  Paris, January 15, 1802. As after one of those awful and violent convulsions of nature which rend the bosom of the earth, and overthrow the edifices standing on its surface, men gradually repair the mischief it has occasioned, so the French, on the ruins of the ancient colleges and universities, which fell in the shock of the revolution, have from time to time reared new seminaries of learning, and endeavoured to organize, on a more liberal and patriotic scale, institutions for PUBLIC INSTRUCTION. The vast field which the organization of public instruction presents to the imagination has, as may be, supposed, given birth to a great number of systems more or less practicable; but, hitherto, it should seem that political oscillations have imprinted on all the new institutions a character of weakness which, if it did not absolutely threaten speedy ruin, announced at least that they would not be lasting. When the germs of discord prevailed, it was not likely that men's minds should be in that tranquil state necessary for the reestablishment of public seminaries, to lay the foundations of which, in a solid and durable manner, required the calm of peace and the forgetfulness of misfortune. After the suppression of the colleges and universities existing under the monarchy, and to which the CollÈge de France in Paris is the sole exception, the National Convention, by a decree of the 24th of NivÔse, year III (14th of January 1795) established Normal Schools throughout the Republic. Professors and teachers were appointed to them; and it was intended that, in these nurseries, youth should be prepared for the higher schools, according to the new plan of instruction. However, in less than a year, these Normal Schools were shut up; and, by a law of the 3d of Brumaire, year IV (25th of October, 1796) Primary, Secondary, and Central Schools were ordered to be established in every department. In the Primary Schools, reading, writing, and arithmetic formed the chief part of the instruction. Owing to various causes, the Secondary Schools, I understand, were never established. In the Central Schools, the internal regulation was to be as follows. The whole of the instruction was divided into three classes or sections. In the first, were taught drawing, natural history, and ancient and modern languages. In the second, mathematics, physics, and chymistry. In the third, universal grammar, the fine arts, history, and legislation. Into the first class the pupils were to be received at the age of twelve; into the second, at fourteen; and into the third, at sixteen. In each Central School were to be a public library, a botanic garden, and an apparatus of chymical and physical instruments. The professors were to be examined and chosen by a Jury of Instruction, and that choice confirmed by the administration of the department. The government, in turning its attention to the present state of the public schools, and comparing them with the wants and wishes of the inhabitants of the Republic, has found that the Primary Schools have been greatly neglected, and that the Central Schools have not been of so much utility as was expected. Alarmed at the consequences likely to be produced by a state of things which leaves a great part of the present generation destitute of the first rudiments of knowledge, the government has felt that the reorganization of these schools is become an urgent duty, and that it is impossible to delay longer to carry it into execution. The Special Schools of Arts and Sciences are mostly confined to Paris. The other rich and populous cities of the Republic have undoubtedly a claim to similar institutions. There is at present no School of Jurisprudence, and but one of Medicine. Agreeably to these ideas, the following is said to be the outline of the new organization of public instruction. It is to be divided into four classes; viz. Primary Schools, Secondary Schools, Lyceums, and Special Schools. PRIMARY SCHOOLS. A Primary School may belong to several communes at a time, according to the population and the locality of these communes. The teachers are to be chosen by the mayors and municipal councils. The under-prefects are to be specially charged with the organization of these schools, and give an account of their state, once a month, to the prefects. SECONDARY SCHOOLS. Every school established in the commune or kept by private individuals, in which are taught the Latin and French languages, the first principles of geography, history and mathematics, is to be considered as a Secondary School. The government promises to encourage the establishment of Secondary Schools, and reward the good instruction that shall be given in them, either by granting a spot for keeping them, or by the distribution of gratuitous places in the Lyceums, to such of the pupils as shall have distinguished themselves most, and by gratifications to the fifty masters who shall have qualified most pupils for the Lyceums. No Secondary School is to be established without the authority of the government. The Secondary Schools and private schools, whose instruction is found superior to that of the Primary Schools, are to be placed under the superintendance and particular inspection of the prefects. LYCEUMS. There is to be one Lyceum at least in the district of every tribunal of appeal. Here are to be taught ancient languages, rhetoric, logic, morality, and the elements of the mathematical and physical sciences. To these are to be added drawing, military exercises and the agreeable arts. Instruction is to be given to the pupils placed here by the government, to those of the Secondary Schools admitted through competition, to those whose parents may put them here as boarders, and also to day-scholars. In each