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    220 EDUCATION IN FRANCE.:

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    *•»- . ; No. I.

    the people only spoke a patois unintelligible to the rest of the country— -to lay the foundations of a system of National Education ,

    and to prepare the way for the subsequent establishment of the Polytechnic and Normal Schools .

    The task of _providing for the educational needs of the nation was , however , one of very great difficulty ; for there existed at that

    time no educational body whatsoever , no general system of schools , which , however imperfectmight have been modified and enlarged

    , to meet the necessities of the day , and thus have served as a basis for the efforts of educational reformers . The religious orders in

    whose hands the work of teaching had remained up to 1789 had been swept away , but no successors were ready to take their place ;

    and imperfectly as these clerical teachers had discharged the educational function , their disappearance had left a want which was

    universally felt , but which it was not easy immediately to _£ H . This want the Constituent Assembly—which offered the faithful

    reflex of the discontents and aspirations of the mass of the peopleset itself to supply . A report , containing a project for the

    establishment of a general system of education , was drawn up by M . de Talleyrand , and read by him in the Constituent Assembly , September

    29 th , 1791 , on the eve of the dissolution of that body , and was subsequently discussed in the Legislative Assembly ; and a short time

    afterwards a bill on the same subject was brought before the Convention by M . Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau . The plans thus proposed

    were , as we shall see , defective in many respects , and produced no immediate results . But they servedat leastto direct attention to

    , , the practical questions connected with the establishment of a national system of educationand to attest the interest excited by this

    mo-, mentous topic during that stormy period . In the Preamble to his Report , M . de Talleyrand lays down the

    principles which , in his view , should serve as the basis of national education—viz ., the equal right of all children , of both sexes , to

    instruction ; the necessity of making the primary schools gratuitous , and _i _# ie opening of the teacher ' s career to all who wish to devote

    themselves to the profession of teaching . " The end of all instruction , " he remarks , "is the perfection of

    man in every period of his career , and the turning to the advantage of each individual , and of the entire community , the intelligence ,

    the experience , and even the very errors of preceding generations . Thus we see that instruction ought to exist for all ; for education

    being one of the results as well as one of the advantages of association , we necessarily infer that it is a common property of all the

    _memlbers of society . No one , then , can be legitimately excluded from its benefits ; and he who is most lacking in _resj 3 ect of private

    property would seem to have the greatest right to participate in this common property .

    " Instruction should therefore be provided for both sexes , and for all ages , and should extend to the physical , intellectual , and moral

    faculties .

    220 Education In France.:

    220 EDUCATION IN FRANCE .:

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), June 1, 1860, page 220, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01061860/page/4/