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In the schools where the number of pupils is limited, this culture, carried still farther, becomes intense and constant. In the Ecole Centrale and in the commercial or agronomic schools, in the Polytechnique or Normale, he is there all day and all night,—he is housed in a barracks.—And the pressure on him is twofold—the pressure of examinations and that of competition. On entering, on leaving, and during his stay there, not only at the end of each year but every six or three months, often every six weeks, and even every fortnight, he is rated according to his compositions, exercises and interrogatories, getting so many marks for his partial value, so many for his total value and according to these figures, classed at a certain rank among his comrades who are his rivals. To descend on the scale would be disadvantageous and humiliating; to ascend on the scale is advantageous and glorious. Driven by this motive, so strong in France, his principal aim is to go up or, at least, not to go down; he devotes all his energy to this; he expends none of it on either side or beyond; he allows himself no diversion, he abstains from taking any initiative; his restrained curiosity never ventures outside of the circle traced for him; he absorbs only what he is taught and in the order in which it is taught; he fills himself to the brim, but only to disgorge at the examination and not to retain and hold on to; he runs the risk of choking and when relieved, of remaining empty. Such is the regime of our Grande Ecoles. They are systematic, energetic and prolonged system of gardening; the State, the gardener-in-chief, receiving or selecting plants which it undertakes to turn out profitably, each of its kind. To this end, it separates the species, and ranges each apart on a bed of earth; and here, all day long, it digs, weeds, rakes, waters, adds one manure after another, applies its powerful heating apparatus and accelerates the growth and ripening of the fruit. On certain beds it plants are kept under glass throughout the year; in this way it maintains them in a steady, artificial atmosphere, forcing them to more largely imbibe the nutritive liquids with which it floods the ground, thus causing them to swell and become hypertrophied, so as to produce fruits or vegetables for show, and which it exposes and which bring it credit; for all these productions look well, many of them superb, while their size seems to attest their excellence; they are weighted beforehand and the official labels with which they are decorated announce the authentic weight.
During the first quarter, and even the first half, of the (19th) century, the system remained almost unobjectionable; it had not yet pushed things to excess. Down to 1850 and later, all that was demanded of the young, in their examinations and competitions, was much less the extent and minutia of knowledge than proofs of intelligence and the promise of capacity: in a literary direction, the main object was to verify whether the candidate, familiar with the classics, could write Latin correctly and French tolerably well; in the sciences, if he could, without help, accurately and promptly solve a problem; if, again unaided, he could readily and accurately to the end, state a long series of theorems and equations without divergence or faltering; in sum, the object of the test was to verify in him the presence and degree of the mathematical or literary faculty.—But, since the beginning of the century, the old subdivided sciences and the new consolidated sciences have multiplied their discoveries and, necessarily, all discoveries end in finding their way into public instruction. In Germany, for them to become installed and obtain chairs, encyclopedic universities are found, in which free teaching, pliant and many-sided, rises of itself to the level of knowledge.[6362] With us, for lack of universities, they have had only special schools[6363]; here only could a place be found for them and professors obtained. Henceforth, the peculiar character of these schools has changed: they have ceased to be strictly special and veritably professional.—Each school, being an individuality, has developed apart and on its own account; its aim has been to install and furnish under its own roof all the general, collateral, accessory and ornamental studies which, far or near, could be of service to its own pupils. No longer content with turning out competent and practical men, it has conceived a superior type, the ideal model of the engineer, physician, jurist, professor or architect. To produce this extraordinary and desirable professional, it has designed some excessively difficult impressive lectures.[6364] To be able to make use of these, it has given the young man the opportunity not only to acquire abstract, multiple, technical knowledge, and information, but also the complementary culture and lofty general ideas, which render the specialist a true savant and a man of a very broad mind.
To this end, it has appealed to the State. The State, the contractor for public instruction, the founder of every new professional chair, appoints the occupant, pays the salary and, when in funds, is not ill-disposed, for it thus gains a good reputation, an increase of granting power and a new functionary. Such is the why and wherefore, in each school, of the multiplication of professorships: schools of law, of medicine, of pharmacy, of charters, of fine arts, polytechnic, normal, central, agronomic and commercial schools, each becoming, or tending to become, a sort of university on a small scale, bringing together within its walls the totality of teachings which, if the student profits by them, renders him in his profession an accomplished personage. Naturally, to secure attendance at these lectures, the school, in concert with the State, adds to the exigencies of its examinations, and soon, for the average of intellects and for health, the burden imposed by it becomes too heavy. Particularly, in the schools to which admission is gained only through competitions the extra load is still more burdensome, owing to the greater crowd striving to pass; there are now five, seven and even eleven candidates for one place.[6365] With this crowd, it has been found necessary to raise and multiply the barriers, urge the competitors to jump over them, and to open the door only to those who jump the highest and in the greatest number. There is no other way to make a selection among them without incurring the charge of despotism and nepotism. It is their business to have sturdy legs and make the best of them, then to submit to methodical training, to practice and train all year and for several years in succession, in order to pass the final test, without thinking of any but the barriers in front of them on the race-course at the appointed date, and which they must spring over to get ahead of their rivals.
At the present day[6366], after the complete course of classical studies, four years in school no longer suffice for obtaining the degrees of a doctor in medicine or doctor in law. Five or six years are necessary. Two years are necessary between the baccalaureat es-lettres and the various licenses es-lettres or sciences, and from these to the corresponding aggregations two, three years, and often more. Three years of preparatory studies in mathematics and of desperate application lead the young man to the threshold of the Ecole Polytechnique; after that, after two years in school and of no less sustained effort, the future engineer passes three not less laborious years at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees or des Mines, which amounts to eight years of professional preparation.[6367] Elsewhere, in the other schools, it is the same thing with more or less excess. Observe how days and hours are spent during this long period.[6368] The young men have attended lecture-courses, masticated and re-masticated manuals, abbreviated abridgments, learned by heart mementos and formulae, stored their memories with a vast multitude of generalities and details. Every sort of preliminary information, all the theoretical knowledge which, even indirectly, may serve them in their future profession or which is of service in neighboring professions, are classified in their brains, ready to come forth at the first call, and, as proved by the examination, disposable at a minute; they possess them, but nothing otherwise or beyond. Their education has all tended to one side; they have undergone no practical apprenticeship. Never have they taken an active part in or lent a hand to any professional undertaking either as collaborators or assistants.
* The future professor, a new aggrege at twenty-four years of age, who issues from the Ecole Normale, has not yet taught a class, except for a fortnight in a Paris lycee.
* The future engineer who, at twenty-four or twenty-five years of age leaves the Ecole Centrale, or the Ecole des Ponts, or Ecole des Mines, has never assisted in the working of a mine, in the heating of a blast furnace, in the piercing of a tunnel, in the laying-out of a dike, of a bridge or of a roadway. He is ignorant of the cost and has never commanded a squad of workmen.
* If the future advocate or magistrate to be has put up with being a notary's or lawyer's clerk, he will at twenty-five years of age, even if he is a doctor of law with his insignia of three "white balls," know nothing of the business; he merely knows his codes; he has never examined pleadings, conducted a case, drawn up an act or liquidated an estate.
* From eighteen to thirty, the future architect who competes for a prix de Rome may stay in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, draw plan after plan there, and then, if he obtains the prix, pass five years at Rome, make designs without end, multiply plans and restorations on paper, and at last, at thirty-five years of age, return to Paris with the highest titles, architect of the government, and with the aspiration to erect edifices without having taken even a second or third part in the actual construction of one single house.—
None of these men so full of knowledge know their trade and each, at this late hour, is expected to act as an expert, improvising,[6369] in haste and too fast, encountering many drawbacks at his own expense and at the expense of others, along with serious risks for the first tasks he undertakes.
