6393 ([return])
[ Law of June 16, 1881 (on gratuitous education).]
6394 ([return])
[ Law of March 28, 1882 (on obligatory education).]
6395 ([return])
[ National temperament must here be taken into consideration as well as social outlets. Instruction out of proportion with and superior to condition works differently with different nations. For the German adult it is rather soothing and a derivative; with the adult Frenchman it is especially an irritant or even an explosive.]
6396 ([return])
[ It might be interesting to note what Mark Twain wrote on India education about the same period when Taine wrote this text: "apparently, then, the colleges of India were doing what our high schools have long been doing—richly over-supplying the market for highly educated service; and thereby doing a damage to the scholar, and through him to the country. At home I once made a speech deploring the injuries inflicted by the High School in making handicrafts distasteful to boys who would have been willing to make a living at trades and agriculture if they had but had the good luck to stop with the common school. But I made no converts. Not one, in a community overrun with educated idlers who were above following their fathers' mechanical trades, yet could find no market for their book-knowledge.">[
6397 ([return])
[ Among the pupils who receive this primary instruction the most intelligent, who study hardest, push on and pass an examination by which they obtain the certificate that qualifies them for elementary teaching. The consequences are as follows. Comparative table of annual vacancies in the various services of the prefecture of the Seine and of the candidates registered for these places. ("Débats," Sep. 16, 1890:) Vacancies for teachers, 42; number of registered candidates, 1,847. Vacancies for female teachers, 54; number of candidates, 7,139.—7,085 of these young women, educated and with certificates, and who cannot get these places, must be content to marry some workman, or become housemaids, and are tempted to become lorettes. (From the church of Notre Dame de Lorette in Paris in the neighborhood of which many young, pretty women of easy virtue were to be found. (SR.))]