446. The Convention.—The Constituent Assembly and the Legislative Assembly had done nothing more than to prepare reports and projected decrees, without either discussing them or bringing them to a vote. The Convention went so far as to vote, but it did not have the time to execute the resolutions, contradictory and incoherent, which it was forced to adopt, one after another, by the fluctuation of political currents.

447. Successive Measures.—Nothing definite in the way of execution issued from the enthusiastic passion which the Convention exhibited for the organization of primary instruction. First there was a triumph of modern ideas in the bill of Lanthenas, the first article of which was adopted December 12, 1792; and they appeared again in the bill of SieyÈs, Daunou, and Lakanal, presented June 26, 1793, and defeated after an exciting discussion. But the influence of the Girondists was succeeded by the domination of the Montagnards[208] whose dictatorial and violent spirit is indicated: 1. in the bill of Lepelletier, adopted through the support of Robespierre, August 13, 1793; 2. in the bill projected and presented by Romme in behalf of the commission of public instruction, October 20, 1793, and passed on the following day; 3. and lastly in the bill of Bouquier, which, presented December 19, 1793, became the decree of December 26. The reaction which followed resulted in the legislative acts by which the Convention finished its educational work. The bill of SieyÈs, Daunou, and Lakanal was reconsidered, and November 17, 1793, it was substituted for the bill of Bouquier. Finally, when the constitution of 1794 was substituted for the constitution of 1793, a new law of public instruction was passed on the report of Daunou, October 27, 1795, and it is this law which presided over the organization of schools under the Directory.

In this confusion, this chaos of bills and counter-bills, it is difficult to establish any clew that is wholly trustworthy. We shall restrict ourselves to noting the points that seem essential.[209]

Impatient to finish its business, the committee on public instruction, which the Convention had appointed October 2, 1792, decided to put aside, for the present, the other branches of public instruction, and proposed for immediate action only the organization of primary schools, by taking, as a point of departure, the bill which Condorcet had presented to the Legislative Assembly. The report of Lanthenas and a proposed decree were within a few weeks the results of these deliberations; but in all its parts this result is scarcely more than the reproduction of Condorcet’s work, and presents nothing original. Let us note, however, the idea of associating the pupil with his teacher in the work of instruction:—

“Teachers will call to their aid the pupils whose intelligence shall have made the most rapid progress; and they will thus be able, very easily, to give to four classes of pupils, in the same session, all the attention needed for their progress. At the same time, the efforts made by the most competent to teach what they know to their schoolmates, will be much more instructive to themselves than the lessons they receive from their masters.”

Further, let us notice title III. of the proposed decree relative to the measures to be taken in order to make obligatory the use of the French language, and to abolish the patois, or particular idioms. The minimum salary of men teachers was fixed at six hundred francs. The appointment of teachers was entrusted to the heads of families, who were to elect one from a list prepared by a “commission of educated persons” appointed by the Councils-General of the communes and the Directories of departments.

448. The Bill of Lanthenas.—The discussion of the bill of Lanthenas began on December 12, 1792, but only article first was carried, and the bill itself did not become a law.

On December 20, another member of the Convention, Romme, mathematician, deputy from Puy-de-DÔme, read a new report on public instruction.

449. The Bill of Romme.—The bill of Lanthenas aimed at only the first grade of instruction, but the report of Romme embraced the four grades of instruction, and was but little more than a reproduction of Condorcet’s work. But no legislative measure followed the reading of his bill, and up to the 30th of May, 1793, there is scarcely anything to be noted, as the educational work of the Convention, save the bill of Rabaud Saint-Étienne on public festivals, and the report of Arbogast on elementary books.

450. National Holidays.—It is difficult to form an idea of the importance which the men of this period attributed to the educational influence of national holidays. At variance on so many points, they all agree in thinking that the French people could be instructed and regenerated simply by establishing popular solemnities.

“It is a kind of institution,” said Robespierre, “which ought to be considered as an essential part of public education,—I mean national holidays.”

Daunou also persisted in considering national holidays as the most certain and the most comprehensive means of public instruction. The decree passed at his request established seven national holidays: that of the foundation of the Republic, of young men, of husbands, of thanksgiving, of agriculture, of liberty, of old men.