Before 1789, says a witness of both the ancient and the modern regime, [6370] young Frenchmen did not thus pass their early life. Instead of dancing attendance so long on the threshold of a career, they were inducted into it very early in life and at once began the race. With very light baggage and readily obtained "they entered the army at sixteen, and even fifteen years of age, at fourteen in the navy, and a little later in special branches, artillery or engineering. In the magistracy, at nineteen, the son of a conseiller-maitre in parliament was made a conseiller-adjoint without a vote until he reached twenty-five; meanwhile, he was busy, active and sometimes was made a reporter of a case. No less precocious were the admissions to the Cour des Comptes, to the Cour des Aides, to inferior jurisdictions and into the bureaus of all the financial administrations." Here, as elsewhere, if any rank in law was exacted the delay that ensured was not apparent; the Faculty examinations were only for forms sake; for a sum of money, and after a more or less grave ceremonial, a needed diploma was obtained almost without study.[6371]—Accordingly, it was not in school, but in the profession, that professional instruction was acquired; strictly speaking, the young man for six or seven years, instead of being a student was an apprentice, that is to say a working novice under several master-workmen, in their workshop, working along with them and learning by doing, which is the best way of obtaining instruction. Struggling with the difficulties of the work he at once became aware of his incompetence;[6372] he became modest and was attentive; with his masters, he kept silent, and listened, which is the only way to understand. If he was intelligent he himself discovered what he lacked; as he found this out he felt the need of supplying what he needed; he sought, set his wits to work, and made choice of the various means; freely and self-initiating he helped himself in his general or special education. If he read books, it was not resignedly and for a recitation, but with avidity and to comprehend them. If he followed lecture-courses it was not because he was obliged to, but voluntarily, because he was interested and because he profited by it.—Chancellor Pasquier was magistrate at seventeen (in 1784), attended at the lycee the lectures of Garat, La Harpe, Fourcroy and Duparcieux and, daily, at table or in the evening, listened to his father and his friends discussing matters which, in the morning, had been argued in the Palais de Justice or in the Grand-Chambre. He imbibed a taste for his profession. Along with two or three prominent advocates and other young magistrates like himself, he inscribed his name for lectures at the house of the first president of the first court of inquiry. Meanwhile, he went every evening into society; he saw there with his own eyes the ways and interests of men and women. On the other hand, at the Palais de Justice, a conseiller- ecoutant he sat for five years, alongside of the conseiller-juges and often, the reporter of a case, he gave his opinion. After such a novitiate, he was competent to form a judgment in civil or criminal cases with experience, competency and authority. From the age of twenty-five, he was prepared for and capable of serious duties. He had only to live and perfect himself to become an administrator, deputy or minister, a dignitary as we see under the first Empire, under the Restoration, under the July monarchy, that is to say the best informed, well-balanced, judicious political character and, at length, the man of highest consideration of his epoch.[6373]
Such is also the process which, still at the present day (1890), in England and in America secures future ability in the various professions. In the hospital, in the mine, in factories, with the architect, with the lawyer, the pupil, taken very young, goes through his apprenticeship and subsequent stages about the same as a clerk with us in an office or an art-student in the studio. Preliminarily and before entering it, he has attended some general seminary lecture which serves him as a ready-made basis for the observations he is about to make. Meanwhile, there are very often technical courses within reach, which he may attend at his leisure in order to give shape to his daily experiences as these happen to accumulate. Under a regime of this stamp practical capacity grows and develops of itself, just to that degree which the faculties of the pupil warrant, and in the direction which his future aims require, through the special work to which he wishes for the time being to adapt himself. In this way, in England and in the United States, the young man soon succeeds in developing all he is good for. From the age of twenty-five and much sooner, if the substance and bottom are not wanting, he is not only a useful subordinate, but again a spontaneous creator, not merely a wheel but besides this a motor force. In France, where the inverse process has prevailed and become more and more Chinese at each generation, the total of the force lost is immense.
The most productive period of human life extends from fifteen or sixteen up to twenty-five or twenty-six; here are seven or eight years of growing energy and of constant production, buds, flowers and fruit; during this period the young man sketches out his original ideas. But, that these ideas may be born in him, sprout, and flourish they must, at this age, profit by the stimulating or repressive influence of the atmosphere in which they are to live later on; here only are they formed in their natural and normal environment; their germs depend for their growth on the innumerable impressions due to the young man's sensations, daily, in the workshop, in the mine, in the court-room, in the studio, on the scaffolding of a building, in the hospital, on seeing tools, materials and operations, in talking with clients and workmen, in doing work, good or bad, costly or remunerative; such are the minute and special perceptions of the eyes and the ears, of touch and even smell which, involuntarily gathered in and silently elaborated, work together in him and suggest, sooner or later, this or that new combination, economy, perfection or invention.[6374] The young Frenchman, just at this fecund age, is deprived of all these precious contacts, of all these assimilating and indispensable elements. During seven or eight years, he is shut up in school, remote from the direct and personal experience which might have given him an exact and vivifying notion of men and things, and of the various ways of handling them. All this time his inventive faculties are deliberately sterilized; he can be nothing but a passive recipient; whatever he might have produced under the other system he cannot produce under this one; the balance of debit and credit is utter loss.—Meanwhile, the cost has been great. Whilst the apprentice, the clerk busy with his papers in his office, the interne with his apron standing by the bedside of the patient in the hospital, pays by his services, at first for his instruction, then for his breakfast, and ends in gaining something besides, at least his pocket-money, the student under the Faculty, or the pupil in a special school is educated and lives at the expense of his family or of the State; he gives back in exchange not work that is useful to mankind, none that is worth anything on the market; his actual consumption is not compensated for by his actual production. Undoubtedly, he cherishes the hope that some day or other he will obtain compensation, that we will refund later and largely both capital and interest, and all the advances made; in other words, his future services are discounted and, as far as he is concerned, he speculates on a long credit.—It remains to be seen whether the speculation is a good one; whether, at last, the receipts will cover the expenses, in short, what will be the net or average returns on the man thus fashioned.[6375]
Now, among the forces expended, the most important to take into account is the time and attention of the pupil, the sum of his efforts, this or that quantity of mental energy; he has only a limited provision of this, and, not only is the proportion of this which the system consumes excessive, but, again, the application of it which the system enforces is not remunerative. The provision is exhausted and by a wrong use of it, with scarcely any profit.—In our lycees, the pupil sits at his task more than eleven hours a day; in a certain ecclesiastical college it is twelve hours, and, from the age of twelve years, through the necessity of being first in competition as well as for securing the greatest number of admissions through various examinations.—At the end of this secondary education there is a graduated scale of successive test, and first the baccalaureat. Fifty out of one hundred candidates fail and the examiners are indulgent.[6376] This proves, first of all, that the rejected have profited by their studies; but it likewise proves that the program of the examination is not adapted to the general run of minds, nor to the native faculties of the human majority; that many young men capable of learning by the opposite method learn nothing by this one; that education, such as it is, with the kind and greatness of the mental labor it imposes, with its abstract and theoretical style, is beyond the capacity of the average mind.—Particularly, during the last year of classical studies, the pupils have had to follow the philosophy lectures: in the time of M. Laromiquiere, this might be useful to them; in the time of M. Cousin, the course, so far, did but little harm; at the present day, impregnated with neo-Kantism, it injects into minds of eighteen, seventeen, and even sixteen years, a metaphysical muddle as cumbersome as the scholasticism of the fourteenth century, terribly indigestible and unhealthy for the stomachs of novices; the swallow even to bursting and throw it off at the examination just as it comes, entirely raw for lack of the capacity to assimilate it.—Often, after failure at the baccalaureat, or on entering the preparatory or Grande Ecoles, the young people go into, or are put into, what they call "a box" or an "oven" a preparatory internat, similar to the boxes in which silkworms are raised and to the ovens where the eggs are hatched. In more exact language it is a mechanical "gaveuse"[6377] in which they are daily crammed; through this constant, forced feeding, their real knowledge is not increased, nor their mental vigor; they are superficially fattened and, at the end of the year, or in eighteen months, they present themselves on the appointed day, with the artificial and momentary volume they need for that day, with the bulk, surface, polish and all the requisite externals, because these externals are the only ones that the examination verifies and imposes.[6378] Less harshly, but in the same manner and with the same object, operate the special education services which, inside our colleges and lycees, prepare young men for the Ecole de Saint-Cyr and for the polytechnic, naval, central, normal, agricultural, commercial and forestry schools; in these too, the studies are cramming machines which prepare the pupil for examination purposes. In the like manner, above secondary education, all our special schools are public cramming machines;[6379] alongside of them are private schools advertised and puffed in the newspapers and by posters of the walls, preparing young men for the license degree in Law and for the third or fourth examinations in Medicine. Some day or other, others will probably exist to prepare them for Treasury inspectors, for the "Cour des Comptes," for diplomacy, by competition, the same as for the medical profession, for a hospital surgeon and for aggregation in law, medicine, letters or sciences.
