Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m8s7h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T03:34:29.974Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Primary Education of French Girls: Pedagogical Prescriptions and Social Realities, 1880–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Linda L. Clark
Linda L. Clark*
Affiliation:
Millersville State College, Pennsylvania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“Woman is the guardian of the foyer. Her place is at home, in the house of her parents or husband…; it is for the foyer that she must reserve all her grace and good humor…. A woman who does not love her home, who has no taste for household duties… cannot remain a virtuous woman for long.” Such were the instructions and warnings about the domestic mission of women which Madame Henry Gréville offered to French schoolgirls in one of the most widely used textbooks for moral and civic education in girls' public primary schools during the late nineteenth century. Gréville's teaching conformed to the wishes of the Ministry of Public Instruction which ordered that primary schools should prepare boys to become workers and soldiers and initiate girls in the “care of the household and ouvrages de femmes.”

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , Winter 1981 , pp. 411 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

I wish to thank the National Institute of Education and the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College for a grant which made possible much of the research on which this paper is based. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a colloquium of the Bunting Institute in April 1980.Google Scholar

1. Durand-Gréville, Alice [Mme. Henry Gréville], L'Instruction morale et civique des jeunes filles (Paris, 1882), pp. 152–153.Google Scholar

2. Ministère de l'instruction publique, Règlements organiques de l'enseignement primaire (Paris, 1887), p. 344.Google Scholar

3. Prost, Antoine, Histoire de l'enseignement en France, 1800–1967 (Paris, 1968), p. 261.Google Scholar

4. “L'Enseignement en France,” Sondages (Eté, 1950): 8.Google Scholar

5. For background on the role of religion and religious personnel in public schools see Zind, Pierre, L'Enseignement religieux dans l'instruction primaire publique en France de 1850 à 1873 (Lyon, 1973).Google Scholar

6. Prost, , Enseignement, p. 218.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., pp. 268–269.Google Scholar

8. Drouard, Charles, Les Ecoles de filles, féminisme et éducation, 2d ed. (Paris, 1907), pp. vii, 226.Google Scholar

9. Gontard, Maurice, L'Oeuvre scolaire de la troisième république; L'Enseignement en France de 1876 à 1914 (Toulouse, 1967), p. 88. Most departments had maintained écoles normales for males since the July Monarchy. In 1878 1,706,000 girls attended public schools but 48.6% were taught by nuns; 684,000 attended private schools. By 1912 2,127,000 girls went to public schools and only 2000 still had religious teachers; 700,000 went to private schools. (Prost, , Enseignement, p. 218.)Google Scholar

10. Horvath, Sandra A., “Victor Duruy and the Controversy over Secondary Education for Girls,” French Historical Studies, 9 (1975): 83–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Although the republican founders of lycées for girls did not intend them to prepare young women for professions or university entrance, the clientele of the girls' lycées developed precisely these ambitions. In 1924 the lycée curriculum for girls became identical to that for boys. For this evolution see Mayeur, Françoise, L'Enseignement secondaire des jeunes filles sous la troisième république (Paris, 1977).Google Scholar

12. In 1913 2,474,000 boys and 2,215,000 girls attended public primary schools; 69,200 boys and 19,700 girls attended lycées and public collèges. In addition, more than 70,000 boys and more than 50,000 girls also attended the less prestigious post-primary cours complémentaires and écoles primaires supérieures. See Prost, , Enseignement, pp. 218, 346.Google Scholar

13. In 1906 86,199 pupils attended the special elementary classes attended to public and private secondary schools. (Statistique de l'enseignement primaire [Paris, 1909], p. cv.) On the efforts to democratize public education see Talbott, John E., The Politics of Educational Reform in France, 1918–1940 (Princeton, 1969) and Halls, W. D., Society, Schools and Progress in France (Oxford, 1965).Google Scholar

14. Significant pre-World War I public school books have been identified from lists collected by the Ministry of Public Instruction which identify how many departments adopted various titles. See Ministère de l'instruction publique. Livres scolaires en usage dans les écoles primaires publiques (Paris, 1889) and Archives Nationales F17 11656, the latter indicating the choices of 23 departments (Ain-Creuse) as of 1909. Reviews in educational journals and the textbook collection of the Institut pédagogique national were used to identify post-1909 public school titles and Catholic titles. For Catholic titles Abbés Labelle, Porteboeuf, Quilici et un professeur d'histoire, Le Livre scolaire catholique français (Paris, 1924) and the Annuaire officiel de l'enseignement libre catholique (Bordeaux, 1935) were also useful. For the method of book selection by public school teachers at the cantonal level see Gay, P.-H. and Mortreux, O., eds., French Elementary Schools, Official Courses of Study, trans. Kandel, I. L. (New York, 1926), p. 16.Google Scholar

15. The Bibliothèque Nationale Catalogue lists 29 editions of François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénèlon, De l'education des filles published between 1870 and 1910; 10 of these were a version edited for republican educators by Charles Defodon. For a survey of ideas about girls' education over the centuries, see Stock, Phyllis H., Better than Rubies, A History of Women's Education (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

