Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Echinoderma" to "Edward, prince of Wales" / Volume 8, Slice 10

by Various

At this point it will be convenient to describe shortly the various central and local authorities that constitute the official machine. The minister, the head of the entire hierarchy, is assisted by a conseil supérieur consisting of Administrative machinery. Minister and conseil supérieur. fifty-seven members, of whom the majority are elected by the higher teaching profession, while a few are nominated by the president, including a small number to represent private schools, and a few are elected by the primary teachers. Practically the ordinary work of the council is carried on by a sub-committee consisting of the nine nominees of the president and six others designated for this purpose by the minister. The council has administrative, judicial and disciplinary, as well as advisory, powers which enable it to exert a direct influence upon the internal organization of schools. There is also a pedagogic comité consultatif and a legal comité contentieux, whose respective functions are purely advisory.

The inspecteurs généraux “act,” says Mr Brereton in his official report to the English Board of Education, “as the eyes and ears of the central authority.” Their duties are: Inspecteurs généraux. first to inspect the normal schools; next to supervise the work of the ordinary inspectorate; lastly to give general and comparative information on the progress of primary instruction in the various parts of France. For the purpose of general inspection France is divided into seven districts.

As already indicated, for the purpose of educational administration, the departments of France are grouped in seventeen divisions called academies. At the head of each academy is the rector. He is appointed directly by the Rector and council of academy. president and must hold the doctor’s degree. He is not only the head of the local teaching university, but is also charged in a general way with the oversight of all three departments of education, superior, secondary and primary; in regard to the last, however, his functions are confined to the pedagogic side. The direct share of the rector in administration is mainly confined to the normal schools and the higher primary schools. The rector is assisted by an academic council composed almost exclusively of pedagogic elements.

Each department of France has an academy inspector appointed by the minister. The duties of the academy inspector embrace both higher and primary education. In the The academy inspector. latter sphere he is the real head of the local administration, and the primary inspectors are his subordinate officers. He appoints the probationer-teachers and nominates the regular teachers for appointment by the préfet.

The préfet, the chief administrative officer of each department, not only appoints the teachers upon the proposition of the academy inspector, he is also as president of the conseil départemental concerned generally with the Préfet and conseil départemental. externa of school administration, including the supply of schools. The conseil départemental with respect to its powers corresponds in some degree to our own local education authorities, but as regards its constitution it is in no sense a municipal body, the representatives of the conseil général of the department (which corresponds to the county council) being greatly outnumbered by the pedagogical members.

The inspectors of primary schools, as has already been stated, act under the academy inspector. They are appointed upon the result of examination and not by direct nomination Primary inspectors. as in England. The examination is severe, and it is from the body of the professors of the normal schools rather than from the ranks of the primary teachers that the successful candidates are chiefly drawn.

Very limited powers are entrusted to certain communal and cantonal authorities. The commission scolaire is a committee organized in each commune for the purpose of improving school attendance, to which end they administer Minor local authorities. a caisse des écoles or school fund for supplying clothing and meals to needy children. The maire of the commune has the right of visiting the schools, but neither he nor any of the minor local authorities can interfere with the teaching. Similar duties are assigned to the délégués cantonaux, who are appointed by the conseil départemental for each canton (a wider area than the commune), and can best be described as local visitors or visiting committees rather than managers in our sense of the word. “All this hierarchy of central and local officials,” says Mr Brereton, “will doubtless seem complicated to English minds. The extraordinary thing is that, so far as I could learn, the machine, for all its complexity, works smoothly enough. The truth is that the province of each particular functionary is so clearly defined that there is no debateable ground over which ambitious rival authorities can wrangle.”

In proceeding to sketch the French system of higher primary and secondary schools, it may be observed that European systems of higher education have generally been framed upon the view that the divisions of education Conception of secondary education. are longitudinal, not latitudinal, and that secondary education is a training complete in itself from the preparatory stage to the university, with aims and ideals of general culture which differentiate it radically and at the very outset from education of the elementary type. On the other hand, in the United States the view has prevailed that the divisions of education must be latitudinal, that the secondary school must be complementary to the elementary school, in which even the élite must receive their preparatory or elementary training. At any rate down to the reform of 1902, which will presently be explained, the French system could be regarded as a typical and even extreme example of the European theory, little consistent as this might seem to be with the broader principles of democracy. This view of the matter is expressed by the French terminology, by which what in England is called “elementary” is in France termed “primary” education.

The thoroughness with which the principle of the autonomous character of the two divisions of education was carried out undoubtedly favoured in a special degree the complete organization given to higher primary instruction in Higher primary schools. the écoles primaires supérieures under the Third Republic. The aim of these schools is to fill the void which must otherwise exist for those who need a higher education than the primary school can give, but for whose subsequent careers secondary education would be ill-adapted and injudicious. Throughout the organization of primary education the French have kept steadily in view the danger of creating an intellectual proletariate. “Nous poursuivons la culture générale du caractère et de l’esprit, mais nous cherchons en même temps à orienter l’enfant vers la vie pratique,” says an official report. The aim of the higher primary school is to continue education in this spirit up to the age of sixteen so as to prepare the scholar to take an honourable place in the higher ranks of skilled industry rather than to deflect him towards a professional career or intellectual pursuits for which he is unfitted, not so much by the accidents of birth and social circumstance as by his own natural aptitudes. Within the limits necessarily marked out for them the higher primary schools of France have aimed at imparting what may be termed a general culture as distinct from purely technical or trade teaching, and this development has been greatly furthered by the separate organization given to the latter teaching in the écoles professionnelles. At the same time, prominence is given in the higher primary schools to practical training of an educational character with special reference to the industries and circumstances of the locality, and in the rural districts a special agricultural bias is imparted to the curriculum. It is interesting to note that the institution of the higher primary schools was due in large part to the spontaneous initiative of the municipalities, and that in the later phases of state organization special care has been taken to avoid anything in the nature of a rigid uniformity in these schools.