Undoubtedly, some minds, very active and very robust, withstand this regime; all they have been made to swallow is absorbed and digested. After leaving school and having passed through all grades they preserve the faculty of learning, investigating and inventing intact, and compose the small elite of scholars, litterateurs, artists, engineers and physicians who, in the international exposition of superior talent, maintain France in its ancient rank.[6380]—But the rest, in very great majority, nine out of ten at least, have lost their time and trouble, many years of their life and years that are useful, important and even decisive: take at once one-half or two-thirds of those who present themselves at the examinations, I mean the rejected, and then, among the admitted who get diplomas, another half or two-thirds that is to say, the overworked. Too much has been required of them by exacting that, on such a day, seated or before the blackboard, for two entire hours, they should be living repertories of all human knowledge; in effect, such they are, or nearly so, that day, for two hours; but, a month later, they are so no longer; they could not undergo the same examination; their acquisitions, too numerous and too burdensome, constantly drop of their minds and they make no new ones. Their mental vigor has given way, the fecund sap has dried up; the finished man appears, often a finished man content to be put away, to be married, and plod along indefinitely in the same circle, entrenched in his restricted vocation and doing his duty, but nothing more. Such are the average returns—assuredly, the profits do not make up for the expenses. In England and in America where, as before 1789 in France, the inverse method is followed, the returns are equal or superior,[6381] and they are obtained with greater facility, with more certainty, at an age less tardy, without imposing such great and unhealthy efforts on the young man, such large expenditure by the State, and such long delays and sacrifices on families.[6382]
Now, in the four Faculties of Law, Medicine, Science and Letters, there are this year 22,000 students; add to these the pupils of the special schools and those who study with the hope of entering them, in all probably 30,000. But there is no need of counting them; since the suppression of the one-year voluntariat, the entire body of youths capable of study, who wish to remain only one year in barracks and not remain there to get brutalized during three years, flocks to the benches of the lycee or to those of a Faculty.[6383] The sole object of the young man is not, as before, to reach the baccalaureat; it is essential that he should be admitted, after a competition, into one of the special schools, or obtain the highest grades or diplomas in one of the Faculties; in all cases he is bound to successfully undergo difficult and multiplied examinations. At present time (1890), there is no place in France for an education in the inverse sense, nor for any other of a different type. Henceforth, no young man, without condemning himself to three years of barrack life, can travel at an early age for any length of time, or form his mind at home by free and original studies, stay in Germany and follow speculative studies in the universities, or go to England or to America to derive practical instruction from factory or farm. Captured by our system, he is forced to surrender himself to the mechanical routine which fills his mind with fictitious tools, with useless and cumbersome acquisitions that impose on him in exchange an exorbitant expenditure of mental energy and which is very like to convert him into a mandarin.
V. Public instruction in 1890.
Public instruction since 1870.—Agreement between the Napoleonic and Jacobin conception.—Extension and aggravation of the system.—The deductive process of the Jacobin mind.—Its consequences.—In superior and in secondary instruction.—In primary instruction.—Gratuitous, obligatory and secular instruction.
Such is the singular and final result brought about by the institution of the year X (or 1801), due to the intervention of the grossly leveling Jacobin spirit.[6384] Indeed, since 1871, and especially since 1879, this spirit, through Napoleonic forms, has given breath, impulse and direction, and these forms suit it. On the principle that education belongs to the State, Napoleon and the old Jacobins were in accord; what he in fact established they had proclaimed as a dogma; hence the structure of his university-organisation was not objectionable to them; on the contrary, it conformed to their instincts. Hence, the reason why the new Jacobins, inheritors of both instinct and dogma, immediately adopted the existing system; none was more convenient, better calculated to meet their views, better adapted in advance to do their work. Consequently, under the third Republic,[6385] as under anterior governments, the school machinery continues to turn and grind in the same rut. Through the same working of its mechanism, under the same impulse of its unique and central motor, conforming to the same Napoleonic and Jacobin idea of the teaching State, it is a formidable concept which, more intrusive every year, more widely and more rigorously applied, more and more excludes the opposite concept. This would be the remission of education to those interested in it, to those who possess rights, to parents, to free and private enterprises which depend only on personal exertions and on families, to permanent, special, local corporations, proprietary and organized under status, governed, managed, and supported by themselves. On this model, a few men of intelligence and sensibility, enlightened by what is accomplished abroad, try to organize regional universities in our great academic centers. The State might, perhaps, allow, if not the enterprise itself, then at least something like it, but nothing more. Through its right of public administration, through the powers of its Council of State, through its fiscal legislation, through the immemorial prejudices of its jurists, through the routine of its bureaus, it is hostile to a corporate personality. Never can such a project be considered a veritable civil personage; if the State consents to endow a group of individuals with civil powers, it is always on condition that they be subject to its narrow tutelage and be treated as minors and children. —Besides, these universities, even of age, are to remain as they are, so many dispensaries of diplomas. They are no longer to serve as an intellectual refuge, an oasis at the end of secondary instruction, a station for three or four years for free curiosity and disinterested self-culture. Since the abolition of the volontariat for one year, a young Frenchman no longer enjoys the leisure to cultivate himself in this way; free curiosity is interdicted; he is too much harassed by a too positive interest, by the necessity of obtaining grades and diplomas, by the preoccupations of examinations, by the limitations of age; he has no time to lose in experiments, in mental excursions, in pure speculations. Henceforth, our system allows him only the regime to which we see him subject, namely the rush, the puffing and blowing, the gallop without stopping on a race-course, the perilous jumps at regular distances over previously arranged and numbered obstacles. Instead of being restricted and attenuated, the disadvantages of the Napoleonic institution spread and grow worse, and this is due to the way in which our rulers comprehend it, the original, hereditary way of the Jacobin spirit.
When Napoleon built his University he did it as a statesman and a man of business, with the foresight of a contractor and a practical man, calculating outlay and receipts, means and resources, so as to produce at once and with the least expense, the military and civil tools which he lacked and of which he always had too few because he consumed too many: to this precise, definite purpose he subjected and subordinated all the rest, including the theory of the educational State; she was for him simply a resume, a formula, a setting. On the contrary, for the old Jacobins, she was an axiom, a principle, an article in the Social Contract; by this contract, the State had charge of public education; it had the right and its duty was to undertake this and manage it. The principle being laid down, as convinced theorists and blindly following the deductive method, the derived consequences from it and rushed ahead, with eyes shut, into practical operation, with as much haste as vigor, without concerning themselves with the nature of human materials, of surrounding realities, of available resources, of collateral effects, nor of the total and final effect. Likewise with the new Jacobins of the present day, according to them, since instruction is a good thing,[6386] the broader and deeper it is the better; since broad and deep instruction is very good, the State should, with all its energy and by every means in its power, inculcate it on the greatest possible number of children, boys and adolescents. Such, henceforth, is the word of command from on high, transmitted down to the three stages of superior, secondary and primary instruction.[6387]
Consequently, from 1876 to 1890,[6388] the State expends for superior instruction, in buildings alone, 99,000,000 francs. Formerly, the receipts of the Faculties about covered their expenses; at the present day, the State allows them annually 6,000,000 francs more than their receipts. It has founded and supports 221 new (professional) chairs, 168 complementary courses of lectures, 129 conferences and, to supply the attendants, it provides, since 1877, 300 scholarships for those preparing for the license and, since 1881, 200 scholarships for those preparing for the aggregation. Similarly, in secondary instruction, instead of 81 lycees in 1876, it has 100 in 1887[6389]; instead of 3,820 scholarships in 1876, it distributes, in 1887, 10,528; instead of 2,200,000 francs expended for this branch of instruction in 1857, it expends 18,000,000 in 1889.—This overload of teaching caused overloaded exams: it was necessary to include more science than in the past to curriculum of the grades delivered and determined by the State. "This was what was then done whenever possible."[6390] Naturally, and through contagion, the obligation of possessing more knowledge descended to secondary instruction. In effect, after this date, we see neo-Kantian philosophy descending like hail from the highest metaphysical ether down upon the pupils in the terminal class of the lycees, to the lasting injury of the seventeen-year old brains. Again, after this date, we see in the class of special mathematics[6391] an abundance of complicated, confusing problems so that, today, the candidate for the Polytechnic School must, to gain admission, expound theorems that were only mastered by his father after he got there.—Hence, "boxes" and "ovens", private internats, the preparatory secular or ecclesiastical schools and other "scholastic cramming-machines"; hence, the prolonged mechanical effort to introduce into each intellectual sponge all the scientific fluid it can contain, even to saturation, and maintain it in this extreme state of perfection if only for two hours during an examination, after which it may rapidly subside and shrink. Hence, that mistaken use, that inordinate expenditure, that precocious waste of mental energy, and that entire pernicious system which overburden for a substantial period the young, not for their advantage, but, on reaching maturity, to their intellectual detriment.