16. Ministère, , Livres, p. 3; AN F17 11656.Google Scholar

17. Gréville, , Instruction, pp. 129–188.Google Scholar

18. Masson, Anne-Louise, Manuel de morale et d'instruction civique, 3d ed. (Paris, 1922), pp. 86, 112–116, 183. The first edition appeared in 1909.Google Scholar

19. Juranville, Clarisse, Manuel d'éducation morale et d'instruction civique à l'usage des jeunes filles, 6th ed. (Paris, 1899), pp. 20, 255; Wirth, Ernestine, La future ménagère, 10th ed. (Paris, 1904), pp. 7–8; Sage, Charlotte, L'Enseignement ménager (Paris, 1901), p. 48.Google Scholar

20. Stella, , Lectures pour les jeunes filles (Tours, 1911), pp. 2, 120; Thiéry, Marie, Lisette (Paris, 1910), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

21. Société départmental d'industrie d'Ille et Vilaine, Leçons d'agriculture élémentaire et d'économie domestique (Rennes, 1896, 1924), p. 10; Religieuses de la Providence, Notions d'économie domestique à l'école primaire et dans les pensionnats de jeunes filles (Ploermel, 1900), p. 20. In 1912 700,000 girls and 368,000 boys attended private schools. (Prost, Enseignement, p. 218.) Google Scholar

22. Dupuy, Aimé, “Les Livres de lecture de G. Bruno,” Revue d'histoire économique et sociale 31 (1953): 137, 147. The 1923 program for elementary schools eliminated “duties to God” from the morale curriculum.Google Scholar

23. Bourceau, Abbé E. and Fabry, R., Lectures littéraires expliquées avec l'enseignement moral et civique (Paris, 1933), p. 369.Google Scholar

24. Wirth, Ernestine, Livre de lecture des jeunes filles chrétiennes (Paris, 1877, 1910), p. 55; Marduel, Fleury, La Morale de la ménagère (Paris, 1938), p. 20.Google Scholar

25. Vieu, Marie [Halt, Marie Robert], Le droit chemin (Paris, 1902).Google Scholar

26. The publisher Armand Colin advertised the Tu seras texts as “véritables manuels d'apprentissage de la vie.” Tu seras ouvrière (Paris, 1892) had been adopted by more than one third of the departments whose 1909 book lists are in AN F17 11656.Google Scholar

27. In 1896 40% of the female nonagricultural work force was employed in the textile and garment industries. See Scott, Joan and Tilly, Louise, “Women's Work and the Family in Nineteenth Century Europe,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 17 (1975): 39.Google Scholar

28. Simon, Jules, “Préface” to Desmaisons, L. C., Ouvrière, pp. iii–iv.Google Scholar

29. Halt, , L'Enfance de Suzette, 17th ed. (Paris, 1907), p. 8; Suzette (Paris, 1889); Le Ménage de Madame Sylvain (Paris, 1895), pp. 311–312. These readers were on 83% of the departmental lists for 1909 in F17 11656.Google Scholar

30. de Kereven, E., Le premier livre d'Elisabeth, 2d ed. (Lyon, 1910); La petite Elisabeth (Lyon, 1910); Elisabeth, 2d ed. (Lyon, 1910). Sales figures from Kereven, , La Famille Aubert (Lyon and Paris, 1920), p. ii.Google Scholar

31. Nolleau, Henri, “Les Femmes dans la population active de 1856 à 1954,” Economie et Politique (October, 1960): 10.Google Scholar

32. Alice Dereims, Jeanne et Madeleine (Paris, 1902), pp. 131. 347. The book was on 60% of 1909 departmental lists in F17 11656.Google Scholar

33. Sursonne, Maurice, “La Lecture et les manuels à l'école primaire,” Revue pédagogique 83 (December, 1923): 404.Google Scholar

34. Ministère, , Livres; AN F17 11656. The 1889 list contained 35 titles especially for girls; at least 89 girls' titles were on the 1909 lists.Google Scholar

35. For evidence of the use of separate science books for boys and girls as of the early 1970s, see Prefecture de Paris, Direction de l'Enseignement, Liste des ouvrages classiques qui peuvent être fournis gratuitement aux frais de la ville de Paris dans les écoles primaires, collèges d'enseignement général, commercial et industriel (Paris, 1971.Google Scholar

36. Rogie, Louis-Eugène, Bornecque, M., and Levesque, Madame, Nouvelles lectures professionnelles (Paris, 1928), pp. 157–184; Bazin, René and Dufrenne, P., Lectures françaises, Il était quatre petits enfants, cours élémentaire et moyen (Tours, 1923, 1942), pp. 6, 16; cours moyen et supérieur (Tours, 1925, 1942), pp. 91, 147.Google Scholar

37. der Halden, Charles Ab, Hors du nid (Paris, 1934, 1950). By 1950 175,000 copies had been published.Google Scholar

38. Hamayon, Marcel Msgr. and Bragade, Abbé A., André, Jacqueline, Deux Enfants de France (Paris, 1940, 1951). The 1940 edition has an introduction dated March 1940, an indication of pre-Vichy origins.Google Scholar