Lyceum is to be a director, who is to have immediately under him a censor of studies, and an administrator who are all to be nominated by the First Consul. In the former institutions, which are to be replaced by these new ones, a vigilant eye was not constantly kept on the state of the schools themselves, nor on that of the studies pursued in them. According to the new plan, three inspectors-general, appointed by the First Consul, are to visit them carefully, and report to the government their situation, success, and defects. This new supervisorship is to be, as it were, the key-stone of the arch, and to keep all the parts connected. The fourth and highest degree of public instruction is to be acquired in the SPECIAL SCHOOLS. This is the name to be applied to those of the upper schools, where are particularly taught, and in the most profound manner, the useful sciences, jurisprudence, medicine, natural history, &c. But schools of this kind must not be confounded with the Schools for Engineers, Artillery, Bridges and Highways, Hydrography, &c. which, special as they are essentially, in proportion to the sciences particularly taught in them, are better described, however, by the name of Schools for Public Services, on account of the immediate utility derived from them by the government. In addition to the Special Schools now in existence, which are to be kept up, new ones are to be established in the following proportion: Ten Schools of Jurisprudence. These useful institutions, which have been abolished during the last ten years, are, by a new organization, to resume the importance that they had lost long before the revolution. The pupils are to be examined in a manner more certain for determining their capacity, and better calculated for securing the degree of confidence to be reposed in those men to whose knowledge and integrity individuals are sometimes forced to intrust their character and fortune. Three new Schools of Medicine, in addition to the three at present in being. These also are to be newly organized in the most perfect manner. The mathematical and physical sciences have made too great a progress in France, their application to the useful arts, to the public service, and to the general prosperity, has been too direct, says FOURCROY, for it not to be necessary to diffuse the taste for them, and to open new asylums where the advantages resulting from them may be extended, and their progress promoted. There are therefore to be four new Special Schools of Natural History, Physics, and Chymistry, and also a Special School devoted to transcendent Mathematics. The mechanical and chymical arts, so long taught in several universities in Germany under the name of technology, are to have two Special Schools, placed in the cities most rich in industry and manufactures. These schools, generally wished for, are intended to contribute to the national prosperity by the new methods which they will make known, the new instruments and processes which they will bring into use, the good models of machines which they will introduce, in a word, by every means that mechanics and chymistry can furnish to the arts. A School of Public Economy, enlightened by Geography and History, is to be opened for those who may be desirous to investigate the principles of governments, and the art of ascertaining their respective interests. In this school it is proposed to unite such an assemblage of knowledge as has not yet existed in France. To the three principal schools of the arts dependent on design, which are at present open, is to be added a fourth, become necessary since those arts bring back to France the pure taste of the beautiful forms, of which Greece has left such perfect models. In each of the observatories now in use is to be a professor of astronomy, and the art of navigation is expected to derive new succour from these schools, most of which are placed in the principal sea-ports. A knowledge of the heavens and the study of the movements of the celestial bodies, which every year receives very remarkable augmentations from the united efforts of the most renowned geometricians and the most indefatigable observers, may have a great influence on the progress of civilization. On which account the French government is extremely eager to promote the science of astronomy. The language of neighbouring nations, with whom the French have such frequent intercourse, is to be taught in several Lyceums, as being a useful introduction to commerce. The art of war, of which modern times have given such great examples and such brilliant lessons, is to have its special school, and this school, on the plan which it is intended to be established by receiving as soldiers youths from the Lyceums, will form for the French armies officers equally skilful in theory as in practice. This new Military School must not be confounded with the old École militaire. Independently of its not being destined for a particular class, which no longer exists in this country, the mode of instruction to be introduced there will render it totally different from the establishment which bore the same name. It is to be composed of five hundred pupils, forming a battalion, and who are to be accustomed to military duty and discipline; it is to have at least ten professors, charged to teach all the theoretical, practical, and administrative parts of the art of war, as well as the history of wars and of great captains. Of the five hundred pupils of the Special Military School, two hundred are to be taken from among the national pupils of the Lyceums, in proportion to their number in each of those schools, and three hundred from among the boarders and day-scholars, according to the examination which they must undergo at the end of