To reach the uncultivated masses, to address popular intellect and imagination, one must use absolute, simple slogans. In the matter of primary instruction, the simplest and most absolute slogan is that which promises and offers it to all children, boys and girls, not merely universal, but again, complete and gratuitous. To this end, from 1878 to 1891,[6392] the State has expended for school buildings and installations 582,000,000 francs; for salaries and other expenses it furnished the latter year 131,000,000. Somebody pays for all this, and it is the tax-payer, and by force; aided by gendarmes, the collector puts his hand forcibly into all pockets, even those containing only sous, and withdraws these millions. Gratuitous instruction sounds well and seems to designate a veritable gift, a present from the great vague personage called the State, and whom the general public dimly sees on the distant horizon as a superior, independent being, and hence a possible benefactor. In reality, his presents are made with our money, while his generosity consists in the fine name with which he here gilds his fiscal exactions, a new constraint added to so many others which he imposes on us and which we endure.[6393]—Besides, through instinct and tradition, the State is naturally inclined to multiply constraints, and this time there is no concealment. From six to thirteen years of age, primary instruction becomes obligatory.[6394] The father is required to prove that his children receive it, if not at the public school at least in a private school or at home. During these seven years it continues, and ten months are devoted to it each year. The school takes and keeps the child three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon; it pours into these little heads all that is possible in such a length of time, all that they can hold and more too,—spelling, syntax, grammatical and logical analysis, rules of composition and of style, history, geography, arithmetic, geometry, drawing, notions of literature, politics, law, and finally a complete moral system, "civic morality."
It is obviously very useful for every adult to be able to read, write and reckon. Who, then, can criticize a Government because it insists that all children be taught these basic skills? But for the same reason and on the same principle, provision could be made for swimming-schools in every village and town on the sea-coast, or on the streams and rivers; every boy should be obliged to learn how to swim.—That it may be useful for every boy and girl in the United States to pass through the entire system of primary instruction is peculiar to the United States and is comprehensible in an extensive and new country where multiplied and diverse pursuits present themselves on all sides;[6395] where every career may lead to the highest pinnacle; where a rail-splitter may become president of the republic; where the adult often changes his career and, to afford him the means for improvising a competency at each change, he must possess the elements of every kind of knowledge; where the wife, being for the man an object of luxury, does not use her arms in the fields and scarcely ever uses her hands in the household.[6396]—It is not the same in France. Nine out of ten pupils in the primary school are sons or daughters of peasants or of workmen and will remain in the condition of their parents; the girl, adult, will do washing and cooking all her life at home or abroad; the son, adult, confined to his occupation will work all his life in a shop or on his own or another's field. Between this destiny of the adult and the plenitude of his primary instruction, the disproportion is enormous; it is evident that his education does not prepare him for the life he has to lead; but for another life, less monotonous, under less restraint, more cerebral, and of which a faint glimpse disgusts him with his own;[6397] at least, it will disgust him for a long time and frequently, until the day comes when his school acquisitions, wholly superficial, shall have evaporated in contact with the ambient atmosphere and no longer appear to him other than empty phrases; in France, for an ordinary peasant or workman, so much the better if this day comes early.[6398]
At the very least, three quarters of these acquisitions are for him superfluous. He derives no advantage from them, neither for inward satisfaction or for getting ahead in the world; and yet they must all be gone through with. In vain would the father of a family like to curtail his children's mental stores to useful knowledge, to reading, writing and arithmetic, to giving to these just the necessary time, at the right season, three months for two or three winters, to keep his twelve-year-old daughter at home to help her mother and take care of the other children, to keep his boy of ten years for pasturing cattle or for goading on the oxen at the plow.[6399] In relation to his children and their interests as well as for his own necessities, he is suspect, he is not a good judge; the State has more light and better intentions than he has. Consequently, the State has the right to constrain him and in fact, from above, from Paris, the State does this. Legislators, as formerly in 1793, have acted according to Jacobin procedure, as despotic theorists. They have formed in their minds a uniform, universal, simple type, that of a child from six to thirteen years as they want to see it, without adjusting the instruction they impose on it to its prospective condition, making abstraction of his positive and personal interest, of his near and certain future, setting the father aside, the natural judge and competent measurer of the education suitable to his son and daughter, the sole authorized arbiter for determining the quality, duration, circumstances and counterpoise of the mental and moral manipulation to which these young lives, inseparable from his own, are going to be subject away from home.—Never, since the Revolution, has the State so vigorously affirmed its omnipotence, nor pushed in encroachments on and intrusion into the proper domain of the individual so far, even to the very center of domestic life. Note that in 1793 and 1794 the plans of Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau and of Saint-Just remained on paper; the latter for ten years have been in practical operation.[63100]
At bottom, the Jacobin is a sectarian, propagator of his own faith, and hostile to the faith of others. Instead of admitting that that people's conceptions are different and rejoicing that there are so many of them, each adapted to the human group which believes in it, and essential to believers to help them along, he admits but one, his own, and he uses power to force it upon adherents. He also has his own creed, his catechism, his imperative formula, and he imposes them.— Henceforth,[63101] education shall be not only free and obligatory but again secular and nothing but secular. Thus far, the great majority of parents, most of the fathers and all of the mothers, were desirous that it should at the same time be religious. Without speaking of professing Christians, many heads of families, even lukewarm, indifferent or skeptical, judge that this mixture of the two is better for children, and especially for girls. According to them, knowledge and faith should not enter into these young minds separate, but combined and as one aliment; at least, in the particular case in which they were concerned, this, in their view, was better for the child, for themselves, for the internal discipline of the household, for good order at home for which they were responsible, for the maintenance of respect, and for the preservation of morals. For this reason, the municipal councils, previous to the laws of 1882 and 1886, still free to choose instruction and teachers as they pleased, often entrusted their school to the Christian Brethren or Sisters under contract for a number of years, at a fixed price, and all the more willingly because this price was very low.[63102] Hence, in 1886, there were in the public schools 10,029 teachers of the Christian Brethren and 39,125 of the Sisters. Now, since 1886, the law insists that public instruction shall be not only secular, but that lay teachers only shall teach; the communal schools, in particular, shall be all secularized, and, to complete this operation, the legislator fixes the term of delay; after that, no member of a congregation, monk or nun, shall teach in any public school.
Meanwhile, each year, by virtue of the law, the communal schools are secularized by hundreds, by fair means or foul; although this is by right a local matter, the municipal councils are not consulted; the heads of families have no voice in this private, domestic interest which touches them to the quick, and such a sensitive point. And likewise, in the cost of the operation their part is officially imposed them; at the present day,[63103] in the sum-total of 131,000,000 francs which primary instruction costs annually, the communes contribute 50,000,000 francs; from 1878 to 1891, in the sum-total of 582,000,000 francs expended on school buildings, they contributed 312,000,000 francs.—If certain parents are not pleased with this system they have only to subscribe amongst themselves, build a private school at their own expense, and support Christian Brothers or Sisters in these as teachers. That is their affair; they will not pay one cent less to the commune, to the department or to the State, so that their tax will be double and they will pay twice, first for the primary instruction which they dislike, and next for the primary instruction which suits them.—Thousands of private schools are founded on these conditions. In 1887,[63104] these had 1,091,810 pupils, about one fifth of all children inscribed in all the primary schools. Thus one fifth of the parents do not want the secular system for their children; at least, they prefer the other when the other is offered to them; but, to offer it to them, very large donations, a multitude of voluntary subscriptions, are necessary. The distrust and aversion which this system, imposed from above excites can be measured by the number of parents and children and by the greatness of the donations and subscriptions. Note, moreover, that in many of the other communes, in all places where the resources, the common understanding and the generosity of individual founders and donators are not sufficient, the parents, even distrustful and hostile, are now constrained to send their children to the school which is repugnant to them.—In order to be more precise, imagine an official and daily journal entitled Secular journal, obligatory and gratuitous for children from six to thirteen, founded and supported by the State, at an average cost of 582,000,000 francs to set it agoing, and 131,0000,000 francs of annual expenditure, the whole taken from the purses of taxpayers, willingly or not; take it for granted that the 6,000,000 children, girls and boys, from six to thirteen, are forced subscribers to this journal, that they get it every day except Sundays, that, every day, they are bound to read the paper for six hours. The State, through toleration, allows the parents who do not like the official sheet to take another which suits them; but, that another may be within reach, it is necessary that local benefactors, associated together and taxed by themselves, should be willing to establish and support it; otherwise, the father of a family is constrained to read the secular journal to his children, which he deems badly composed and marred by superfluities and shortcomings, in brief edited in an objectionable spirit. Such is the way in which the Jacobin State respects the liberty of the individual.
