Education not a Mark of Class in France. Latin a Matter of Business.
Greater Value of English University Degrees.
France, being a more advanced democracy than England, has made greater efforts to bring secondary education within the reach of many, and the consequence is that such education, in that country, having ceased to be a mark of class, confers very little social position. The majority of French boys who learn Latin do it simply as a matter of business, the bachelor’s degree being necessary to every physician and surgeon, to every barrister and notary, and even to every teacher of modern languages in the public schools. There are also examinations to be passed before practising pharmacy as a trade, and for that the examinations are not confined to the special science itself. In England the University degree is not absolutely required for the professions of law and medicine, and therefore it retains more of an ornamental character. It is more of an intellectual distinction and less of a matter of business than in France.
Tendency of Modern French Institutions.
The Bourgeois.
What Education can do in France.
Degrees and Society.
To understand France in this and many other matters we must bear in mind that the whole tendency of modern French institutions is to produce, not what the English call the gentleman, but the middle-class man, or bourgeois, in enormous numbers. He is comfortably clothed, badly lodged, far too well fed, and educated in many studies, but not quite up to the point at which they would begin to be available for the intellectual life. The public schools where he gets this education are both too numerous in themselves and too numerously attended, besides being too cheap, for purposes of social distinction. All that education can do for a lad in France, at any school or college, is to place him in the bourgeoisie, that is to say, in the middle class. It does not, in the least, give him an approach to social equality with the aristocracy. Sons of peasants frequently rise in the bourgeoisie by means of University degrees; but that is not much, and there they stop. There is not any University degree, however elevated, not even the double doctorate, which is recognised by what is called “Society” as conferring any claim whatever to come within its pale.[13]
Choice of School and University in England. Eton and Oxford.
English always wrong about French Lycées.