The History Of Education, Ellwood P. Cubberley [motivational novels .TXT] 📗

higher primary schools in the principal towns; colleges (secondary schools) in the chief cities (one for every four thousand inhabitants); a higher school for each “department”; Lyc�es, or institutions of still higher learning, at nine places in France; and a National Society of Sciences and Arts to crown the educational system at Paris. The national system of education he proposed was to be equally open to women, as well as men, and to be gratuitous throughout. Teachers for each grade of school were to be prepared in the school next above. Sunday lectures for workingmen and peasants were to be given by teachers everywhere. Public morality, political intelligence, human progress, and the preservation of liberty and equality were the aims of the instruction. The necessity for education in a constitutional government he saw clearly. “A free constitution,” he writes, “which should not be correspondent to the universal instruction of citizens, would come to destruction after a few conflicts, and would degenerate into one of those forms of government which cannot preserve the peace among an ignorant and corrupt people.” Anarchy or despotism he held to be the future for peoples who become free without being enlightened. He held it to be a fundamental principle that:

 

The order of nature includes no distinctions in society beyond those of education and wealth. To establish among citizens an equality in fact, and to realize the equality confirmed by law, ought to be the primary object of national instruction.

 

The bill proposed by Condorcet, while too ambitious for the France of his day, was thoroughly sound as a democratic theory of education, and an accurate prediction of what the nineteenth century brought generally into existence. Condorcet’s Report was discussed, but not acted upon.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 160. THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE

Founded by Article 298 of the Constitution of Year III (1793)]

 

3. The National Convention (September 21, 1792, to October 26, 1795).

The Convention was also a radical body, deeply interested in the creation of a system of state schools for the people of France. To higher education there was for a time marked opposition, though later in its history the Convention erected a number of important higher technical institutions and schools, among the most important of which was the Institute of France.

There was also in the Convention marked opposition to all forms of clerical control of schools. The schools of the Brothers of the Christian Schools were suppressed by it, in 1792, and all secular and endowed schools and colleges were abolished and their property confiscated, in 1793. The complete supremacy of the State in all educational matters was now asserted. Great enthusiasm was manifested for the organization of state primary schools, which were ordered established in 1793 (R. 258 a), and in these:

 

Children of all classes were to receive that first education, physical, moral, and intellectual, the best adapted to develop in them republican manners, patriotism, and the love of labor, and to render them worthy of liberty and equality.

 

The course of instruction was to include: “to speak, read, and write correctly the French language; the geography of France; the rights and duties of men and citizens; [8] the first notions of natural and familiar objects; the use of numbers, the compass, the level, the system of weights and measures, the mechanical powers, and the measurement of time. They are to be taken into the fields and the workshops where they may see agricultural and mechanical operations going on, and take part in the same so far as their age will allow.”

 

What a change from the course of instruction in the religious schools just preceding this period!

 

[Illustration: FIG. 161. LAKANAL (1762-1845)]

 

A multiplicity of reports, bills, and decrees, often more or less contradictory but still embodying ideas advanced by Condorcet and Talleyrand, now appeared. Whereas the preceding legislative bodies had considered the subject carefully, but without taking action, the Convention now acted. The nation, though, was so engrossed by the internal chaos and foreign aggression that there was neither time nor funds to carry the decrees into effect.

 

The most extreme proposal of the period was the bill of Lepelletier le Saint-Fargeau to create a national system of education modeled closely after that of ancient Sparta. The best of the proposals probably was the Lakanal Law, of November 17, 1794, which ordered a school for every one thousand inhabitants, with special divisions for boys and girls, and which provided for instruction in:

 

1. Reading and writing the French language.

2. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Constitution.

3. Lessons on republican morals.

4. The rules of simple calculation and surveying.

5. Lessons in geography and the phenomena of nature.

6. Lessons on heroic actions, and songs of triumph.

 

Lakanal also carefully prescribed the method of instruction, and advocated the founding of a national normal school (Latin norma; a rule), which idea the Convention adopted in 1794, the school opening [9] in January, 1795. Supplementing this was the law of February 25, 1795, ordering central or higher schools established to replace the former colleges, [10]

one for every three hundred thousand of the population, which were to offer instruction from twelve to eighteen. The course was to include: 12 to 14—Drawing, natural history, ancient and living languages.

14 to 16—Mathematics, natural philosophy, experimental chemistry.

16 to 18—Grammar, literature, history, legislation.

 

Organized on a soviet principle, each professor declared the equal of every other, and lacking any effective administration or discipline, these institutions soon fell into disrepute and were displaced when Napoleon reorganized secondary education in France.

 

The law of October 25, 1795, closed the work of the Convention. This made less important provisions for primary education (R. 258 b) than had preceding bills, but was the only permanent contribution of this period to the organization of primary schools. It placed greater emphasis than had the legislative Assembly on the creation of secondary and higher institutions (R. 258 a), of more value to the bourgeois class. This bill of 1795 represents a reaction from the extreme republican ideas of a few years earlier, and the triumph of the conservative middle-class elements in the nation over the radical republican elements previously in control.

