Six lessons a week are employed in preparation for the bachelorship of science, and in a methodical recapitulation of the courses of the three preceding years according to the state of the pupil’s knowledge.
Two lessons a week are allowed for reviewing the literary instruction; evening lessons in Latin, French, English, and German, and in History and Geography, having been given through the whole previous time.
The Special Mathematics, at eighteen and nineteen years old.
Five lessons a week are devoted to these studies; in the other lessons the pupils join those of the Logic class for reviewing all their previous subjects, whether for the bachelorship in science or for competition for admission at the Ecole Normale or the Polytechnic.
It will only be necessary to add a few sentences in explanation of the methods pursued in the upper classes of the Lycées. The classes are large—from 80 to above 100; the lessons strictly professorial lectures, with occasional questions, as at the Polytechnic itself. In large establishments the class is divided, and two professors are employed, giving two parallel courses on the same subject. To correct and fortify this general teaching, we find, corresponding to the interrogations of the Polytechnic, what are here called conferences. The members of the large class are examined first of all in small detachments of five or six by their own professors once a week; and, secondly, a matter of yet greater importance, by the professor who is conducting the parallel course, and by professors who are engaged for this purpose from other Lycées and preparatory schools, and from among the répétiteurs of the Polytechnic and the Ecole Normale themselves. It appeared by the table of the examinations of this latter kind which had been passed by the pupils of the class of Special Mathematics at the Lycée St. Louis, that the first pupil on the list had in the interval between the opening of the school and the date of our visit (February 16th) gone through as many as twenty-four.
The assistants, who bear the name of répétiteurs at the Lycées, do not correspond in any sense to those whom we shall hereafter notice at the Ecole Polytechnique. They are in the Lycées mere superintendents in the salles d’étude, who attend to order and discipline, who give some slight occasional help to the pupils, and may be employed in certain cases, where the parents wish for it, in giving private tuition to the less proficient. The system of salles d’étude appears to prevail universally; the number of the pupils placed in each probably varying greatly. At the Polytechnic we found eight or ten pupils in each; at St. Cyr as many as 200. The number considered most desirable at the Lycée of St. Louis was stated to be thirty.
It thus appears that in France not only do private establishments succeed in giving preparation for the military schools, but that even in the first-class public schools, which educate for the learned professions, it has been considered possible to conduct a series of military or science classes by the side of the usual literary or arts classes. The common upper schools are not, as they used to be, and as with us they are, Grammar schools, they are also Science schools. In every Lycée there is, so to say, a sort of elementary polytechnic department, giving a kind of instruction which will be useful to the future soldier, and at the same time to others, to those who may have to do with mines, manufactures, or any description of civil engineering. There is thus no occasion for Junior Military Schools in France, for all the schools of this class are more or less of a military character in their studies.
The conditions of admission to the examination for the degree of Bachelor of Science are simply, sixteen years of age, and the payment of fees amounting to about 200 fr. (10l.) Examinations are held three times a year by the Faculties at Paris, Besançon, Bordeaux, Caen, Clermont, Dijon, Grenoble, Lille, Lyons, Marseilles, Montpellier, Nancy, Poitiers, Rennes, Strasburg, and Toulouse, and once a year at Ajaccio, Algiers, and nineteen other towns. There is a written examination of six hours, and a viva voce examination of an hour and a quarter. It is, of course, only a pass examination, and is said to be much less difficult than the competitive examination for admission to St. Cyr.—Report of English Commissioners, 1856.