The American in Paris; vol. 2 of 2

by John Sanderson

Here are two sheets of large post, which I must try to fill with this subject. I say try, because I write in obedience to your orders, and in total defiance of inclination. This will be the only letter I have written since I came here, to any of your bearded sex, and I feel already very grave and dull. Not that I think ladies more frivolous than men, or men more stupid than ladies, but it is my humour. I can write to my lady acquaintance without thinking, which I esteem a special favour, during my residence in Paris.—They do not expect me to be wise, and what extravagant notions you may have on this subject I don’t know.—If I write you nothing but what you know already, it will not be my fault, for I am unacquainted with the extent of your information, and you have not been specific in your inquiries.

The authority which presides over the Public Instruction in France, is personified under the term “University,” at the head of which is a minister, who has a salary of twenty thousand dollars, and a rank with the other ministers. A “Central Board” of nine members, has a general superintendence of the studies, and expense of the establishments. The divisions of the kingdom for the “Royal Courts,” are the school districts, which are called Academies; these have each a “Governor,” representing the minister, and an “Academical Board,” the Central Board at Paris; and each has its establishments, which are the Faculties, the Royal and Communal Colleges, Primary Schools, and Private Institutions. The Instruction is Superior, Secondary, and Primary.

The “Faculties” teach theology, law, medicine, science, and letters. They confer degrees of Bachelor, Licentiate, and Doctor; and are thirty-five in number. Three are Medical Faculties, at Paris, Montpelier and Strasburg; eight are Theological; of the Catholic Religion, six; of the Protestant, two; and nine are Faculties of Law. There are thirty Royal, three hundred and twenty Communal; and two Private Colleges; one hundred and twenty Private Institutions, or Boarding Schools, and one thousand and twenty-five Select Private Schools. The studies of these are Philosophy, Natural History, Elementary Mathematics, Latin, Greek, and modern languages.

The Primary Schools embrace only reading, arithmetic, and writing: and the “Primary Superior” add history, geography, elements of chemistry, and surveying. Their number is about fifty thousand.

At Paris there is a “Normal School,” for the education of Professors; and throughout the kingdom about sixty for masters of the Primary Schools.

The minister is appointed by the king, and the other officers directly, or indirectly by him. There are thirty General Inspectors, two for each academy or district. The “Proviseurs” have a care of the household and conduct of the students, and “Censors” superintend studies. Teachers are selected at a distance from their own departments, so that no local interests may grow up against the great central authority. Private institutions are forbidden to teach any thing else than grammar, elements of arithmetic, and geometry. Reports from the Academical Boards are examined twice a-week by the Central Board of the University, and the University presents a report every two years, to the Chamber of Deputies.

Education in France is a universal and uninfringible monopoly, and has the benefits and evils of such systems. The Central Board establishes uniformity in books, and instruction; it decides whether you are to teach your son pot-hooks, or straight strokes; but it impedes also improvement in the school-books, and processes of teaching; it selects competent instructors, but it represses the exercise of ingenuity by prescribing their duties; it cuts up the Lancasters, the Fellenbergs, and Pestalozzis by the roots. I say nothing of the independence of mind, without which there is neither genius, nor virtue, which is repressed by so absolute an authority. It suppresses also imposture in the teachers, but it destroys, too, the spirit of competition which imparts life and vigour to all human employments. It does not suppress the jobbing which arises out of all government projects, or intrigue, or favouritism in the appointment of its officers.

This is the system lately engrafted upon the great Prussian plan, which it is the fashion to praise so much about in the world. Time will perhaps reveal its merits; but this is by no means certain. There are other causes at work for the diffusion of knowledge amongst the people, and it is so easy to ascribe the merit to the Prussians; besides, it is not likely that, once used to receive instruction from their magistrates, as it were, for nothing, the people should consent to educate themselves at their own cost; or that, seeing for a long time effects produced by a certain machinery, especially so remote from their causes, they should conceive them producible by any other.

I have looked at the working of this plan in Paris and several of the neighbouring towns, and am sorry that I cannot share in the flattering hopes entertained of its results. Burke lays it down as “one of the finest problems of legislation” to know “what the state ought to undertake to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual discretion.” “All governments,” he observes, “fall into the error of legislating too much.” I have no good hopes of any system of education under the management of a government.

Nothing is so badly managed as a government itself all over the world; and to have as little as possible of it seems to me the perfection of social economy. The rich and middling classes will take care of their own children always, and no one, I presume, will say that they will not do it better under the impulse of parental feeling than they who act only from delegated authority. Why do we not put the cultivation of the earth under the management of a company? A parent, being able, feels as strong a necessity to educate his son as to cultivate his field. To the parent only, who is destitute, and to whom there is but the alternative of a bad system or none; to him only whose instincts are frozen by necessity, should the sceptre of legislation be extended—extended as medicine to the health, with prudence, and only when the native vigour is irrecoverable by the natural stimulus. You cannot by any human device prevent the division of the poor and rich into different schools; they do not attempt it even in arbitrary Prussia. And it is better the government, with its broad shoulders, than individuals, should make the distinction.