The Modern Regime Volume II Part 22

[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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 quant.i.te 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 pa.s.sed all his other studies with great brilliance. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6369: A practical apprenticeship in the Faculty of Medicine is less r.e.t.a.r.ded; 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 t.i.tle 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., n.o.body 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 pa.s.sing 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 navete: "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 pa.s.sively 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 Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. 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, Hauy, 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tudes 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 cla.s.ses, 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 pa.s.s 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.)]

[Footnote 6399: In certain cases, the school commission may grant exemptions. But there art two or three parties in each commune, and the father of a family must stand well with the dominant party to obtain them.]

[Footnote 63100: After the second world war the world, helped by the United Nations, have pushed obligatory education further and further, and the number of dissatisfied youth have consequently increased and increased. (SR.)]

[Footnote 63101: Law of March 28, 1882, and Oct. 30, 1886.]

[Footnote 63102: "Journal des Debats," Sep. 1, 1891. Report of the Commission on Statistics: "In 1878-9 the number of congregationist schools was 23,625 with 2,301,943 pupils."]

[Footnote 63103: Bureaux of the direction of public instruction, budget of 1892.]