A brief description of the buildings may be a suitable introduction to an account of the studies that are pursued, and the life that is led in them.
[The Polytechnic School] stands near the Pantheon, and consists of two main buildings, one for the official rooms and the residence of the commandant and director of studies, the other, and larger one, for the pupils. Detached buildings contain the chemical lecture room and laboratory, the laboratory of natural philosophy, the library, fencing and billiard rooms.
The basement floor of the larger building contains the kitchen and refectories. On the first floor, are the two amphitheaters or great lecture rooms, assigned respectively to the pupils of the two years or divisions, in which the ordinary lectures are given. The rooms are large and well arranged; the seats fixed, the students’ names attached to them. The students are admitted by doors behind the upper tier of seats; at the foot of all is a platform for the professor, with a blackboard facing his audience, and with sufficient room for a pupil to stand and work questions beside him. Room also is provided for one of the captains, inspectors of studies, whose duty it is to be present, for the director of studies, whose occasional presence is expected, and for the assistant teachers or répétiteurs, who in the first year of their appointment are called upon to attend the course upon which they will have to give their subsequent questions and explanations. On this floor are also the museums, or repositories of models, instruments, machines, &c., needed for use in the amphitheaters, or elsewhere. The museum provided for the lecturer on Physics (or Natural Philosophy) appeared in particular to be well supplied.
The whole of the second floor is taken up with what are called the salles d’interrogation, a long series of small cabinets or studies, plainly furnished with six or eight stools and a table, devoted to the interrogations particulières, which will presently be described.
The third floor contains the halls of study, salles d’étude, or studying rooms, in which the greater part of the student’s time during the day is passed—where he studies, draws, keeps his papers and instruments, writes his exercises, and prepares his lectures. These are small chambers, containing eight or, exceptionally, eleven occupants. A double desk runs down the middle from the window to the door, with a little shelf and drawers for each student. There is a blackboard for the common use, and various objects are furnished through the senior student, the sergeant, a selected pupil, more advanced than the rest, who is placed in charge of the room, and is responsible for whatever is handed in for the use of the students. He collects the exercises, and generally gives a great deal of assistance to the less proficient. “When I was sergeant,” said an old pupil, “I was always at the board.” The spirit of camaraderie, said to exist so strongly among the Polytechnic students, displays itself in this particular form very beneficially. Young men of all classes work heartily and zealously together in the salles d’étude, and no feeling of rivalry prevents them from assisting one another. The sergeant does not, however, appear to exercise any authority in the way of keeping discipline.
These chambers for study are arranged on each side of a long corridor which runs through the whole length of the building, those of the juniors being separated from those of the seniors by a central chamber or compartment, the cabinet de service, where the officers charged with the discipline are posted, and from hence pass up and down the corridor, looking in through the glass doors and seeing that no interruption to order takes place.
The fourth story is that of the dormitories, airy rooms, with twelve beds in each. These rooms are arranged as below, along the two sides of a corridor, and divided in the same manner into the senior and junior side. A non-commissioned officer is lodged at each end of the corridor to see that order is kept.
Such is the building into which at the beginning of November the successful candidates from the Lycées and the Ecoles préparatoires are introduced, in age resembling the pupils whom the highest classes of English public schools send annually to the universities, and in number equal perhaps to the new under-graduates at one of the largest colleges at Cambridge. There is not, however, in other points much that is common, least of all in the methods and habits of study we are about to describe. This will be best understood by a summary of a day’s work.
[The students are summoned] to rise at half-past five, have to answer the roll-call at six, from six to eight are to occupy themselves in study, and at eight they go to breakfast. On any morning except Wednesday, at half-past eight, we should find the whole of the new admission assembled in an amphitheater, permanent seats in which are assigned to them by lot, and thus placed they receive a lecture from a professor, rough notes of which they are expected to take while it goes on. The first half hour of the hour and a half assigned to each lecture is occupied with questions put by the professor relating to the previous lecture. A name is drawn by lot, the student on whom the lot falls is called up to the blackboard at which the professor stands, and is required to work a problem and answer questions. The lecture concluded, the pupils are conducted to the salles d’étude, which have just been described, where they are to study. Here for one hour they devote themselves to completing and writing out in full the notes of the lecture they have just heard. The professor and his assistants, the répétiteurs, are expected to follow and make a circuit through the corridors, to give an opportunity to ask for information on any difficult points in the lecture. A lithographed summary of the substance of the lecture, extending perhaps to two octavo pages, is also furnished to each studying room for the use of its pupils.
The lecture, as we have said, commences at half-past eight o’clock; it lasts an hour and a half; the hour of writing up the notes brings us to eleven. The young men are now relieved by a change of occupation, and employ themselves (still in their places in the rooms of study) at drawing. A certain number, detached from the rest, are sent to the physical and chemical laboratories. The rotation is such as to admit each student once a month to two or three hours’ work at a furnace for chemistry, and once in two months to make experiments in electricity, or other similar subjects. In this way, either at their drawing or in the laboratories, they spend three hours, and at two o’clock go to their dinner in the refectories below, and after dinner are free to amuse themselves in the court-yard, the library, the fencing and the billiard rooms, till five. At five they return to the studying rooms, and for two hours, on Mondays and Fridays, they may employ themselves on any work they please (étude libre;) on Tuesday there is a lecture in French literature, and on Thursday in German; at seven o’clock they commence a lesson, which lasts till nine, in landscape and figure drawing, or they do exercises in French writing or in German; at nine they go down to supper; at half-past nine they have to answer to a roll-call in their bedrooms, and at ten all the lights are put out.