Chapter 97
[5] In 1909 a decree restored Greek and Latin to their old place of first importance in the Lycees, thus destroying the strong interest in scientific instruction, in so far as the higher secondary schools were concerned, which had characterized the Revolution.
[6] _Report on the Condition of Public Instruction in Germany, and particularly in Prussia_. Paris, 1831. Reprinted in London, 1834; New York City, 1835.
[7] Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot was Minister for public Instruction from 1832 to 1837, and head of the French government from 1840 to 1848. He was throughout his entire political career a conservative, anxious to preserve const.i.tutional government under a monarchy and stem the tide of republicanism.
[8] We see here the beginnings of education in agriculture, in which the French were pioneers.
[9] The schools, though, were not very successful, because of social reasons. Parents who could afford to do so sent their children to the much higher-priced Communal Colleges or _Lycees_, where Latin was the main study, in preference to sending them to a scientific, modern-type, middle- cla.s.s school, as conferring a better social distinction on both pupils and parents.
[10] By 1838 there were 14,873 public schools the property of the communes; by 1847 there were 23,761; and by 1851 but 2500 out of approximately 37,000 communes were without schools. There were also over six thousand religious schools by 1850. By 1834 the number of boys in the communal schools was 1,656,828, and a decade later over two millions. The thirteen normal schools of 1830 had grown to seventy-six by 1838, with over 2500 young men then in training for teaching. In 1836 the Law of 1833 was extended to include, where possible, schools for girls as well, and the creation of a new set of normal schools to train schoolmistresses was begun. By 1848 over three and a half millions of children, of both s.e.xes, were receiving instruction in the primary schools. In 1835 primary inspectors, those "sinews of public instruction," as Guizot termed them, were established, one for every Department, by royal decree. By 1847 there were two inspectors-general, and 13 inspectors and sub-inspectors at work in France.
[11] This was in large part due to manufacturing and business needs, as France was rapidly forging ahead during the period as a manufacturing and commercial nation.
[12] Prominent among these, perhaps most prominent, was Jules Ferry, Mayor of Paris during the trying period of 1870-71, then member of the French legislature and Minister of Public Instruction in a number of cabinets between 1879 and 1885. Drawing his inspiration from Condorcet's _Plan of Education_ (p. 514; R. 256) and Edgar Quinet's _Instruction of the People_ (R. 289), he brought about the enactment of a series of reform school laws commonly known as the "Ferry Laws." These provided for free, compulsory, elementary education, to be given by laymen; secondary education for girls; the extension of normal schools; and enlarged aid by the State in the building up of popular education.
[13] "The non-sectarian school is not the work of a few advanced thinkers imposed upon a docile country. They would not have been able to create anything enduring if the French conscience had not been ready to follow them. This is what the adversaries of our schools do not wish to understand, cannot understand, or are anxious to conceal from those whom they direct. Certainly they have the right to attempt a reaction according to their own preferences. They have no right to believe, nor even to allow it to be believed, that the creation of the non-sectarian school was the _coup de force_ of an audacious minority. The non-sectarian school has come because the nation wished it. The program of moral instruction, long prophesied, conceived, and hoped for, was in the traditions of France as she marched forward toward her republican aspirations. This program is not only the conscious effort of the men who gave the school a new mission-- that of laying the foundation of social peace through elementary instruction; it is the expression of the republican conscience of 1882."
(Moulet, Alfred, _D'une education morale democratique_.)
[14] "To each man his proper sphere; to the minister of religion the liberty of preaching the doctrine of the different churches, to teachers who teach in the name of the State, that is, of society, the right of limiting themselves to the field of universal human morals, together with the duty of refraining from any attack on religious beliefs. Neutrality is guaranteed by the secularization of the teaching body, and it must be strictly observed." (Compayre, Gabriel.)
[15] "The most striking feature is that, in place of the one single and uniform course for all pupils, several are provided for their selection.
Here is obvious the influence of the elective courses common in the United States, whose existence and success were reported on to the Minister of Public Instruction by the Commission to the World Exposition at Chicago, in 1893. The courses last seven years. The school period is divided into two cycles, first one of four years, and then one of three. In the first cycle, the pupils have a choice of two sections, one emphasizing the ancient and modern languages, the other the modern languages and science.
In the second cycle there are four sections, viz., Graeco-Latin; Latin- modern languages; Latin-scientific; and scientific-modern languages."