451. Elementary Books.—An important point in the pedagogy of the Revolution was the attention given to the composition of elementary books. On several occasions the Convention put up for competition these modest works intended to aid parents or teachers in their task. It was one of the happiest thoughts of that period to desire that there should be placed in the hands of parents simple methods and well-arranged books which might teach them how to bring up their children. The difficulty of this kind of composition was understood, and so application was made to the most distinguished writers. Bernardin de Saint Pierre was employed to edit the Elements of Morality.

December 24, 1792, Arbogast had submitted to the Convention a proposed decree in which it was said:—

“It is only the superior men in a science, or in an art, those who have sounded all its depths, and have carried it to its farthest limits, who are capable of composing such elementary treatises as are desirable.”

452. Decree of May 30, 1793.—The first decree of the Convention relative to primary schools was passed May 30, 1793. But this laconic law contained nothing very new. Besides, it was forgotten in the storm which on the next day, May 31, swept away the Girondists, and gave to the Montagnards the political supremacy.

453. Lakanal (1762-1845).—After the revolution of May 31, among the men who, in the committee on public instruction and in the assembly itself, were occupied with the educational organization of France, we must assign the first place to Lakanal and Daunou. On June 26, 1793, three days after the adoption of the new constitution, Lakanal brought to the tribune the bill which he had drawn up in conjunction with Daunou and SieyÈs.

Lakanal is one of the purest and most remarkable characters of the French Revolution.[210] “Lakanal,” said Marat, to whom some one had denounced him, “works too much to have the time to conspire.” Industrious and thoughtful, after having taught philosophy with the “Doctrinaires,” of whom he was the pupil, he became the first, after Condorcet, of the educators of the Revolution. “His appearance,” says Paul Bert, “has always particularly attracted me. It unites gentleness with force, energy with serenity. We feel that this austere citizen has never known any other passion than that of well-doing, and has neither desired nor obtained any other reward than that of having done his duty. He despises violence of language, and hates that of acts; and so we do not find him, under the Empire, a baron like Jean-Bon Saint AndrÉ, a minister like FouchÉ, or a senator like a whole herd.”

454. Daunou (1761-1840).—At an early period in his life, Daunou had taught philosophy in the colleges of the Oratorians, of whom he was a member. In 1789 he published in the Journal EncyclopÉdique, a plan of national education which was approved by the Oratory, and which he presented to the Constituent Assembly in 1790. In the Convention he took an active part in the work of the committee on public instruction, and assisted in the preparation of Lakanal’s first bill. In the same year he published an Essay on Public Instruction. In the Council of the Five Hundred he was appointed to make a report on the organization of special schools. Under the Empire he accepted the management of the national archives. Under the Restoration he was appointed professor of history in the College of France. Finally, after 1830, we find him once more in the Chamber of Deputies, giving proof of unusual energy and vitality, and presenting in opposition to the minister of public instruction, de Montalivet, a counter-bill, the principal aim of which was to lodge with the municipal authorities the administration of schools, a power which the government wished to leave in the hands of the inspectors.

455. The Bill of Lakanal, SieyÈs, and Daunou.—These are the principal provisions of this bill: a school for each thousand inhabitants; separate schools for girls and boys; the election of teachers entrusted to a board of inspectors composed of three members, and located at the government centre of each district; the general organization of methods, regulations, and school rÉgime placed in the hands of a central commission sitting with the Corps LÉgislatif, and placed under its authority; an education which embraces the whole man, at once intellectual, physical, moral, and industrial; the first lessons in reading given to boys as to girls by a woman teacher; arithmetic, geometry, physics, and morals included in the programme of instruction; visits to hospitals, prisons, and workshops; finally, liberty granted to private initiative to found schools.

“The law can put no veto on the right which all citizens have to open private courses and schools, free in all grades of instruction, and to direct them as shall seem to them best.” (Art. 61.)

This was pushing liberality rather far.

