Other superior schools were represented in adequate manner through the aggregate exhibits. That at Onzain showed a few peculiarities of the rural type.
Superior primary schools for girls only showed a few specimens of several collections of work. The department of technical education, as represented by practical, industrial, and commercial schools, gave a fair idea of what is done in France in that branch.
The aggregate display gave a fair idea of what is going on in France in the normal schools, where teachers of both sexes are being prepared for their work.
Attention was particularly directed to manual work, especially to the scientific training that the girls of the normal school receive on leaving school.
A show case in one of the compartments contained a complete collection of documents relating to primary education in France. Several displays of that kind were attached to the walls, such as the six graphical tables made by Levasseur, which are summaries of statistical documents.
The Museum of Pedagogy had collected in similar summary form the most important results obtained for the past twelve years in the work done in promoting special work as a complement to school education.
Enlarged photographs representing scenes of school life were placed practically everywhere throughout the exhibit of French primary schools. They were prepared by the school administration as a reproduction, on a smaller scale, of the exhibit which proved such a success at the Paris Exhibition Fair in 1900.
The exhibit of higher education included displays from universities and scientific institutions, the leading ones being the College of France, the Museum of Natural History, the Practical of Highest Studies, the School of Charters, the School of Living Oriental Languages.
An inquiry was instituted in 1883 in academic councils and faculties in reference to drafting a plan for the constitution of universities that should administer and manage themselves under the supervision of the State.
Many had been impressed with the inconvenience caused by a lack of cohesion in the work. Attention was called to those many common interests of which the faculties should have been the guardian, but of which they could not take care on account of their isolation. Inquiry, begun in 1883, made the necessity of a reform obvious. It ended in the rendering of the decrees of July 25 and December 28, 1885. These decrees may be divided into two distinct parts—one covering the interior life of faculties, the other providing for a grouping of faculties established in each academic center and the general council of faculties to be the representative organ and executive power of the new faculty life created.