(Compayre, Gabriel, _Education in France_.)
[16] Arnold, Matthew, _Schools and Universities on
[17] For example, by the Peace of Luneville (1801), by which Napoleon took from the Germans all territory west of the Rhine and consolidated it, he extinguished 118 free cities, princ.i.p.alities, and petty states. In addition, he extinguished the separate existence of 160 others east of the Rhine. The importance of such consolidations for the future of Germany has been large.
[18] Bologna, for example, had 166 professors in the early seventeenth century, but by 1737 it had but 62. The universities came chiefly to be places where young men obtained degrees but not learning. At Naples a n.o.ble family by the name of Avellino came to have the power of virtually selling degrees in law and medicine.
[19] Not only were schools built up, but commerce, roads, and in particular scientific agriculture were subjects of deep interest to Cavour. He saw, very clearly, that if Sardinia was to be the nucleus of a future Italy, Sardinia must show unmistakably her worthiness to lead.
[20] By 1859 Sardinia had come to include Savoy and Lombardy, and was the largest State in northern Italy. A year later all but Venetia and the States of the Church had been added.
[21] The Law of 1877 fixed the instruction in the primary schools, for the three compulsory years, as reading, writing, the Italian language, elements of civics, arithmetic, and the metric system. The omission of religious instruction excited much opposition from church authorities, but without effect.
CHAPTER XXIV
[1] Prussia and Holland possibly form exceptions in the matter. Frederick the Great (p. 474) was noted for his liberality in religious matters.
There different varieties of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews were all tolerated, and there they mingled and intermarried. So well were the Jews received that the type--German-Jew--is to-day familiar to the world.
[2] As early as 1670, in the celebrated Bates case, the English court held that a teacher could not be dispossessed from his school for teaching without the Bishop's license, if he were the nominee of the founder or patron. This led (p. 438) to a great increase in endowed schools.
[3] In the c.o.x case (1700), another important legal decision, the English court held that there was not and never had been any ecclesiastical control over any schools other than grammar schools, and that teachers in elementary schools did not need to have a license from the Bishop. The year following, in the case of _Rex_ v. _Douse_, the same principle was affirmed in even clearer language.
[4] It was not until 1779 that an Act (19 Geo. III, c. 44) granted full freedom to Dissenters to teach. In 1791 a supplemental Act (31 Geo. III, c. 32, s. 13-14) granted similar liberty to Roman Catholics.
[5] It was this second Society that did notable work in the Anglican Colonies of America, and particularly in and about New York City (p. 369).
See Kemp, W. W., _Support of Schools in Colonial New York by the S.P.G._ (New York, 1913.)
[6] Begun, in 1704, in London, these were continued yearly there until 1877. They were also preached for more than a century in many other places. To these sermons the children marched in procession, wearing their uniforms, and a collection for the support of the schools was taken. Of the first of these occasions in London, Strype; in his edition of Stow, says: "It was a wondrous surprising, as well as a pleasing sight, that happened June the 8th, 1704, when all the boys and girls maintained at these schools, in their habits, walked two and two, with their Masters and Mistresses, some from Westminster, and some through London; with many of the Parish ministers going before them; and all meeting at Saint Andrews', Holburn, Church, where a seasonable sermon was preached... upon Genesis xviii, 19, _I know him that he will command his children_, etc., the children (about 2000) being placed in the galleries."
[7] "The religious revival under Wesley owed, perhaps, more than is generally suspected to the Christian teaching in these new and humble elementary schools." (Montmorency, J. E. G. de, _The Progress of Education in England_, p. 54.)
[8] He gathered together the children (90 at first) employed in the pin factories of Gloucester, and paid four women a s.h.i.+lling each to spend their Sundays in instructing these poor children "in reading and the Church Catechism."
[9] Sunday being a day of rest and the mills and factories closed, the children ran the streets and spent the day in mischief and vice. In the agricultural districts of England farmers were forced to take special precautions on Sundays to protect their places and crops from the depredations of juvenile offenders.
[10] "In a very special way they met the sentiment of the times. They were cheap--many were conducted by purely voluntary teachers--they did not teach too much, and they had the further merit of not interfering with the work of the week." (Birchenough, C., _History of Elementary Education in England and Wales_, p. 40.)
[11] In a Manchester Sunday School, in 1834, there were 2700 scholars and 120 unsalaried teachers, all but two or three of whom were former pupils in the Sunday Schools, now teaching others, free of charge, in return for the advantages once given them.