Another distinctive feature of this bill, which is not without value, is the respect shown the character and functions of the teacher. On public occasions the schoolmaster shall wear a medal with this inscription: He who instructs is a second father. The form is rather pretentious, but the sentiment is good. Other articles do not merit the same commendation, particularly the one which established theatres in each canton, in which men and women would take part in music and dancing.

The bill of Lakanal, vigorously opposed by a part of the Assembly, was not adopted. Under the leadership of Robespierre, the Convention gave preference to the dictatorial and violent measure of Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau.

456. Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau (1760-1793).—Assassinated in 1793, Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau left among his papers an educational bill which Robespierre took up, and which he presented to the Assembly July 13, 1793, on the occasion of the debate opened on the motion of BarrÈre. A month later the bill was passed by the Convention, but before being carried into operation, the decree was revoked. The Assembly receded from the accomplishment of a reform in which some good intentions could not atone for measures that, on the whole, were mischievous and tyrannical.

457. His Scheme of Education.—The plan of Lepelletier scarcely deserves the admiration which Michelet gives it, who salutes in this work the “revolution of childhood,” and who declares that it is “admirable in spirit, and in no respect chimerical.” An imitation with but little originality of the institutions of Lycurgus and the reveries of Plato, the plan of Lepelletier is scarcely more than an historical curiosity.

458. Lepelletier and Condorcet.—Lepelletier accepted Condorcet’s plan in all that relates to secondary schools, institutes, and lycÉes, that is to say, higher primary instruction, secondary instruction, and superior instruction.

“I find,” he said, “in these three courses a plan which seems to me wisely conceived.”

But Lepelletier follows only his own fancy in the conception of those curious boarding-schools, little barracks for childhood, in which he confined all children by force, wresting them from their parents, and placing at the expense of the State their moral training, as well as their material support.

459. Obligatory Attendance in Boarding-Schools.—In education, Lepelletier represents the doctrine of the Jacobins. In order to make France republican, he would employ radical and absolute measures.

“Let us ordain,” he says, “that all children, girls as well as boys, girls from five to eleven, and boys from five to twelve, shall be educated in common, at the expense of the State, and shall receive, for six or seven years, the same education.”

In order that there may be complete equality, their food, like their instruction, shall be the same; even more, their dress shall be identical. Does Lepelletier then desire, in his craze for equality, that girls shall be dressed like boys?

460. The Child belongs To the Republic.—The idea of Lepelletier is that the child is the property of the State, a chattel of the Republic. The State must make the child in its own image.

“In our system,” he says, “the entire being of the child belongs to us; the material never leaves the mould.” And he adds, “Whatever is to compose the Republic ought to be cast in the republican mould.”

Lepelletier imposes on all children, girls and boys, the same studies,—reading, writing, numbers, natural morality, domestic economy. This is almost the programme of Condorcet. But he adds to it manual labor. All children shall be employed in working the soil. If the college has not at its disposal enough land to cultivate, the children shall be taken out on the roads, there to pick up stones or to scatter them. Can we imagine, without smiling, a system of education, in which our future advocates and writers are to spend six years in transporting material upon the highways?

461. Absolute Gratuity.—The colleges in which Lepelletier sequesters and quarters all the children are to be absolutely free. Three measures were proposed for covering the expense: 1. tuition paid by parents in easy circumstances; 2. the labor of the children; 3. the balance needed furnished by the State. But is there not just a little of the chimerical in counting much on the work of children of that age?

462. The Rights of the Family.—Lepelletier takes but little account of the rights of the family. However, notice must be taken of that idea which Robespierre thought “sublime,”—the creation, at each college, of a council of heads of families, entrusted with the oversight of teachers and their children.

463. Saint-Just.—Saint-Just, in his Institutions rÉpublicaines, maintains opinions analogous to those of Lepelletier. He admits that the child belongs to his mother till the age of five; but from the age of five till death he belongs to the Republic. Till the age of sixteen boys are fed at the expense of the State. It is true that their food is not expensive. It is composed of grapes, fruit, vegetables, milk-diet, bread, and water. Their dress is of cotton in all seasons. However, Saint-Just did not subject girls to the same rÉgime. More liberal on this point than Lepelletier, he would have them brought up at home.