On the other hand, through this operation, it has extended and fortified itself; it has multiplied the institutions it directs and the persons whom it controls. To direct, inspect, augment and diffuse its primary instruction, the State has maintained 173 normal schools for teachers, male and female, 736 schools and courses of lectures in primary, superior and professional instruction, 66,784 elementary schools, 3,597 maternal schools, and about 115,000 functionaries, men and women.[63105] Through these 115,000 officials, representatives and megaphones, Secular Reason, which is enthroned at Paris, sends its voice even to the smallest and most remote villages. It is this Reason, as our rulers define it, with the inclinations, limitations and prejudices they have need of, the near-sighted and half-domesticated grand-daughter of that other formidable sightless, brutal and mad grandmother, who, in 1793 and 1794, sat under the same name and in the same place. With less of violence and blundering, but by virtue of the same instinct and with the same one-sidedness, the latter employs the same propaganda. She too wants to seize the new generations, and through her programs and manuals, her insinuations and summaries of the Ancient Regime, the Revolution and the Empire, by her perceptions of recent or contemporary matters, through her formulae and suggestions in relation to moral, social and political affairs, it is of her and she alone, that she preaches and glorifies.
VI. Summary.
Total and actual effect of the system.—Increasing unsuitableness between early education and adult life. —Change for the worse in the mental and moral balance of contemporary youth.
In this manner does the education by the State end. (in 1890) When a matter is taken out of the hands of those who are concerned and handed over to a third and differently motivated party, it cannot end well; sooner or later, this basic defect will dominate and lead to unexpected results. In this case a growing disparity between education and life. On the three levels of instruction, infancy, adolescence and youth, the actual theoretical and direct instruction is extended and overloaded with the examination, the grade, the diploma and the certificate in view only. To this end any and all means is used; through the application of an unnatural and anti-social system competition, through excessive delay in practical apprenticeship, through the internat, through artificial stimulation and mechanical cramming, and through overwork. There is no consideration of the future, of the adult epoch and the duties of the complete man. The real world in which the young man is about to enter, the state of society to which he must adapt or resign himself, the human struggle in which he must defend himself or keep erect is left out. For this new life he is neither armed, equipped, drilled and hardened. That solid common sense, that determination and those steady nerves, indispensable tools in life, are not dispensed by our schools; quite the contrary; far from qualifying him for his approaching independence the schools disqualify him for it. Accordingly, his entrance into the world and his first steps on the field of practical life are generally a series of painful failures; as a consequence he remains bruised, often for a long time, offended sometimes permanently crippled. This is a rude and dangerous ordeal; the moral and mental balance is altered and risks never being restored; his illusions vanish too suddenly and too completely. His deceptions have been too great and his disappointment too severe. Sometimes, among close friends, embittered and worn out like himself, he is tempted to tell us:
"Through your education you have led us to believe, or you have let us believe, that the world is made in a certain fashion. You have deceived us. It is much uglier, more dull, dirtier, sadder and harder, at least in our opinion and to our imagination: you judge us as overexcited and disordered; if so, it is your fault. For this reason, we curse and scoff at your world and reject your pretended truths which, for us, are lies, including those elementary and primordial verities which you declare are evident to common sense, and on which you base your laws, your institutions, your society, your philosophy, your sciences and your arts."
This is what our contemporary youth, through their tastes, opinions, vague desires in letters, arts and life, have loudly proclaimed for the past fifteen years.[63106] (Written in 1890.)
*****
POSTSCRIPT:
It is only fair to the French to note that they have, since the law called Debre in 1959 allowed the Catholic schools to operate freely with teachers paid by the state provided they,
* use qualified teachers,
* have a contract with the government submitting to inspection of their buildings etc.,
* submit to government study programs,
* regular accepted hours etc. (SR.)
*****
[Footnote 6301: Ordinance of Oct. 4, 1814.]
[Footnote 6302: Liard, "L'Enseignement superieur pendant la Restauration." (Rev. des deux Mondes, number for Feb.15, 1892.) Decree of April 8, 1814.]
[Footnote 6303: Ordinance of April 17, 1815 (to suppress the university pay and separate the sole University into seventeen regional universities.) This ordinance, dating from the last days of the first Restoration, is repealed the first days of the second Restoration, Aug. 15, 1815.]
[Footnote 6304: "The Modern Regime," p.316. (Laff. II 581-582.)]
[Footnote 6305: Basset, censor of studies in the Charlemagne college, "Coup d'oeil general sur l'Education et l'Instruction publique en France" (1816), p. 21. (State of the University in 1815.)]
[Footnote 6306: Today, in year 2000, the educational machinery in France employs more than 1 million teachers and, as all children are in school from the age of 3 to at least 16 years of age, there are more than 12 million children and students under the tutelage of the state. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6307: Political party terms.]
[Footnote 6308: Ordinance of Feb.21, 1821, article 13, and Report by M. de Corbieres: "The youth clamour for a religious and moral direction.. .. The religious direction belongs by right to the highest pastors: it is proper to ask from them for these establishments (the university colleges) for constant supervision and to legally call on them to suggest all measures that they may deem necessary."]
[Footnote 6309: Liard, "L'Enseignement superieur," 840 (Speech by Benjamin Constant in the Chamber of Deputes, May 18th, 1827).]
[Footnote 6310: Ordinances of Novem. 21, 1822, article I, and Feb. 2, 1823, article II.]
[Footnote 6311: Ordinances of Sep. 6, 1822, and of Feb. 21st, 1821, title VI, with report by M. de Corbieres.]
[Footnote 6312: Liard, ibid., p. 840. (Circular addressed to the rectors by Monseigneur Freyssinous immediately after his installation:) "In summoning a man of sacerdotal character to the head of public instruction, His Majesty has made all France well aware of his great desire to have the youth of his kingdom brought up in monarchical and religious sentiments.... Whoever has the misfortune to live without religion, or not to be devoted to the reigning family, ought to be sensible of what he lacks in becoming a worthy instructor of youth. He is to be pitied and is even culpable."—"Ambroise Rendu," by Eug. Rendu, p. III (circular to rectors in 1817). "Make it known to the MM. the bishops and to all ecclesiastics that, in the work of education, you are simply auxiliaries, and that the object of primary instruction is above all to fortify religious instruction."]
[Footnote 6313: De Riancey, "Histoire de l'instruction publique," II.,312. (Apropos of the lectures by Guizot and Cousin, stopped by Mgr. de Freyssinous:) "He did not believe that a Protestant and a philosopher could treat the most delicate questions of history and science with impartiality, and through a fatal effect of the monopoly he found himself placed between his conscience and the law. On this occasion he sacrificed the law."]
[Footnote 6314: Liard, ibid., p.837. After 1820, "a series of measures are passed which, little by little, give back its primitive constitution to the University and even end in incorporating it more closely with power than under the Empire."]
[Footnote 6315: Here Taine describes the very principle of democratic government in a welfare state. "Do not worry, demand and we supply, the rich will pay!!!" Taine understood and foresaw the riches which the industrial society could be made to produce but neither he nor anyone else could foresee that Human Rights should include central heating, housing, running hot and cold water, television, free health care, a car and worldwide tourism..(SR.)]
