Japanese Education
"In 1871, the Ministry of Education was established, with a school system based closely on the American model, which promoted a utilitarian curriculum, but with the centrally-controlled school administration system copied from France. With the aid of foreign advisors, such as David Murray and Marion McCarrell Scott, Normal Schools for teacher education were also created in each prefecture. Other advisors, such as George Adams Leland, were recruited to create specific types of curriculum.
Private schools run by Buddhist temples (terakoya) and neighborhood associations were nationalized as elementary schools; feudal domain schools run by daimyo became middle schools, and the Tokugawa shogunal Academy became the foundation of Tokyo Imperial University.
However,they added a new curriculum which emphasized conservative, traditional ideals more reflective of Japanese values. Confucian precepts were stressed, especially those concerning the hierarchical nature of human relations, service to the new Meiji state, the pursuit of learning, and morality. These ideals, embodied in the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education, along with highly centralized government control over education, largely guided Japanese education until the end of World War II.
In December, 1885, the cabinet system of government was established, and Mori Arinori became the first Minister of Education of Japan. Mori, together with Inoue Kowashi created the foundation of the Empire of Japan's educational system by issuing a series of orders from 1886. These laws established an elementary school system, middle school system, normal school system and an imperial university system.
Elementary school was made compulsory from 1872, and was intended to create loyal subjects of the Emperor. Middle Schools were preparatory schools for students destined to enter one of the Imperial Universities, and the Imperial Universities were intended to create westernized leaders who would be able to direct the modernization of Japan.
With the increasing industrialization of Japan, demand increased for higher education and vocational training. Inoue Kowashi, who followed Mori as Minister of Education established a state vocational school system, and also promoted women's education through a separate girl's school system.
Compulsory education was extended to six years in 1907. According to the new laws, textbooks could only be issued upon the approval of the Ministry of Education. The curriculum was centered on moral education (mostly aimed at instilling patriotism), mathematics, design, reading and writing, composition, Japanese calligraphy, Japanese history, geography, science, drawing, singing, and physical education. All children of the same age learned each subject from the same series of textbook." -- Wikipedia
British Education
Industrialisation: the need for mass education
The industrial revolution
In 1751 the population of the British mainland stood at seven million. By 1821 - after seventy years of industrial revolution - it had reached fourteen million, and by 1871 it would reach twenty-six million. The rapid expansion in the overall population was matched by increases in the proportion of people who lived in towns and cities, and in the proportion of the population who were children.
England's industrial revolution began in the second half of the 18th century. At first, new agricultural techniques freed workers from the land and made it possible to feed a large non-agricultural population.
In the 19th century, relative world peace, the availability of money, coal and iron ore, and the invention of the steam engine, all combined to facilitate the construction of factories for the mass production of goods. The factory system increased the division and specialisation of labour and resulted in large numbers of people moving to the new industrial cities, especially in the midlands and the north. It also resulted in low wages, slum housing and the use of child labour.
Thus the industrial revolution exacerbated the problems of a society 'divided into those with land or capital or profession and those with no wealth, no possessions and no privileges' (Benn and Chitty 1996:2).
Perhaps the first sign that the state was beginning to acknowledge some responsibility for the conditions in which the poor - and particularly poor children - lived, was Peel's Factory Act of 1802: 'An Act for the preservation of the health and morals of apprentices and others employed in cotton and other mills and cotton and other factories'. The Act required an employer to provide instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic during at least the first four years of the seven years of apprenticeship. Such secular instruction was to be part of the twelve hours of daily occupation beginning not earlier than 6am and ending not later than 9pm. Many of the apprentices were young pauper children who were frequently brought from distant workhouses to labour in the cotton mills.
Alongside the upheaval of industrialisation, the process of democratisation got under way with the Representation of the People Act 1832 (commonly known as the Reform Act), which gave a million people the right to vote.
This dramatic social, political and economic transformation served to reveal the utter inadequacy of England's educational provision. A number of reports highlighted the deficiencies and called for more and better schools. One such report looked at 12,000 parishes in 1816, and found that 3,500 had no school, 3,000 had endowed schools of varying quality, and 5,500 had unendowed schools of even more variable quality.
New types of school
To fill the gaps, and to provide for England's newly-industrialised and (partly) enfranchised society, various types of school began to be established to offer some basic education to the masses.
Sunday schools
The Sunday schools taught the poor - both children and adults - to read the Bible, but not to do writing or arithmetic or any of the 'more dangerous subjects' which were 'less necessary or even harmful' (Williams 1961:136).