464. The Romme Law (Oct. 30, 1793).—Romme was one of the most active members of the committee on public instruction. He was the principal author of the bill which the Convention passed in October, 1793, the principal articles of which were conceived as follows:—

“Art. 1. There are primary schools distributed throughout the Republic in proportion to the population.

“Art. 2. In these schools children receive their earliest physical, moral, and intellectual education, the best adapted to develop in them republican manners, love of country, and taste for labor.

“Art. 3. They learn to speak, read, and write the French language.

“They are taught the acts of virtue which most honor free men, and particularly the acts of the French Revolution most fit to give them elevation of soul, and to make them worthy of liberty and equality.

“They acquire some notions of the geography of France.

“The knowledge of the rights and duties of the man and the citizen is brought within their comprehension through examples and their own experience.

“They are given the first notions of the natural objects that surround them, and of the natural action of the elements.

“They have practice in the use of numbers, of the compass, the level, weights and measures, the lever, the pulley, and in the measurement of time.

“They are often allowed to witness what is done in the fields and in workshops; and they take part in these employments as far as their age permits.”

But the bill of Romme was not put in operation. The Convention presently decided on a revision of the decree it had passed, and the bill of Bouquier was substituted for the bill of Romme.

465. The Bouquier Law (Dec. 19, 1793).—Bouquier was a man of letters, deputy from Dordogne, and belonged to the Jacobinic party. He spoke of his bill as follows:—

“It is a simple and natural scheme, and one easy to execute; a plan which forever proscribes all idea of an academic body, of a scientific society, of an educational hierarchy; a plan, finally, whose bases are the same as those of the constitution, liberty, equality, and simplicity.”

The Bouquier bill was adopted December 19, and remained in force till it was superseded by the Lakanal law.

These are its principal provisions:—

“The right to teach is open to all.” “Citizens, men and women, who would use the liberty to teach, shall be required to produce a certificate of citizenship and good morals, and to fulfill certain formalities.” “They shall be designated as instituteurs and institutrices.” They shall be placed “under the immediate supervision of the municipality, of parents, and of all the citizens.” “They are forbidden to teach anything contrary to the laws and to republican morality.” On the other hand, parents are required to send their children to the primary schools. Parents who do not obey this order are sentenced, for the first offence, to pay a fine equal to a fourth of their school tax. In case of a second offence, the fine is to be doubled and the children to be suspended for ten years from their rights as citizens. Finally, young people who, on leaving the primary schools, “do not busy themselves with the cultivation of the soil, shall be required to learn a trade useful to society.”

Enforced school attendance, and what is an entirely different thing, the obligation of citizens to work, were thus established by the Bouquier law.

Let us add that the author of this bill, which, like so many others, was not executed, had strange notions on the sciences and on instruction.

“The speculative sciences,” he says, “detach from society the individuals who cultivate them.... Free nations have no need of speculative scholars, whose minds are constantly travelling over desert paths.”

Hence, no scientific instruction. The real schools, “the noblest, the most useful, the most simple, are the meetings of committees. The Revolution, in establishing national holidays, in creating popular associations and clubs, has placed in all quarters inexhaustible sources of instruction. Then let us not go and substitute for this organization, as simple and sublime as the people that creates it, an artificial organization, based on academic statutes which should no longer infect a regenerated nation.”

466. The Lakanal Law (Nov. 17, 1794).—There still remained something of the spirit of Lepelletier in the Bouquier law, though the idea of an education in common had been abandoned; but the Lakanal law openly breaks with the tendencies of Robespierre and his friends.

The law which was passed November 17, 1794, upon the report of Lakanal, reproduced in its spirit and in its principal provisions the original bill which the influence of Robespierre had defeated.

The following was the programme of instruction contained in this law.

The instructor shall teach:—

“1. Reading and writing; 2. the declaration of the rights of man and the constitution; 3. elementary lessons on republican morals; 4. the elements of the French language both spoken and written; 5. the rules of simple calculation and of surveying; 6. lessons on the principal phenomena and the most common productions of nature; there shall be taught a collection of heroic actions and songs of triumph.”

