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Educational Thought and Educational Practice During the Years of the French Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Robert M. Stamp
Robert M. Stamp*
Affiliation:
The University of Western Ontario
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Extract

Historians and educators have frequently overlooked the significant contributions made to modern education by the French Revolution. It is accepted that the upheavals of 1789 and the years following caused profound changes in the political and social development of Western man—even in his economic, cultural, and religious development. Yet even such a distinguished and respected historian of education as Adolphe Meyer feels that in the field of education the French revolutionaries effected few significant changes. “What they actually accomplished beyond the robust exercise of their arms and larnyx was very little,” concludes Meyer.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , Fall 1966 , pp. 35 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Meyer, Adolphe E., An Educational History of the Western World (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1965), p. 295.Google Scholar

2. Most twentieth-century historians have at least limited praise for the educational reforms of the Revolution. See Brinton, Crane, A Decade of Revolution (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1934), and Van Duzer, C. H., Contribution of the Ideologues to French Revolutionary Thought (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1934). The most critical views are expressed by the conservative writers of the Third French Republic. An outstanding example is Duruy, Albert, L'Instruction Publique et la Révolution (Paris: Hachette, 1882).Google Scholar

3. Statistics from Van Duzer, , Ideologues , p. 85. Other accounts of education under the old regime are in Brinton, , Decade of Revolution , Duruy, , L'Instruction Publique, and Lowell, Edward J., The Eve of the French Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1892).Google Scholar

4. Palmer, R. R., “The National Idea in France Before the Revolution,” Journal of the History of Ideas , I (1940), 102.Google Scholar

5. Van Duzer, , op. cit. , p. 87.Google Scholar

6. Rousseau's, Jean Jacques Emile is perhaps the best known of these eighteenth-century French works on education.Google Scholar

7. de la Chalotais, Caradeuc, Essai d'Education Nationale ou Plan d'Etudes pour la Jeunesse (Paris, 1762), was the best known of these projects for reform. See Palmer, , op. cit., p. 101.Google Scholar

8. Montesquieu, , Esprit des Lois, Oeuvres completes , ed. Masson, André, I (Paris: Nagel, 1950), 46.Google Scholar

9. Pamphlets concerning educational reform are discussed by Shafer, Boyd, “Bourgeois Nationalism in the Pamphlets on the Eve of the French Revolution,” Journal of Modern History , X (1938), 31–50.Google Scholar

10. Hyslop, Beatrice, French Nationalism in 1789 According to the General Cahiers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), p. 253. Miss Hyslop has found some mention of education in 111 of the cahiers.Google Scholar

11. Ibid. , pp. 49–51.Google Scholar

12. Ibid. , p. 108.Google Scholar

13. Ibid. , p. 180.Google Scholar

14. Brinton, , op. cit. , p. 153.Google Scholar

15. Réimpression de l'ancien Moniteur (Paris: Plon Frères, 1847), XIV, December 20, 1792, 784. Le Moniteur was a semiofficial newspaper published daily in Paris during the Revolution. It is the best source for the debates of the various legislative bodies.Google Scholar

16. Stewart, J. H., A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951), p. 232.Google Scholar

17. Talleyrand, , Rapport sur l'Instruction Publique (Paris, 1791).Google Scholar

18. Condorcet, , Memoires sur L'Instruction Publique (Paris, 1790).Google Scholar

19. For a detailed study of Condorcet's educational philosophy and proposed reforms, see Burlingame, A. E., Condorcet: The Torch Bearer of the French Revolution (Boston: Stratford, 1930), or Cahen, Leon, Condorcet et la Révolution Française (Paris: F. Alcan, 1904).Google Scholar

20. Condorcet, , Rapport et Projet et Décret sur l'Organization Générale de l'Instruction Publique (Paris: 1792).Google Scholar

21. Dawson, J. C., Lakanal the Regicide (University, Ala.: The University of Alabama Press, 1948), p. 21.Google Scholar

22. Condorcet's influence on educational reform was not lost however. Virtually all of the educational legislation of the later Convention and the Directory bears the stamp of Condorcet. As late as April 1795, for instance, the government ordered that 3,000 copies of his 1792 report be distributed throughout the country. Moniteur , XXIV (April 6, 1795), 133.Google Scholar

23. Ibid. , XVII (July 6, 1793), 41.Google Scholar

24. Le Pelletier was a Jacobin deputy murdered by a royalist supporter at the time of Louis XVI's trial.Google Scholar

25. Moniteur , XVII (July 17, 1793), 135.Google Scholar

26. This Constitution of 1793 echoed the one of 1791 in advocating that education be placed within the reach of all citizens, Stewart, , op. cit. , p. 457.Google Scholar

27. Curtis, E. N., Saint-Just, Colleague of Robespierre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), pp. 308–11.Google Scholar

28. Moniteur , XX (June 3, 1794), 623.Google Scholar

29. Stewart, , op. cit. , p. 516.Google Scholar

30. Dawson, , op. cit. , pp. xiii–xiv, and Van Duzer, , op. cit., p. 5.Google Scholar

31. Moniteur , XXVI (October 25, 1795),. 260.Google Scholar

32. Ibid. , XXVI (November 2, 1795), 323–26. Many of the pieces of legislation during these years took their name from the date of the revolutionary calendar on which they were passed.Google Scholar

33. Van Duzer, , op. cit. , p. 108.Google Scholar

34. Moniteur , XXVIII (April 12, 1796), 181.Google Scholar

35. Le Pelletier's and Saint-Just's educational bills, cited above, are examples of extremist thinking.Google Scholar

36. Duruy, , op. cit. , pp. 258–93, presents a detailed assessment of these men.Google Scholar

37. Van Duzer, , op. cit. , p. 132.Google Scholar

38. Duruy, , op. cit. , p. 351.Google Scholar

39. Van Duzer, , op. cit. , p. 137.Google Scholar

40. Ibid. , p. 136.Google Scholar

41. Duruy, , op. cit. , p. 179. Duruy, , of course, presents a very critical view of all educational projects during the years 1789-1799.Google Scholar

42. Van Duzer, , op. cit. , p. 130.Google Scholar

43. Moniteur , XXVIII (April 29, 1796), 315–18.Google Scholar

44. Rose, J. H., The Life of Napoleon I , I (New York: G. Bell and Sons, 1918), 272.Google Scholar