Schools of industry
'Schools of industry' were set up to provide the poor with manual training and elementary instruction. Such a school opened at Kendal in the Lake District in 1799. According to the Records of the Society for Bettering the Conditions of the Poor (III. 300-312):
In the rival systems of Lancaster and Bell, as in the Sunday schools, the teaching was based on the Bible, but using a new method which Bell called 'the steam engine of the moral world' (quoted in Williams 1961:136). (Incidentally, Young and Hancock (1956:830) ascribe this quotation to Brougham, of whom more below).
Bell's method involved the use of monitors and standard repetitive exercises so that one master could teach hundreds of children at the same time in one room. It was the industrialisation of the teaching process.
The curriculum in these monitorial schools was at first largely similar to that of the schools of industry - the 'three Rs' (reading, writing and 'rithmetic) plus practical activities such as cobbling, tailoring, gardening, simple agricultural operations for boys, and spinning, sewing, knitting, lace-making and baking for girls.
A small group of thinkers led by Bentham and Place, impressed by developments in Scotland, Prussia, France and Holland, sought to establish higher grade elementary schools and monitorial secondary schools to meet the needs of the class immediately above the very poor. Unfortunately, Bentham's 'Chrestomathic Scheme' for the education of 7 to 14 year olds, devised around 1816, proved too encyclopaedic a course of studies, and the proposal met with little support.
Kay-Shuttleworth recognised the shortcomings of the monitorial schools and made an important contribution to the general development of primary education by introducing a modified form of the pupil teacher system, so preparing the way for a large supply of adult teachers (see Hadow 1931:7).
Infant schools
The first infant school was established by Robert Owen (1771-1858) in New Lanark, Scotland, in 1816. Children were admitted at the age of two and cared for while their parents were at work in the local cotton mills. The instruction of children under six was to consist of 'whatever might be supposed useful that they could understand, and much attention was devoted to singing, dancing, and playing' (Hadow 1931:3).
Infant schools were thus at first partly 'minding schools' for young children in industrial areas; but they also sought to promote the children's physical well-being and to offer opportunities for their moral and social training and to provide some elementary instruction in the 3Rs, so that the children could make more rapid progress when they entered the monitorial school.
In 1818 a group led by the radical Whig politician Henry Brougham and the historian and philosopher James Mill (both Scots) established an infant school on Owen's lines in London, and imported a teacher from New Lanark.
Owen's ideas were developed by Samuel Wilderspin (1792-1866), who worked out a system of infant education which left its mark for many years on the curriculum and buildings of elementary schools. He had 'a mistaken zeal for the initiation of children at too early an age to formal instruction' (Hadow 1931:3).
The Home and Colonial Institution (later known as the Home and Colonial Society) was founded in 1836 to establish infant schools and to train teachers for them. The principal promoter of the Society, Revd Charles Mayo (1792-1846), was much influenced by the work of Pestalozzi, the Swiss educational reformer.
Elementary schools
The question of how to organise children above the age of six in elementary schools was first addressed in Great Britain by David Stow (1793-1864), who began his work in Glasgow around 1824. He founded the Glasgow Normal School and became a significant figure in the development of educational theory and practice. He believed that in primary education the living voice was more important than the printed page, so he laid great stress on oral class teaching.
He also conceived a graded system of elementary education, with an initiatory department for children of two or three to six years of age, and a juvenile department for children between the ages of six and 14, itself divided into junior and senior divisions. He described this scheme in his 1836 book Training System of Education for the Moral and Intellectual Elevation of Youth, especially in large Towns and Manufacturing Villages.
There were several practical objections to his system in the first half of the 19th century: it was costly; the school life of most children was short; and teachers could not be obtained in sufficient numbers. As a result, few schools were established using Stow's system, and the usual arrangement was an infant department for children up to the age of six, and a senior department for 6-12 year olds.
The small 'all-age' school for children between 6 and 12 often developed into a school with three or more classes, in which one teacher took a section for an oral lesson, while assistant teachers took other sections for written work in arithmetic and for exercises in reading, dictation and composition. This system became common after about 1856 (see Hadow 1931:7).
Impressed by the practical work he had seen in Swiss schools, Kay-Shuttleworth attempted to introduce more practical instruction into England's elementary schools. In the Regulations for the education of pupil teachers and stipendiary monitors, which he submitted to the Privy Council in December 1846, it was provided that pupil teachers at the end of their fourth year should be examined by the Inspector 'in the first steps in mensuration with practical illustrations, and in the elements of land surveying and levelling'. The women pupil-teachers in every year of their course were expected 'to show increased skill as seamstresses, and teachers of sewing, knitting, etc' (see Hadow 1926:8-9).