At the same time the bill required that the schools be divided into two sections, one for the girls and the other for the boys, and distributed in the proportion of one to each thousand inhabitants. The teachers, nominated by the people and confirmed by a jury of instruction, are to receive salaries as follows: men, twelve hundred francs; women, one thousand francs.

467. Pedagogical Methods.—Lakanal had given much thought to pedagogical methods. It is the interior of the school, not less than its exterior organization, that preoccupied his generous spirit. Like the most of his contemporaries, a partisan of Condillac’s doctrine, he believed that the idea could not reach the understanding except through the mediation of the senses. Consequently, he recommended the method which consists “in first appealing to the eyes of pupils, ... in creating the understanding through the senses, ... in developing morals out of the sensibility, just as understanding out of sensation.” This is an excellent method if we add to it a corrective, if we do not forget to excite the intelligence itself, and to make an appeal to the interior forces of the soul.

468. Elementary Books.—A few other quotations will suffice to prove with what acuteness of pedagogic sense Lakanal was endowed.[211] Very much interested in the composition of works for popular instruction, he sharply distinguished the elementary book, which brings knowledge within the reach of children, from the abridgment, which does no more than condense a long work. “The abridged,” he said, “is exactly opposed to the elementary.” No one has better comprehended than he the difficulty of writing a treatise on morals for the use of children:—

“It requires special genius. Simplicity in form and artless grace should there be mingled with accuracy of ideas; the art of reasoning ought never to be separated from that of interesting the imagination; such a work should be conceived by a profound logician and executed by a man of feeling. There should be found in it, so to speak, the analytical mind of Condillac and the soul of FÉnelon.”

469. Geography.—Lakanal has defined with the same exactness the method to be followed in the teaching of geography. “First let there be shown,” he says, “in every school, the plan of the commune in which it is situated, and then let the children see a map of the canton of which the commune forms a part; then a map of the department, and then a map of France; after which will come the map of Europe and of other parts of the world, and lastly a map of the world.”[212]

470. Letters and Sciences.—More just than Condorcet, Lakanal did not wish scientific culture to do prejudice to literary culture:—

“For a long time we have neglected the belles-lettres, and some men who wish to be considered profound regard this study as useless. It is letters, however, which open the intelligence to the light of reason, and the heart to impressions of sentiment. They substitute morality for interest, give pupils polish, exercise their judgment, make them more sensitive and at the same time more obedient to the laws, more capable of grand virtues.”

471. Necessity of Normal Schools.—Lakanal’s highest title to glory is that he has associated his name with the foundation of normal schools. The idea of establishing pedagogical seminaries was not absolutely new. A number of the friends of instruction, both in the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century,[213] had seen that it would be useless to open schools, if good teachers had not been previously trained; but the Convention has the honor of having for the first time given practical effect to this vague aspiration.

Decreed June 2, 1793, the foundation of normal schools was the object of a report by Lakanal on October 26, 1794. In a style which was inferior to his ideas, and which would have been more effective had it been simpler, Lakanal sets forth the necessity of teaching the teachers themselves before sending them to teach their pupils:—

“Are there in France, are there in Europe, are there in the whole world, two or three hundred men (and we need more than this number) competent to teach the useful arts and the necessary branches of knowledge, according to methods which make minds more acute, and truths more clear,—methods which, while teaching you to know one thing, teach you to reason upon all things? No, that number of men, however small it may appear, exists nowhere on the earth. It is necessary, then, that they be trained. In being the first to decree normal schools, you have resolved to create in advance a very large number of teachers, capable of being the executors of a plan whose purpose is the regeneration of the human understanding, in a republic of twenty-five millions of men, all of whom democracy renders equal.”

The term normal schools (from the Latin word norma, a rule) was not less new than the thing. Lakanal explains that it was designed by this expression to characterize with exactness the schools which were to be the type and the standard of all the others.