[Footnote 6316: See "The Modern Regime," I., pp.183, 202.]
[Footnote 6317: Maggiolo, "des Ecoles en Lorraine." (Details on several communal schools.) 3rd part, pp. 9-50.—Cf. Jourdain, "le Budget de l'Instruction publique," 1857, passim. (Appropriation by the State for primary instruction in 1829, 100,000 francs; in 1832, 1,000,000 francs; in 1847, 2,400,000 francs;—for secondary instruction, in 1830, 920,000 francs; in 1848, 1,500,000 francs; in 1854, 1,549,241 francs. (The towns support their own communal colleges.)—Liard," Universites et Facultes," p. II. In 1829, the budget of Faculties does not reach 1,000,000 francs; in 1848, it is 2,876,000 francs.]
[Footnote 6318: Law of Floreal 11, year X, article 4.—"Rapport sur la statistique comparee de l'enseignement primaire," 1880, vol. II.,p. 133;—31 per cent of the pupils in the public schools were gratuitously admitted in 1837; 57 per cent in 1876-77. The congregationists admit about two thirds of their scholars gratuitously and one third for pay.]
[Footnote 6319: Cf. Jourdain, Ibid., pp. 22, 143, 161.]
[Footnote 6320: Cf. Jourdain, Ibid., p.287. (The fixed salary and examination-fees are included in the above figures.) In 1850, the regular salary of the professor in the Paris Medical Faculty is reduced from 7000 to 6000 francs. In 1849, the maximum of all the salaries of the Law professors is limited to 12,000 francs.]
[Footnote 6321: Read, among other biographies, "Ambroise Rendu," by Eug. Rendu.]
[Footnote 6322: This, in France, lasted until the Communists in 1946 insisted as a price for their participation in governing France that the right to strike for civil servants be inserted in the French Constitution. In this way Stalin was sure to trouble France a great deal. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6323: "Rapport sur la statistique comparee de l'enseignement primaire," 1880, vol. II.,pp.8, 110, 206.—Law of March 15, 1850, "Expose des motifs," by M. Beugnot.]
[Footnote 6324: "Revue des Deux Mondes," number of Aug.15, 1869, pp. 909, 911. (Article by M. Boissier.)]
[Footnote 6325: Act of Nov. 9, 1818. (Down to 1850 and after, the University so arranged its teaching (in high school) as not to come in conflict with the clergy on the debatable grounds of history. For example, at the end of the 8th grade the history of the Roman Empire after Augustus was rapidly passed over and then, in the 9th grade, they began again with the invasion of the barbarians. The origins of Christianity and the entire primitive history of the Christian Church were thus avoided. For the same reason, modern history ended in 1789.]
[Footnote 6326: M. Guizot, "Memoires," vol. II.]
[Footnote 6327: An eminent university personage, a political character and man of the world, said to me in 1850: "Pedagogy does not exist. There are only personal methods which each finds out for himself and eloquent phrases for effect on the public."—Breal, "Quelques mots sur l'instruction publique" (1872), p. 300: "France produces more works on sericiculture than on the direction of colleges; rules and a few works already ancient suffice for us."]
[Footnote 6328: On this day the monarchy of King Louis-Phillippe collapsed and the Republic was declared. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6329: "L'Eglise et l'Etat sous la monarchie de juillet," by Thureau-Dangin, 481-483.]
[Footnote 6330: Law of March 15, 1850 (Report by M. Beugnot).]
[Footnote 6331: Law of March 15, 1850, art. 21.]
[Footnote 6332: Law of March 15, 1850, article 21.]
[Footnote 6333: "Ambroise Rendu et l'Universite de France," by E. Rendu, p.128 (January, 1850). The discretionary power given to the prefects to punish "the promoters of socialism" among the teachers in the primary schools.—Six hundred and eleven teachers revoked.—There was no less repression and oppression in the secondary and higher departments of instruction.]
[Footnote 6334: Kingdom of July, (Louis-Philippe from 1830 to 24-2-1848.) (SR.)]
[Footnote 6335: De Riancey, ibid., II.., 476. (Words of M. Saint-Marc Girardin.) "We instruct, we do not bring up (children); we cultivate and develop the mind, not the heart."—Similar evidence, as for instance that of M. Dubois, director of the Ecole Normale and of M. Guizot, minister of public instruction. "Education is not up to the level of instruction." (Exposition of the intent of the law of 1836.)]
[Footnote 6336: De Riancey, ibid., II., 401, 475.—Thureau-Dangin, ibid., 145 and 146.—(Words of a fervent Catholic, M. de Montalembert, on the trial of the Free School, Sept.29, 1831.) "It is with a heart still distressed with these souvenirs (personal) that I here declare that, were I a father, I would rather see my children crawl their whole life in ignorance and idleness than expose them to the horrible risk I ran myself of obtaining a little knowledge at the cost of their father's faith, at the price of everything that is pure and fresh in their soul and of honor and virtue in their breast."—(Testimony of a zealous Protestant, M. de Gasparin.) "Religious education does not really exist in the colleges. I remember with horror how I was on finishing my national education. Were we good citizens? I do not know. But it is certain that we were not Christians."—Testimony of a free-thinker, Sainte-Beuve.) "In mass, the professors of the University, without being hostile to religion, are not religious. The pupils feel this, and they leave this atmosphere, not fed on irreligion, but indifferent.... One goes away from the University but little of a Christian."]
[Footnote 6337: Boissier, ibid., p.712]
[Footnote 6338: In my youth, I was able to talk with some of those who lived during the Consulate. All agreed in opinion. One, an admirer of Condillac and founder of a boarding-school, had written for his pupils a number of small elementary treatises, which I still possess.]
[Footnote 6339: Charles Hamel, "Histoire de Juilly," pp. 413, 419 (1818).—Ibid., 532, 665 (April 15, 1846.) The Tontine Association replaced by a limited association (40 years) with a capital of 500,000 francs in 1000 shares of 500 francs each, etc.]
[Footnote 6340: For example, "Monge," the "Ecole Alsacienne," the "Ecole libre des Sciences Politiques." Competent jurists recommend the founders of a private school to organize it under the form of a commercial association, with profit for its aim and not the public good. If the founders of the school wish to maintain the free management of it they must avoid declaring it "of public utility."]
[Footnote 6341: The "Ecole Alsacienne" has been supported for some years mainly by a subsidy of 40,000 francs allotted by the State. This year the State furnishes, "Monge" and "Sainte-Barbe" with subsidies of 130,000 and 150,000 francs, without which they would become bankrupt and close their doors. The State probably thus supports them so as to have a field of pedagogic experiences alongside of its lycees, or to prevent their being bought by some Catholic corporation.]
[Footnote 6342: Even when the masters are conciliatory or reserved the two institutions face each other and the pupils are aware of the antagonism; hence, they turn a cold shoulder to the pupils, education and ideas of the rival institution. In 1852, and on four circular journeys from 1863 to 1866, I was able to observe these sentiments which are now very manifest.]
[Footnote 6343: The period of the annual school examinations in France.—Tr.]
[Footnote 6344: This word means something more than an ordinary "boarding-school," as the reader will see by the text, and is therefore retained as untranslatable.—Tr.]
[Footnote 6345: Expositione universelle of 1889, "Rapport du jury," group II., 1st part, P.492.—Documents collected in the bureaus of public instruction for 1887. (To the internes here enumerated must be added those of private secular establishments, 8958 out of 20,174 pupils.)—Breal, "Excursions pedagogiques," pp.293, 298.]
[Footnote 6346: All these figures are today in 1998, 100 years later, no longer valid, they are only included in order to understand Taine's insights into human nature and education in general. In 1994-5 there were, in the State lycees and colleges over 4 millions students and only those whose parents live too far from the schools, or some 9%, are boarders. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6347: Today, in 1998, the number of pupils living on French school premises amount to approximatively 10%, mostly because the parents live too far away from the school. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6348: Breal, ibid., pp. 10, 13. Id., "Quelques mots sur l'instruction publique," p. 286. "The internat is nearly unknown in Germany.... The director (of the gymnase) informs parents where families can be found willing to receive boarders and he must satisfy himself that their hospitality is unobjectionable.... In the new gymnases there is no room for boarders."—Demogeot et Montucci, "Rapport sur l'enseignement secondaire en Angleterre et en Ecosse," 1865.—(I venture also to refer the reader to my "Notes sur l'Angleterre," for a description of Harrow-on-the-Hill and another school at Oxford, made on the spot.)]