their studies. Every year one hundred of the former are to be admitted, and two hundred of the latter. They are to be maintained two years in the Special Military School, at the expense of the Republic. These two years are to be considered as part of their military service. According to the report made of the behaviour and talents of the pupils of the Military School, the government is to provide them with appointments in the army. NATIONAL PUPILS. There are to be maintained at the expense of the Republic six thousand four hundred pupils, as boarders in the Lyceums and Special Schools. Out of these six thousand four hundred boarders, two thousand four hundred are to be chosen by the government from among the sons of officers and public functionaries of the judicial, administrative, or municipal order, who shall have served the Republic with fidelity, and for ten years only from among the children of citizens belonging to the departments united to France, although they have neither been military men nor public functionaries. These two thousand four hundred pupils are to be at least nine years of age, and able to read and write. The other four thousand are to be taken from double the number of pupils of the Secondary Schools, who, according to an examination where their talents are put in competition, are to be presented to the government. The pupils, maintained in the Lyceums, are not to remain there more than six years at the expense of the nation. At the end of their studies, they are to undergo an examination, after which a fifth of them are to be placed in the different Special Schools according to their disposition, in order to be maintained there from two to four years at the expense of the Republic. The annual cost of all these establishments is estimated at near eight millions of francs, (circa £336,000 sterling) which exceeds by at least two millions the amount of the charges of the public instruction for the few preceding years; but this augmentation, which will only take place by degrees, and at soonest in eighteen months, appears trifling, compared to the advantages likely to result from the new system. Whenever this plan is carried into execution, what hopes may not France conceive from the youth of the rising generation, who, chosen from among those inclined to study, will, in all probability, rise to every degree of fame! The surest pledge of the success of the measure seems to consist in the spirit of emulation which is to be maintained, not only among the pupils, but even among the professors in the different schools; for emulation, in the career of literature, arts and sciences, leads to fame, and never fails to turn to the benefit of society; whereas jealousy, in the road of ambition and fortune, produces nothing but hatred and discord. "Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, There are very few men who know how to confine themselves within just bounds. Some yield to the mania of innovation, and imagine that they create only because they destroy and change. Others bend under the yoke of old habits. Some, solely because they have remained strangers to the sciences, would wish that youth should be employed only in the study of languages and literature. Others who, no doubt, forget that every learned man, who aims at a solid reputation, ought to sacrifice to the Muses, before he penetrates into the sanctuary of science, would wish education to be confined to the study of the exact sciences, and that youth should be occupied on things, before they are acquainted with words. For the sole reason that the old system of instruction bore too exclusively on the study of the learned languages, it was to be feared that the new one, through a contrary excess, would proscribe the Greek and Latin. The study of these two languages, as FOURCROY has observed to me, is not merely useful to those who wish to acquire a thorough knowledge of the French, which has borrowed from them no small number of words, but it is only from the perusal of the great writers of antiquity, on whom the best among the moderns have formed themselves, that we can imbibe the sentiment of the beautiful, the taste, and the rectitude of mind equally necessary, whether we feel ourselves attracted towards eloquence or poetry, or raise ourselves to the highest conceptions of the physical or mathematical sciences. At no time can the instruction given to a youth be otherwise considered than as a preparatory mean, whose object is to anticipate his taste and disposition, and enable him to enter with more firmness into the career which he is intended to follow. From an attentive perusal of the plan, of which I have traced you the leading features, you will be convinced that the study of the sciences will gain by the new system, without that of literature being in danger of losing. The number of professors is increased, and yet the period of education is not prolonged. A pupil will always be at liberty to apply himself more intensely to the branch to which he is impelled by his particular inclination. He may confine himself to one course of lectures, or attend to several, according to his intellectual means. He will not be compelled to stop in his career, merely because the pupils of his class do not advance. In short, neither limits nor check have been put to the progress that may be made by talent. I here give you only a principal idea, but the application of it, improved by your sagacity and knowledge, will be sufficient to answer all the objections which may be started against the new plan of instruction, and which, when carefully investigated, may be reduced to a single one; namely, that literature is sacrificed to the sciences. |
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