[12] "The amount of instruction rarely, if ever, exceeds the first four rules of arithmetic, with reading and writing. The cla.s.s of children instructed is presumed to be of the very poorest, living in the most crowded districts. No doubt a large number come under this designation, but not a few better-to-do persons are found ready to take advantage for their children of the free instruction thus held out to them, and even at times almost pressed upon them." (Bartley, George C. T., _The Schools for the People_, p. 385.)
[13] The Reverend George Crabbe (1754-1832). "The schools of the Borough."
[14] French Revolutionary thought "represented an attack on over- interference, vested interests, superst.i.tion, and tyranny of every form.
It showed a marked propensity to ignore history, and to judge everything by its immediate reasonableness. It pictured a society free from all laws and coercion, freed from all clerical influence and ruled by benevolence, a society in which all men had equal rights and were able to attain the fullest self-realization. In its strictly educational aspects, it demanded the withdrawal of education from the Church and the setting up of a state system of secular instruction." (Birchenough, C., _History of Elementary Education in England and Wales_, p. 20.)
[15] The ideas of Malthus were especially offensive to his brother clergymen, and created quite a furor. Many regarded him as an insane and unorthodox fanatic. A prevailing idea of the time was that of a "beautiful order Providentially arranged," and it was the custom to give everything a rose-colored hue. The poor were thought to be contented in their poverty, and the rich and the aristocratic considered themselves divinely appointed to rule over them. Malthus saw the fallacy of such thinking, and stated matters in the light of biologic and political truths.
[16] Foster, John, _An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance_, p. 259.
[17] Bell, Reverend Dr. Andrew, _An Experiment in Education made at the Male Asylum at Madras, Suggesting a System by which a School or a Family may teach itself under the Superintendence of the Master or Parent_.
London, 1797.
[18] Lancaster, Joseph, _Improvements in Education as it Respects the Industrial Cla.s.ses of the Community_. London, 1803; New York, 1807.
[19] Both Bell and Lancaster worked with great energy to organize schools after their respective plans, and quarreled with equal energy as to who originated the idea. While both probably did, the idea nevertheless is older than either. In 1790 Chevalier Paulet organized a monitorial school in Paris; while the English schoolmaster, John Brinsley (1587-1665), in his _Ludus Literarius, or the Grammar Schooles_ (1612), laid down the monitorial principle in explicit language.
[20] This Society adopted, as a fundamental principle, "that the national religion should be made the foundation of national education, and according to the excellent liturgy and catechism adopted by our Church for that purpose."
[21] "When Lancaster had his famous interview with King George III, that monarch was impressed, as he naturally might be, by the statement that one master 'could teach five hundred children at the same time.' 'Good,' said the King; 'Good,' echoed a number of wealthy subscribers to Lancaster's projects." (Binns, H. B., _A Century of Education_, p. 299.)
[22] In 1807 Mr. Whitbread, an ardent supporter of schools, said, in an address before the House of Commons: "I cannot help noticing that this is a period particularly favorable for the inst.i.tution of a national system of education, because within a few years there has been discovered a plan for the instruction of youth which is now brought to a state of great perfection, happily combining rules by which the object of learning must be infallibly attained with expedition and cheapness, and holding out the fairest prospect of utility to mankind."
[23] When Lancaster first hired the large hall in Borough Road which later became an important training-college, and opened it as a mutual- instruction school, he announced: "All that will may send their children, and have them educated freely, and those who do not wish to have education for nothing, may pay for it if they please."
[24] In 1820, Brougham, in introducing his "Bill for the Better Education of the Poor in England and Wales," gave statistics as to the progress of education at that time in England. His estimate as to the numbers being educated were:
430,000 in endowed and privately managed schools; 220,000 in monitorial schools; 50,000 being educated at home; 100,000 educated only in Sunday Schools; 53,000 being educated in dame schools.
From these figures he argued that one in fifteen of the population of England and one in twenty in Wales were attending some form of school, but with only one in twenty-four in London. The usual period of school attendance for the poorer cla.s.ses was only one and a half to two years.
[25] Known as the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act. It limited the working hours of apprentices to twelve; forbade night work; required day instruction to be provided in reading, writing, and arithmetic; required church attendance once a month; and provided for the registration and inspection of factories. The Act was very laxly enforced, and its chief value lay in the precedent of state interference which it established.