The story of education; Education in France

You're Pacific University program today and in the broadcast a follow is based upon the story of education published by Chilton books in June 1962 co-author with your narrator was Dr. Eugene my skier and I cistern superintendent in charge of teacher recruitment for the New York City Board of Education. By presenting these excerpts from our book The Story of education we are hoping that you our listening audience may be better able to understand the whys and wherefores of our own American schools. Our topic today the evolution of Education in France. Two American education England gave its early traditions pressure its ideas and organization and methods. Why the major contribution of France was the theory that man has certain natural rights to be respected and cultivated. Paris had been the first great medieval center of learning but during the Renaissance the French universities proved hostile to humanism. New ideas invariably are looked upon with

suspicion by established institutions so that even the kings who had been rapidly gaining power were able to force the introduction of this new type of learning. The universities it had to struggle too long during the Middle Ages to gain their right of self government from both church and state. Not to put up stop resistance to outside interference. Hence in order to have an institution has spendable to humanism. France is the first found it necessary to set up the Coase de France the municipal governments of Bordeaux only on the air only on Iran's also established institutions to promote the new classical learning. As has been the case with all vital and vigorous educational movements humanism once established lost its vigor and became formalized. Typical of its critics was Petrus Rama's wed here do the naturalistic interest in science and mathematics in attacking both the heiress to Tilly and

scholasticism of the universities and formalize humanism. He set out to reform each of the seven liberal arts by improving the material studied and by making the methods of acquisition the simpler and easier. His aim was to make knowledge applied more readily to actual social situations to free it from ecclesiastical control and above all to emphasize science and mathematics. Ramos wrote new textbooks became quite popular in European countries and later in colonial America. But it was not a church man Katie or a scientist but a man of affairs and letters who most effectively combined humanism and naturalism and his attacks upon formalism of verbal ism and blind reliance upon authority in his sophisticated essays miss she had to moan Taney urge that the proper education of a gentleman should include the classics as a source of wisdom and action and not merely as models of literary style. Modern languages as well as classics

history travel and wide social contacts and physical education. In America Thomas Jefferson advocated and tried to put into operation many of the ideas the moment pain. During the Reformation period Catholic leaders in France showed themselves more willing to expand and reform a secondary education than they were to provide common education for the masses. There was but little serious thought given to changing the traditional I was to create a conception of Medieval and Renaissance education. In the 17th century however the French estates general did call upon the church to establish schools in all towns and villages and to institute compulsory attendance before the end of the Reformation period there were several Catholic orders promoting elementary education. The purpose of founding most of those schools was to provide free education for poor children of the working classes where the dominant aim invariably being to prepare

used to become good Catholic men and women. In the eighteenth century the religious rivalries that marked the Reformation had largely given way to rivalries over commercial and nationalistic interest. The church conducted its schools with very little civil control. However Louis the Fourteenth did issue edicts covering what the university professors could and could not teach. And he required instruction in French civil as well as canon law. Governmental extravagance economic disasters of the colonial wars abroad heavier taxation and irritating social injustices that eventually led to the French Revolution in which the Declaration of the Rights of Man enunciated the liberal principles that form the basis of most of the democratic constitutions of the 19th century. That man are born free and equal brought an entirely new slant into education. It should be free compulsory and secular.

The French Revolution in setting out to create a new and more democratic society dramatized how important education might become as a tool of nationalism. Several plans were proposed but the most detailed was by the markers to Khandahar say. He proposed a complete state system with elementary schools throughout the country within walking distance for all pupils intermediate schools located in all medium sized towns provide more advanced education for the common people. Secondary Schools are institutes in the cities to give not only a classical education but also a wide variety of subjects adapted to the needs of the people. Kandar say further propose nine these say to replace the traditional universities in higher and professional education. And at the very top there was to be a National Society of Arts and Sciences through which scholars could exert influence over the entire educational

system. The end of the French Revolution prevented this plan from being put into operation but its ideas were embodied later in the school laws of France and other nations. However in attempting to establish a state educational system the National Convention confiscated church property and suppress the teaching orders noteworthy was the new emphasis upon the political use of education to make better citizens. Napoleon secured for France a large measure of law order and efficiency and even equality before the law. But he did not allow democracy. In order to strengthen the centralized power of the state and a well France into a united nation. Napoleon found it advisable to reach an agreement with the Catholic Church by restoring it to a privileged position through the Concord it eight thousand five hundred one. He did refuse to return the lands the Republic had

