The Modern Regime Volume II Part 20

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 inst.i.tution 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 hara.s.sed 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 inst.i.tution 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 cla.s.s of the lycees, to the lasting injury of the seventeen-year old brains. Again, after this date, we see in the cla.s.s 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 ma.s.ses, 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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 pa.s.s 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, circ.u.mstances 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 munic.i.p.al 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 munic.i.p.al 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 mult.i.tude 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 ent.i.tled 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, a.s.sociated 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 inst.i.tutions 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 compet.i.tion, 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 inst.i.tutions, 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: Ba.s.set, 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, t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sed which, little by little, give back its primitive const.i.tution to the University and even end in incorporating it more closely with power than under the Empire."]