[Footnote 6349: Taine, "Notes sur l'Angleterre," P.139. The pupils of the superior class (sixth form), especially the first fifteen of the class (monitors), the first pupil in particular, have to maintain order, insure respect for the rules and, taking it all together, take the place of our maitres d'etude.]
[Footnote 6350: Breal, "Quelques mots, etc.," pp.281, 282. The same in France, "before the Revolution,... except in two or three large establishments in Paris, the number of pupils was generally sufficiently limited.... At Port-Royal the number of boarders was never over fifty at one time."—"Before 1764, most of the colleges were day-schools with from 15 to 80 pupils," besides the scholarships. and peasant boarders, not very numerous.—"An army of boarders, comprising more than one half of our bourgeois class, under a drill regulated and overlooked by the State, buildings holding from seven to eight hundred boarders—such is what one would vainly try to find anywhere else, and which is essentially peculiar to contemporary France."]
[Footnote 6351: Breal, ibid., 287, id., "Excursions pedagogiques," p. 10. "I took part (with these pupils) in a supper full of gayety in the room of the celebrated Latinist, Corssen, and I remember the thought that passed through my mind when recurring to the meal we silently partook of at Metz, two hundred of us, under the eye of the censor and general superintendent, and menaced with punishment, in our cold, monastic refectory."]
[Footnote 6352: Even though Taine had visited Eton and other English schools, he appears to have a somewhat rosy picture of life inside these institutions. I have been 9 years to a similar school and can assure the reader that the headmaster's wife is no suitable substitute for a real mother and her table does not replace one's own home. The rector of my school once stated that boarding schools should only be resorted to when one could not remain at home. It was my impression that this school had two effects upon me: the first that I wanted, in spite of good grades, to stop my studies and get a job and the second that I became, like Taine, an opponent to the system. Later on in life I should come to appreciate all the useful things like languages, literature, math and physics which I had learned in this well-organized school. I also came to understand that much worse than harsh discipline is no discipline and no learning at all, something which happened to my children when they attended, for one year only, the American School in Bangkok. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6353: Pelet de la Lozere, "Opinions de Napoleon au Conseil d'Etat," p.172. (Session of April 7, 1807:) "The professors are to be transferred from place to place in the Empire according to necessity." —Decree of May 1, 1802, article 21: "The three functionaries in charge of the administration and the professors of the lycees may be transferred from the weakest to the strongest lycees and from inferior to superior places according to the talent and zeal they show in their functions."]
[Footnote 6354: A splendid description which also fits the international civil servants working for the United Nations. I know this because I was one for 32 years of my life. I suspect it also fits members of the police forces, secret or not. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6355: Act of Jan. 11, 1811.—Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 101 and 102.]
[Footnote 6356: Boissier ("Revue du Deux Mondes," Aug. 15, 1869, p. 919): "The externe lycees cost and the interne lycees bring in."]
[Footnote 6357: "Statistique de l'enseigncnient secondaire" (46,816 pupils, of which 33,092 internes and 13,724 externes).—Abbe Bougaud, "Le Grand Peril de l'Eglise du France," p. 135.—"Moniteur," March 14, 1865, Speech of Cardinal Bonnechose in the Senate.]
[Footnote 6358: Name of the navy school-ship at Brest.—TR.]
[Footnote 6359: Breal, "Quelques mots, etc.," p. 308: "We need not be surprised that our children, once out of the college, resemble horses just let loose, kicking at every barrier and committing all sorts of capers. The age of reason has been artificially retarded for them five or six years."]
[Footnote 6360: On the tone and turn of conversation among boys in school on this subject in the upper classes and even earlier, I can do no more than appeal to the souvenirs of the reader.—Likewise, on another danger of the internat, not less serious, which cannot be mentioned. (Here Taine undoubtedly refers to homosexuality. (SR.))]
[Footnote 6361: Breal, "Excursions pedagogiques," pp. 326, 327. (Testimony of two university graduates.) "The great college virtue is comradeship, which comprises a bond of union among the pupils and hatred of the master." (Bessot:) "Punishment irritates those who undergo it and engenders punishment. The pupils become wearied: they fall into a state of mute irritability coupled with contempt for the system itself and for those who apply it. Unruliness furnishes them with the means of avenging themselves or at least to relax their nerves; they commit disorders whenever they can commit them with impunity.... The interdiction of an act by authority is sufficient to excite the glory of committing it." (A. Adam, "Notes sur l'administration du'un lycee.")—Two independent and original minds have recounted their impressions on this subject, one, Maxime Du Camp, who passed through the lycee system, and the other, George Sand, who would not tolerate if for her son. (Maxime Du Camp, "Souvenirs litteraires," and George Sand, "Histoire de ma vie.")]
[Footnote 6362: All this was in 1890, a long time ago, and if there was much to learn then, how much do we not have to learn now? It helped, however, to reduce the curriculum, that Latin and Greek was removed from middle and senior high school programs and that international Socialism through the Politically Correct movement, either forbade or rewrote history, art and literature. In science, however, the young engineers and scientists have a lot more to learn today and that in all branches of science and especially in electronics. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6363: The so-called "Grandes Ecoles" which exist today and which continue to form the French administrative, commercial and scientific elite. They cannot be done away with since the French universities have become accessible for an ever increasing number of students since nearly 50% of the population pass their "bac" or final high school exam. The level of this exam has decreased year after year and only the preparatory schools for the Grande Ecoles continue to insist on verifying diligence and attention. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6364: Taine expresses this in the following manner: "elle a imagine quantite de cours surerogatoires et de luxe,.." (SR.)]
[Footnote 6365: This year (1892) 1750 candidates were entered or 240 vacancies in the Ecole Polytechnique, 230 for 30 places in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (section of Architecture) and 266 for 24 places in the Ecole Normale (section of Literature).]
[Footnote 6366: 1890.]
[Footnote 6367: In France today, in 2000, there are still preparatory schools which, in two or three years after their baccalaureat, prepare the young applicants for the various competetive entrance examinations to the "Grande Ecoles". 4000 specially selected students vie annually with each other for the 400 places in the Ecole Polytechnique. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6368: I was once, writes Taine, an examiner for admission to a large special school and speak from experience.. Taine was well placed to know about the system since he was first in the competetive entrance exam (concours) to the Ecole Normale Superior, and had also passed all his other studies with great brilliance. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6369: A practical apprenticeship in the Faculty of Medicine is less retarded; the future doctors, after the third year of their studies, enter a hospital for two years, ten months of each year or 284 days of service, including an "obstetrical stage" of one months. Later, on competing for the title of physician or surgeon in the hospitals and for the aggregation of the Faculty, the theoretical preparation is as onerous as that of other careers.]
[Footnote 6370: "Souvenirs" by Chancellor Pasquier. (Written in 1843). (Etienne Dennis Pasquier (Paris 1767—id. 1862) was a high official under Napoleon, and President of the upper house under Louis-Phillippe and author of "L'Histoire de mon temps", published posthumously in 1893. Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. On page 16 and 17 in volume I he fully confirms Taine's views. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6371: Idem., Nobody attended the Lectures of the Law faculty of Paris, except sworn writers who took down the professor's dictation and sold copies of it. "These were nearly all supported by arguments communicated beforehand... At Bourges, everything was got through within five or six months at most."]
[Footnote 6372: "Souvenirs" by Chancellor Pasquier, vol. I. p. 17. Nowadays, "the young man who enters the world at twenty-two, twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, thinks that he has nothing more to learn; he commonly starts with absolute confidence in himself and profound disdain for whoever does not share in the ideas and opinions that he has adopted. Full of confidence in his own force, taking himself at his own value, he is governed by one single thought, that of displaying this force and this estimate himself immediately so as to demonstrate what he is worth." This must have been written around 1830. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6373: This last quality is given by Sainte-Beuve.]
[Footnote 6374: Dunoyer, "De la liberte du travail" (1845), II.,119. The extraordinary progress of England in the mechanical arts, according to English engineers, "depends much less on the theoretical knowledge of scholars than on the practical skill of the workmen who always succeed better in overcoming difficulties than cultivated minds." For example, Watt, Stephenson, Arkwright, Crampton and, in France, Jacquart.]