472. The Normal School of Paris.—To accomplish his purpose, Lakanal proposed to assemble at Paris, under the direction of eminent masters, such as Lagrange, Berthollet, and Daubenton, a considerable number of young men, called from all quarters of the Republic, and designated “by their talents as by their state of citizenship.” The masters of this great normal school were to give their pupils “lessons on the art of teaching morals, ... and teach them to apply to the teaching of reading and writing, of the first elements of calculation, of practical geometry, of history and of French grammar, the methods outlined in the elementary courses adopted by the National Convention and published by its orders.” Once instructed “in the art of teaching human knowledge,” the pupils of the Normal School of Paris were to go and repeat in all parts of the Republic the “grand lectures” they had heard, and there form the nucleus of provincial normal schools. And thus, says Lakanal with exaggeration, “that fountain of enlightenment, so pure and so abundant, since it will proceed from the foremost men of the Republic of every class, poured out from reservoir to reservoir, will diffuse itself from place to place throughout all France, without losing anything of its purity in its course.”

October 30, 1794, the Convention adopted the proposals of Lakanal. The Normal School opened January 20, 1795. Its organization was defective and impracticable. First, there were too many pupils,—four hundred young men admitted without competitive tests, and abandoned to themselves in Paris; professors who were doubtless illustrious, but whose literary talent or scientific genius did not perhaps adapt itself sufficiently to the needs of a normal course of instruction and of a practical pedagogy; lectures insufficient in number, which lasted for only four months, and which, on the testimony of Daunou, “were directed rather towards the heights of science than towards the art of teaching.” Thus the experiment, which terminated May 6, 1795, did not fulfill the hopes that had been formed of it: the idea of establishing provincial normal schools was not carried out. But no matter; a memorable example had been given, and the fruitful principle of the establishment of normal schools had made a start in actual practice.

473. Central Schools.—The central schools, designed to replace the colleges of secondary instruction, were established by decree of February 25, 1795, on the report of Lakanal. Daunou modified them in the law of October 25, 1795. They continued, without great success, till the law of May 1, 1802, which suppressed them.

474. Defects of the Central Schools.—The Central Schools of Lakanal resembled, trait for trait, the Institutes of Condorcet. And it must be confessed that here the imitation is not happy. Lakanal made the mistake of borrowing from Condorcet the plan of these poorly defined establishments, in which the instruction was on too vast a scale, and the programmes too crowded, where the pupil, it seems, was to learn to discuss de omni re scibili. Condorcet went so far as to introduce into his Institutes a course of lectures on midwifery! The Central Schools, in which the instruction was a medley of studies indiscreetly presented to an overdriven auditory, do honor neither to the Convention that organized them, nor to Condorcet who had traced the first sketch of them.

475. Positive and Practical Spirit.—However, there was something correct in the idea which presided over the foundation of the Central Schools. We find this expressed in the Essays on Instruction, by the mathematician, Lacroix.[214] Lacroix calls attention to the fact that the progress of the sciences and the necessity of learning a great number of new things, impose on the educator the obligation to take some account of space; and, if I may so speak, of clipping the wings of studies which, like Latin, had thus far been the unique and exclusive object of instruction.

In the Central Schools, in fact, the classical languages held only the second place. Not only were the mathematical sciences, and those branches of knowledge from which the pupil can derive the most immediate profit, associated with the classics, but the preference was given to them. In the minds of those who organized these schools, the positive and practical idea of success in life was substituted for the speculative and disinterested idea of mental development for its own sake. In reality, these two ideas ought to complete each other, and not to exclude each other. The ideal of education consists in finding a system which welcomes both. But in the Central Schools the first point of view absorbed the second. These establishments resembled the industrial schools of our day, but with this particular defect, that there was a determination to include everything in them, and to give a place to new studies without wholly sacrificing the old. Let there be created colleges of practical and special instruction; nothing can be better, for provision would thus be made for the needs of modern society. But let no one force literary studies and the industrial arts to live together under the same roof.

476. Great Foundations of the Convention.—In the first years of its existence, the Convention had given its attention only to primary schools. It seemed as though teaching the illiterate to read was the one need of society. In the end the Convention rose above these narrow and exclusive views, and turned its attention towards secondary instruction and towards superior instruction. It is particularly by the establishment of several special schools for superior instruction that the Convention gave proof of its versatility and intelligence.