confiscated and preserve some measure of religious liberty by refusing to recognize Catholicism as the only religion in France. Napoleon was less interested in elementary education than in secondary schools. The latter he expected to train in loyal and efficient body of officials to help carry on his government. The law of eighteen hundred to return elementary schools to church control at the same time it provided the framework for a state system a secondary schools under public control. Police say of the larger towns became the standard secondary school to France. The preferred way to prepare for entrance to universities. This developed into a residential boarding school received national funds for building construction and teacher salaries maintained a humanistic course of study and by charging fees it catered principal aid to the aristocratic classes. The Coase of the communes the smallest political division in France.

Also led to the universities but was not so well endowed as Elise A because it had to depend more for financial support upon its local community. The law of 18 0 2 also as tabbies to higher faculties of law medicine science technology and theology. During the period of restoration of the bourbon kings in 1814 1830 the church was given much more of its former status than the school's priests were appointed as principals and teachers in public schools and the licensing of private teachers was through bishops rather than state authorities. However secular interests regain much of the ground they had lost when the constitutional monarchy was established in the July revolution of 1830. Victor cousins visit precious in 1831 to study the organization the German schools. And his report form the basis for the law of

1833 there stablished the framework of French primary education. Each commune was required to provide a building and pay the teachers for a public primary school. Poor children attended free but fees were charged those parents who could afford to pay the private religious schools continued in operation but their teachers had to be certified by the mayor of the commune as well as by church officials. It was stipulated that no child in the public primary schools could be forced to receive any religious instruction against the wishes of the parents. In the principal cities of the legal and political subdivisions known as departments they were authorized higher primary schools designed to offer vocational preparation and I got cultural commercial and industrial subjects appropriate to each region. The law of 1833 also provided for establishment of each department of a primary normal school for the training of teachers. In the late 1830s infant schools were set up but children of preschool

aged primary schools for girls and so-called adult classes were boys beyond 14 and girls over 12. Primary education was still neither free nor compulsory but was started toward that objective. France probably more than any other European country has continuously changes governments and each shift has involved the educational system. When Louis Napoleon became emperor largely on the strength of his famed uncle's reputation he saw to it that bishops and other church officials games to teach positions in the control of education that's making it easier for the clergy to teach in the public primary and secondary schools. Liberals in the schools were hunted down exiled in certain cases and discharged others while the normal schools were kept under close surveillance to prevent them from becoming hotbeds for the growth of liberal social political or educational ideas. The disastrous defeat by Prussia and 1870 overthrew the Second

Empire and under the Third Republic Democratic ideas regained ascendancy. The modern form of French education was realized in the 1880s through a series of laws promoted by Juve's Faery. Fees were abolished in the primary schools and compulsory education required between the ages of 6 and 13. The Ministry of Public Instruction was given complete control over the details of curriculum selection the textbooks examination and appointment of teachers and payment of salaries in primary schools. There developed much stricter supervision at private religious schools. Regardless a form of government moniker any empire or Republic French leaders have believed in a strongly centralized system of state education. The Third Republic brought with it many democratic trends. But these did not prove strong enough to eliminate the two track system of schooling that provides one type of training for

the upper classes and still another for the masses. Occasionally attempts are made to grant secondary school scholarships to talented poor children but until 1933 the lease A's virtually limited their membership to the privileged few. That year they began the process of abolishing tuition fees. In the mean time practical education had been gaining ground in the higher primary schools and beyond them they developed technical and trade schools as part of the two track system. Always foremost has been the glorification of France based upon the authoritarian role of the teacher in strict discipline. I'm questioning a beating as the pupils and rigid adherence to state curriculum and textbooks. The socialist and Republican forces brought about the separation act in 1905 stipulating that within 10 years all teachers in elementary schools were to be laymen and all religious teaching orders suppressed. While the Third Republic had allowed

no religious instruction in public schools a half holiday per week was set aside for children to receive such instruction out of school. If parents desired. Then came the Nazis and they see France the Fourth Republic and General de Gaulle.