 

The Convention also, in the latter part of its history, created a number of higher technical institutions of importance, which were expressive alike of the French interest in scientific subjects which arose during the latter part of the eighteenth century, and of the new French military needs. Many of these institutions have persisted to the present, so well have they answered the scientific interests and needs of the nation. A mere list of the institutions created is all that need be given. These were:

 

Museum or Conservatory of Arts (Jan. 16, 1794).

Conservatory of Arts and Trades (Oct. 10, 1794).

New medical schools (Schools of Health) ordered (Dec. 4, 1794).

Museum of Natural History (Dec. 11, 1794).

Central Schools to succeed the former Colleges (secondary schools) (Feb. 25, 1795).

School of Living Oriental Languages (March 30, 1795).

Veterinary Schools (April 21, 1795).

Course in Archaeology, National Library (June 8, 1795).

Bureau of Longitude (June 29, 1795).

Conservatory of Music (Aug. 3, 1795).

The National Library (Oct. 17, 1795).

Museum of Archaeological Monuments (Oct. 20, 1795).

Polytechnic Schools (R. 257);

School of Civil Engineering;

School of Hydrographic Engineers; and School of Mining (Oct. 22, 1795).

 

The Convention also adopted the metric system of weights and measures; enacted laws under which the peasants could acquire title to the lands they had tilled for so long; and began the unification of the laws of the different parts of the country into a single set, which later culminated in the Code Napol�on.

 

4. The Directory (1795-99) and the Consulate (1799-1804). The Revolution had by this time largely spent itself, the Directory followed, and in 1799 Napoleon became First Consul and for the next sixteen years was master of France. The Law of 1795 for primary schools (R. 258 b) was but feebly administered under the Directory, as foreign wars absorbed the energies and resources of the Government. Napoleon’s chief educational interest, too, was in opening up opportunities for talent to rise, in encouraging scientific work and higher specialized institutions, and in developing schools of a type that would support the kind of government he had imposed upon France. The secondary and higher schools he established and promoted cost him money at a time when money was badly needed for national defense, and primary education was accordingly neglected during the time he directed the destinies of the nation. His educational organizations and work we shall refer to again in a later chapter.

 

The Revolutionary enthusiasts had stated clearly their theory of republican education, but had failed to establish a permanent state school system according to their plans. This now became the work of the nineteenth century. In the meantime, in the new United States of America the same ideas were taking shape and finding expression, and to the developments there we next turn.

 

III. THE NEW STATE THEORY IN AMERICA

 

WANING OF THE OLD RELIGIOUS INTEREST. As early as 1647 Rhode Island Colony had enacted the first law providing for freedom of religious worship ever enacted by an English-speaking people, and two years later Maryland enacted a similar law. Though the Maryland law was later repealed, and a rigid Church-of-England rule established there, these laws were indicative of the new spirit arising in the New World. By the beginning of the eighteenth century a change in attitude toward the old problem of personal salvation had become evident. Frontier conditions; the gradual rise of a civil as opposed to a religious form of town government; the rising interests in trade and shipping; the beginnings of the breakdown of the old aristocratic traditions and customs transplanted from Europe; the rising individualism in both Europe and America—these all helped to weaken the hold on the people of the old religious doctrines.

 

By 1750 the change in religious thinking in the American Colonies had become quite marked. [11] Especially was this change evidenced in the dying-out of the old religious fervor and intolerance, and the breaking-up of the old religious solidarity. While most of the Colonies continued to maintain an “established Church,” other sects had to be admitted to the Colony and given freedom of worship. The Puritan monopoly in New England was broken, as was also that of the Anglican faith in the central Colonies. The day of the monopoly of any sect in a Colony was over. New secular interests began to take the place of religion as the chief topic of thought and conversation, and secular books began to dispute the earlier predominance of the Bible. A few colonial newspapers had begun (seven by 1750), and these became expressive of the new colony interests.

 

CHANGING CHARACTER OF THE SCHOOLS. These changes in attitude toward the old religious problems materially affected both the support and the character of the education provided in the Colonies. The Law of 1647, requiring the maintenance of the Latin grammar schools, had been found to be increasingly difficult of enforcement, not only in Massachusetts, but in all the other New England Colonies which had followed the Massachusetts example. With the changing attitude of the people, which had become clearly manifest by 1750, the demand for relief from the maintenance of this school in favor of a more practical and less aristocratic type of higher school, if higher school were needed at all, became marked. By the close of the colonial period the new American Academy (p. 463), with its more practical studies, had begun to supersede the old Latin grammar school.

 

The elementary school experienced something of the same difficulties. Many of the parochial schools died out, while others declined in character and importance. In