In quick succession it decreed and founded the Polytechnic School, under the name of the Central School of Public Works (March 11, 1794); the Normal School (October 30, 1794); the School of Mars (June 1, 1794); the Conservatory of Arts and Trades (September 29, 1794). The next year it organized the Bureau of Longitudes, and finally the National Institute. What a magnificent effort to repair the ruins which anarchy had made, or to supply the omissions which the old rÉgime had patiently suffered! Of these multiplied creations the greater number remain and still flourish.

477. Law of October 27, 1795.—Those who ask us to see in the decree of October 27, 1795, “the capital work of the Convention in the matter of instruction, the synthesis of all its previous labors and proposals, the most serious effort of the Revolution,”[215] evidently put forward a paradox. Lakanal and his friends would certainly have disavowed a law which cancels with a few strokes of the pen the grand revolutionary principles in the matter of education,—the gratuity, the obligation, and the universality of instruction.

The destinies of public instruction are allied to the fate of constitutions. To changes of policy there correspond, by an inevitable recoil, analogous changes in the organization of instruction. Out of the slightly retrograde constitution of 1793 there issued the educational legislation of 1794, of which it could be said that “the spirit of reaction made itself painfully felt in it.”

Daunou, who was the principal author of it, doubtless had high competence in questions of public instruction; but with a secret connivance of his own temperament he yielded to the tendencies of the times. He voluntarily condescended to the timidities of a senile and worn-out Assembly, which, having become impoverished by a series of suicides, had scarcely any superior minds left within it.

478. Insufficiency of Daunou’s Scheme.—Nothing could be more defective than Daunou’s plan. The number of primary schools was reduced. It is no longer proposed to proportion them to the population. Daunou goes back to the cantonal schools of Talleyrand: “There shall be established in each canton of the Republic one or more primary schools.” We are far from Condorcet, who required a school for each group of four hundred souls, and from Lakanal, who demanded one for each thousand inhabitants. On the other hand, teachers no longer receive a salary from the State. The State merely assures to them a place for a class-room and lodging, and also a garden! “There shall likewise be furnished the teacher the garden which happens to lie near these premises.” There is no other remuneration save the annual tuition paid by each pupil to the teacher. At the same stroke the teacher was made the hireling of his pupils, and gratuity of instruction was abolished. Only the indigent pupils, a fourth of the whole number, could be exempted by the municipal administration from the payment of school fees. Finally, the programme of studies was reduced to the humblest proportions: reading, writing, number, and the elements of republican morality.

After so many noble and generous ambitions, after so many enthusiastic declarations in favor of the absolute gratuity of primary instruction, after so many praiseworthy efforts to raise the material and moral condition of teachers, and to cause instruction to circulate to the minutest fibres of the social tissue, the Convention terminated its work in a mean conception which thinned out the schools, which impoverished the programmes, which plunged the teacher anew into a precarious state of existence, which put him anew at the mercy of his pupils, without, however, taking care to assure him of patronage, and which, for his sole compensation in case he had no pupils to instruct, guaranteed him the right to cultivate a garden, if, indeed, there should be one in the neighborhood of the school! Had the law of 1795 been in fact the educational will of the Convention, is it not true, at least, that it is after the manner of those wills extorted by undue means, where a man by his final bequests recalls his former acts, and proves himself faithless to all the aspirations of his life?

No, it is not from Daunou, but from Talleyrand, from Condorcet, and from Lakanal that we must seek the real educational thought of the Revolution. Doubtless the measure of Daunou had over all previous measures the advantages of being applied, and of not remaining a dead letter; but the glory of the early Revolutionists should not be belittled by the fact that circumstances arrested the execution of their plans, and that a century was necessary in order that society might attain the ideal which they had conceived. They were the first to proclaim the right and the duty of each citizen to be instructed and enlightened. We are ceaselessly urged to admire the past and to respect the work of our fathers. We do not in the least object to this, but the Revolution itself also forms a part of that past, and we regret that the men who so eloquently preach the worship of traditions and respect for ancestors, are precisely those who the most harshly disparage the efforts of the Revolution.