[Footnote 6375: Today, in year 2000, the socialist revolutionaries have, through the Human Rights activities broken the chain between the generations, forbidden the parents, the teachers and the supervisors to correct and discipline their children and apprentices. The French educational system, perfectly equal, still survives and is probably the best in existence since it insists on teaching the students even if a lot of the curriculum is a dead loss. The final product is still a useful citizen and functionary, something which make France tick. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6376: Breal, "Quelques mots," etc.,, p. 336. (He quotes M. Cournot, a former rector, inspector-general, etc.:) "The Faculties know that they would be subject to warnings on the part of the authorities as well as to comparisons and regrettable desertions on the part of the pupils if the proportion between candidates and admissions did not vary between 45 and 50%... When the proportion of postponements reaches between 50 and 555 the examiners admit with groans, considering the hard times, candidates of which they would reject at least one half their hands were not tied." (This was 100 years ago, today less than 30% on the average, but more than 70% in certain bad areas, fail their Baccalaureat. The curriculum has, however, been lightened so that about 50% of the population may end up passing their baccalaureat. Democracy oblige. (SR.))]
[Footnote 6377: A machine for the forced feeding of ducks and geese to make their liver grow to excessive proportions.]
[Footnote 6378: An old professor, after thirty years of service, observed to me by way of summing up: "One half, at least, of our pupils are not fitted to receive the instruction we give them."]
[Footnote 6379: Lately, the director of one of these schools remarked with great satisfaction and still greater naivete: "This school is superior to all others of its kind in Europe, for nowhere else is what we teach taught in the same number of years."]
[Footnote 6380: But what if Taine was mistaken? What if he, like so many other highly talented and intelligent men, took his own superb intelligence and imagination for granted? What if the talent of such men is inherited? We know from identical twins how many of our particularities have been given to us at birth. What if most men are lazy and especially intellectually so, what if we can only be made to learn and think when under great stress, the stress introduced by fear of dismissal or hope of promotion or riches? Then the French system is perhaps hard, perhaps expensive but certainly useful in producing the great number of hardworking and competent and passively obedient supervisors and civil servants that any large organization needs. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6381: "Souvenirs", by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France, in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Although pupils were admitted in the preparatory Schools very early, "our navy, engineer and artillery officers were justly esteemed the best instructed in Europe, as able practically as theoretically; the position occupied by artillery and engineer officers from 1792 in the French army sufficiently attests this truth. And yet they did not know one tenth of those who now issue from the preparatory schools. Vauban himself would have been unable to undergo the examination for admission into the Polytechnic School." There is then in our system "a luxury of science, very fine in itself, but which is not necessary to insure good service on land or at sea." The same in civil careers, with the bar, in the magistracy, in the administration and even in literature and the sciences. The proof of this is found in the men of great talent who, after 1789, were prominent in the Constituent Assembly. In the new-born University there was not one half of the demand for attainments as is now exacted. There is nothing like our over-loaded baccalaureat, and yet there issued from it Villemain, Cousin, Hugo, Lamartine, etc. No Ecole Polytechnique existed, and yet at the end of the eighteenth century in France, we find the richest constellation of savants, Lagrange, Laplace, Monge, Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Berthollet, Hauey, and others. (Since the date of these souvenirs (1843) the defects in the French system have gotten worse.]
[Footnote 6382: In England and in the United States the architect and engineer produce more than we do with greater pliancy, fertility, originality and boldness of invention, with a practical capacity at least equal and without having passed six, eight or ten years in purely theoretical studies.—Cf. Des Rousiers, "La Vie Americaine," p. 619: "Our polytechnicians are scientific erudites.... The American engineer is not omniscient as they were, he is special." "But, in his specialty he has profound knowledge; he is always trying to make it more perfect by additions, and he does more than the polytechnician to advance his science" or his art. (Since Taine noted this times have changed; I once put my 3 older sons into the American school in Bangkok (in 1972), and not only did they not learn anything during their year there, they actually lost some of their reading and writing skills and I had to remove them as soon as I could. (SR.)).]
[Footnote 6383: In 1889 a law called Freycinet, France introduced 3 years of military service for all young men. Students and married men were, subject to certain conditions, released after one year of service. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6384: To facilitate his or her comprehension the reader might replace the word Jacobin with the expression Socialist, Marxist, national-socialist or Communist since they are all heirs to the heritage left by the French Revolutionaries. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6385: IIIrd Republique lasted from 14-9-1870 until 13-7-1940. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6386: Instruction is good, not in itself, but through the good it does, and especially to those who possess or acquire it. If, simply by raising his finger, a man could enable every French man or woman to read Virgil readily and demonstrate Newton's binomial theory, this man would be dangerous and ought to have his hands tied; for, should he inadvertently raise his finger, manual labor would be repugnant and, in a year or two, become almost impossible in France.]
[Footnote 6387: And so it happened. After the second world war, when international Marxism became installed its agents throughout the Western world, compulsory, unified education was pushed from the age of 14 to 16 and a majority of young remained in school till after their 18th birthday, an education which successfully made them believe that the attitudes and values they were taught were the only valid ones. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6388: Liard, "Universites et Facultes," p. 39 and following pages.—"Rapport sur la statistique comparee de l'instruction," vol. II. (1888).—"Exposition universelle de 1889" ("Rapport du jury," groupe II., part I., p.492.)]
[Footnote 6389: In 1994 there were in France 1389 public and 841 private lycees (SR.)]
[Footnote 6390: Liard, ibid., p. 77.]
[Footnote 6391: Also called the preparatory classes, the so-called math-sup and math-spe of the preparatory schools attached to the state lycees and attended by selected 18-20 year-old students. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6392: These figures were obtained in the bureaux of the direction of primary instruction.—The sum-total of 582,000,000 francs is composed of 241,000,000, furnished directly by the State, 28,000,000 furnished by the departments, and 312,000, 000 furnished by the communes. The communes and departments being, in France, appendices of the State, subscribe only with its permission and under its impulsion. Hence the three contributions furnish only one.—Cf. Turlin, "Organisation financiere et budget de l'Instruction primaire," p. 61. (In this study, the accounts are otherwise made up. Certain expenses being provided for by annuities are carried into the annual expenditure:) "From June 1, 1878, to Dec. 31, 1887, expenses of first installation, 528 millions; ordinary expenses in 1887, 173 millions."]
[Footnote 6393: Law of June 16, 1881 (on gratuitous education).]
[Footnote 6394: Law of March 28, 1882 (on obligatory education).]
[Footnote 6395: National temperament must here be taken into consideration as well as social outlets. Instruction out of proportion with and superior to condition works differently with different nations. For the German adult it is rather soothing and a derivative; with the adult Frenchman it is especially an irritant or even an explosive.]
[Footnote 6396: It might be interesting to note what Mark Twain wrote on India education about the same period when Taine wrote this text: "apparently, then, the colleges of India were doing what our high schools have long been doing—richly over-supplying the market for highly educated service; and thereby doing a damage to the scholar, and through him to the country. At home I once made a speech deploring the injuries inflicted by the High School in making handicrafts distasteful to boys who would have been willing to make a living at trades and agriculture if they had but had the good luck to stop with the common school. But I made no converts. Not one, in a community overrun with educated idlers who were above following their fathers' mechanical trades, yet could find no market for their book-knowledge."]
[Footnote 6397: Among the pupils who receive this primary instruction the most intelligent, who study hardest, push on and pass an examination by which they obtain the certificate that qualifies them for elementary teaching. The consequences are as follows. Comparative table of annual vacancies in the various services of the prefecture of the Seine and of the candidates registered for these places. ("Debats," Sep. 16, 1890:) Vacancies for teachers, 42; number of registered candidates, 1,847. Vacancies for female teachers, 54; number of candidates, 7,139.—7,085 of these young women, educated and with certificates, and who cannot get these places, must be content to marry some workman, or become housemaids, and are tempted to become lorettes. (From the church of Notre Dame de Lorette in Paris in the neighborhood of which many young, pretty women of easy virtue were to be found. (SR.))]
[Footnote 6398: Taine wrote this when compulsory education in France kept the children in school until their 13th year. Today in year 2000 they must stay until they are 16 years old but more often continue until they are 19—23 years old. (SR.)]
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