344] under the discipline of barracks or convent, while the university, through its priority and supremacy, in contact with or contiguously, has communicated this discipline at first to its subordinates, and afterward to its rivals.—In 1887,[6345] in the State lycées and colleges, there are more than 39,000 boarding-schools (internes) while, in the ecclesiastic establishments, it is worse: out of 50,000 pupils there, over 27,000 are internes, to which must be added the 23,000 pupils of the small seminaries, properly so called, nearly all of them boarders; in a total of 163,000 pupils we find 89,000 internes.[6346] Thus, to secure secondary instruction, more than one-half of the youth of France undergo the internat, ecclesiastic or secular. This is peculiar to France, and is due to the way in which Napoleon, in 1806, seized on and perverted all school enterprises.[6347]
Before 1789, in France, this enterprise, although largely trammeled and impeded by the State and the Church, was not violated in principle nor perverted in essence; still at the present day, in Germany, in England, in the United States, it exists and is developed in accordance with its nature. It is admitted to be a private enterprise,[6348] the collective and spontaneous work of several associates voluntarily bound together, old founders, actual and future benefactors, masters and parents and even scholars,[6349] each in his place and function, under a statute and according to tradition, in such a way as to continue functioning indefinitely, in order to provide, like a gas company on its own responsibility, at its own risk and expense, a provider of services for those who want it; in other terms, the school enterprise must, like any other undertaking, render acceptable what it offers thereby satisfying the needs of its clients.—Naturally, it adapts itself to these needs; its directors and those concerned do what is necessary. With hands free, and grouped around an important interest evidently for a common purpose, mutually bound and veritable associates not only legally but in feeling, devoted to a local enterprise and local residents for many years, often even for life, they strive not to offend the profound repugnance of the young and of families. They therefore make the necessary arrangements internally and with the parents.[6350]
That is why, outside of France, the French internat, so artificial, so forced, so exaggerated, is almost unknown. In Germany, out of one hundred pupils in the gymnases, which correspond to our lycées, there are scarcely ten boarders lodged and fed in the gymnase; the rest, even when their parents do not live near by, remain day-scholars, private guests in the families that harbor them, often at a very low price and which take the place of the absent family. No boarders are found in them except in a few gymnases like Pforta and by virtue of an ancient endowment. The number, however, by virtue of the same endowment, is limited; they dine, in groups of eight or ten,[6351] at the same table with the professors lodged like themselves in the establishment, while they enjoy for a playground a vast domain of woods, fields and meadow.—The same in England, at Harrow, Eton and Rugby. Each professor, here, is keeper of a boarding-house; he has ten, twenty and thirty boys under his roof, eating at his table or at a table the head of which is some lady of the house. Thus, the youth goes from the family into the school, without painful or sudden contrast, and remains under a system of things which suits his age and which is a continuation, only enlarged, of domestic life.[6352]
The French college or lycée is quite the opposite. It operates against the true spirit of the school, and has done so for eighty years being an enterprise of the State, a local extension of a central enterprise, one of the hundred branches of the great State university trunk, possessing no roots of its own and with a directing or teaching staff composed of functionaries similar to others, that is to say transferable,[6353] restless and preoccupied with promotion, their principal motive for doing well being the hope of a higher rank and of getting a better situation. This almost separate them in advance from the establishment in which they labor and,[6354] besides that, they are led, pushed on, and restrained from above, each in his own particular sphere and in his limited duty. The principal (proviseur) is confined to his administrative position and the professor to his class, expressly forbidden to leave it. No professor is "under any pretext to receive in his house as boarders or day-scholars more than ten pupils."[6355] No woman is allowed to lodge inside the lycée or college walls, all,—proviseur, censor, cashier, chaplain, head-masters and assistants, fitted by art or force to each other like cog-wheels, with no deep sympathy, with no moral tie, without collective interests, a cleverly designed machine which, in general, works accurately and smoothly, but with no soul because, to have a soul, it is of prime necessity to have a living body. As a machine constructed at Paris according to a unique pattern and superposed on people and things from Perpignan to Douai and from Rochelle to Besançon, it does not adapt itself to the requirements of the public; it subjects its public to the exigencies, rigidity and uniformity of its play and structure. Now, as it acts mechanically only, through outward pressure, the human material on which it operates must be passive, composed, not of diverse persons, but of units all alike; its pupils must be for it merely numbers and names.—Owing to this our internats, those huge stone boxes set up and isolated in each large town, those lycées parceled out to hold three hundred, four hundred, even eight hundred boarders, with immense dormitories, refectories and playgrounds, recitation-rooms full to overflowing, and, for eight or ten years, for one half of our children and youths, an anti-social unnatural system apart, strict confinement, no going out except to march in couples under the eyes of a sub-teacher who maintains order in the ranks, promiscuity and life in common, exact and minute regularity under equal discipline and constant constraint in order to eat, sleep, study, play, promenade and the rest,—in short, COMMUNISM.