39. Gréville, , Instruction, pp. 163–164; Stella, , Lectures, pp. 31–32.Google Scholar

40. Republican texts: Payot, Jules, La Morale à l'école, 3d ed. (Paris, 1908), p. 191; Souché, Aimé, Le deuxiéme livre de morale de la jeune française (Paris, 1926), pp. 5–6. Catholic: Thiéry, Lisette, p. 32; Darcey, Mlle., Petit cours d'enseignement ménager, 8th ed. (Lyon, 1935), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

41. Foulon-Lefranc, Mme. and Laurent, G., L'Ecole du bonheur (Paris, 1938), p. 9.Google Scholar

42. [Laloi], Ernest Lavisse, La première année d'instruction civique (Paris, 1880), p. 89. Masson, , Manuel, p. 115.Google Scholar

43. Perrot, Michelle, “Machine à coudre et travail à domicile,” Mouvement social (November, 1978): 164.Google Scholar

44. Devinat, Emile, Livre de lecture et de morale, 17th ed. (Paris, n.d.), p. 50; der Halden, Ab, Hors du nid, p. 60.Google Scholar

45. Nolleau, , “Les Femmes,” pp. 2–21.'Google Scholar

46. Souché, , Le deuxiéme livre, pp. 13, 103–106; Foulon-Lefrance, and Laurent, , Ecole, p. 10.Google Scholar

47. Computed from figures in Bairoch, P., ed., La Population active et sa structure (Brussels. 1968), p. 167.Google Scholar

48. Daric, Jean, L'Activité professwnnelle des femmes en France (Paris, 1947), p. 80.Google Scholar

49. For example, Broutet, Felix and Reynier, Marguerite depicted 22 male and 5 female occupations in their Livre des métiers, 5th ed. (Paris, 1938). The female occupations were seamstress, grocery store owner, milkseller, laundress and ironer.Google Scholar

50. Mézières, A, Education morale et instruction civique (Paris, 1883), pp. 60, 154; Ligny, Armand, En route pour la vie, 7th ed. (Paris, 1919), p. 162; Grill, Chanoine C. and Le Floch, P., L'Enseignement scientifique par l'observation et l'expérience, Garçons (Paris, 1937), p. 393.Google Scholar

51. For enrollments in post-primary schools, see Prost, , Enseignement, p. 346. A primary school pupil wishing to transfer to a secondary school had to do so at age 11 to start Latin with others of his age, but by so doing he left the primary school before preparing for the certificat d'études primaires and thus, if he later dropped out of school or did not obtain a baccalauréat, ran the risk of having no degree.Google Scholar

52. Hoffman, Stanley, “Paradoxes of the French Political Community,” in In Search of France, ed. Hoffmann and Others (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), p. 3; Dupeux, Georges, French Society 1789–1970 , trans. Wait, Peter (London and New York, 1976), Chapters 4, 5.Google Scholar

53. Dupeux, , French Society, pp. 1–4.Google Scholar

54. Gréville, , Instruction, pp. 36–37; Stella, Lectures, p. 99.Google Scholar

55. Republican texts: Challaye, Fèlicien and Reynier, Marguerite, Cours de morale, 8th ed. (Paris, 1939), p. 140; Souché, , Le deuxième livre, p. 21. Catholic: Bourceau and Fabry, Lectures, pp. 93, 350; Marduel, , Morale, p. 17.Google Scholar

56. Lefèvre, G., “Une enquête pédagogique dans les cours moyens des écoles primaires du Nord,” Revue pédagogique 36 (January, 1900): 8.Google Scholar

57. Prost, , Enseignement, pp. 10–12, 330.Google Scholar

58. Statistique de l'enseignement primaire (1884), pp. 248–249; (1909), pp. 266–269; Rivet, R., “L'Enseignement primaire en France depuis la guerre,” Bulletin de la Statistique générale de la France 25 (1936): 327; Annuaire statistique de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1906), pp. 396–397, (1920), p. 355. In 1934 only 50% of primary school pupils nearing the end of their studies tried for the certificate and only 40% obtained it.Google Scholar

59. Daric, , Activité, p. 31.Google Scholar

60. Unlike the 1940 edition, the 1951 version of Hamayon, and Bragade, , André, Jacqueline, had a chapter on the domestic mission of women (pp. 242–245). For public school texts see Souché, , Les nouvelles leçons de morale au cours moyen (Paris, 1947), pp. 38–43, 218–222; Ballot, M. and Aveille, R., Education morale et civique (Paris, 1952), p. 86.Google Scholar

61. Bairoch, , Population, pp. 167, 169.Google Scholar

62. de Lauwe, Marie-José Chombart, de Lauwe, Paul-Henry Chombart, and Others, La Femme dans la société, Son image dans différents milieux sociaux (Paris, 1963), pp. 212–213.Google Scholar

63. Institut national pour la documentation et recherche pédagogiques, “Images de la femme dans les manuels scolaires,” Bibliographie de France 19, part 2 (May 7, 1975): 766–787. For similar findings, see Délégation régionale à la condition féminine, L'Image de la Femme dans les manuels scolaires et les livres d'enfants (Paris, 1979), issued by the Prefecture de la Région Ile de France.Google Scholar