However, Kay-Shuttleworth's efforts had little effect on the great mass of elementary schools, most of which were set up and run by university graduates with literary and scientific interests. They wanted more culture in the schools, and there was a noticeable tendency to emphasise the superiority of a general non-manual education over any sort of vocational training such as that given in the schools of industry.
There was another reason why vocational training took second place to academic studies: it was soon discovered that any effective form of practical instruction cost much more than the teaching of the three Rs. Moreover, it was almost impossible to arrange for such instruction in large classes taught by monitors. Owing to the growth of commerce and sea-borne trade in the mid 19th century there was a great demand for clerks, and in schools where advanced work for older pupils was attempted it was found that it was much easier to train them for clerical work than for manual occupations. Matthew Arnold, writing about 1858, considered that the humane studies in the upper classes of the best elementary schools were by far the most interesting part of the curriculum.
Technical education
Because the industrial revolution had given Britain a head start in world trade, the government saw no reason why the state should be involved in the training of industrial recruits. So modernisation of the old apprenticeship system was left to voluntary agencies. Several Mechanics' Institutes opened in the mid 1820s and by 1850 there were 610 such Institutes in England and 12 in Wales, with a total membership of over 600,000.
The state did establish a 'Normal School of Design' in London in 1837 and made some annual grants for the maintenance of some provincial schools of design from 1841 onwards, but otherwise it did nothing until the Great Exhibition of 1851 drew public attention to the lack of facilities for technical education in England compared with those provided in various continental countries.
So in 1852 a Department of Practical Art was created under the Board of Trade. In 1856 this was moved into the Education Department as the Department of Science and Art, and in 1859 it began setting examinations - for both teachers and students - in branches of science related to industrial occupations (see Spens 1938:51).
Hostility to mass education
All the schools described above were established by individuals and groups who believed in - and campaigned for - mass education. But they found themselves up against vicious hostility to the very idea of educating the poor. One Justice of the Peace, for example, opined in 1807 that:
The origins of the German education system date back to church schools in the Middle Ages. The first university was founded in 1386 in Heidelberg; others were subsequently established in Cologne, Leipzig, Freiburg, and a number of other cities. These universities, which trained only a small intellectual elite of a few thousand, focused on the classics and religion. In the sixteenth century, the Reformation led to the founding of universities along sectarian lines. It was also in this century that cities promulgated the first regulations regarding elementary schools. By the eighteenth century, elementary schools had increasingly been separated from churches and had come under the direction of state authorities. Prussia, for example, made school attendance for all children between the ages of five and fourteen compulsory in 1763. A number of universities dedicated to science also came into being in the eighteenth century.
The defeat of Prussia by France led to a reform of education by the Berlin scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). His reforms in secondary schools have shaped the German education system to the present day. He required university-level training for high school teachers and modernized the structure and curriculum of the Gymnasium , the preparatory school. He also proposed an orientation phase after the Gymnasium and a qualifying examination known as the Abitur for university admission. In 1810 Humboldt founded the university in Berlin that now bears his name. Humboldt also introduced the three principles that guided German universities until the 1960s: academic freedom, the unity of teaching and research, and self-government by the professors. Also of much influence in education, both within Germany and abroad, was Friedrich Froebel's development of the kindergarten in 1837.
For much of the nineteenth century, Germany had two distinctive educational tracks: the Gymnasium , which provided a classical education for elites; and the Volksschule , which was attended for eight years by about 90 percent of children. The two schools were administered and supervised separately. Later in the century, two additional types of school emerged: the Realgymnasium , which substituted modern languages for the classics, and the Oberrealschule , which emphasized mathematics and science. Most children, however, could not attend the schools that prepared students for the professions or university entrance because of the schools' high standards and long duration. Hence, around the turn of the century, the Mittelschule , or middle school, was introduced to meet parental demand for expanded educational and economic opportunities. Children entered the Mittelschule after three years of elementary school, and they attended that school for six years.
In the nineteenth century, new universities were established in a number of major German cities, including Munich, Hamburg, and Frankfurt am Main. The older universities had been located mainly in smaller cities, such as Heidelberg. Many of the new universities were technical universities, and Germany soon attained a leadership in science that it lost only with World War II. Universities were state supported but largely independent in matters of curriculum and administration. A university degree brought much social status and was the prerequisite for entering the professions and the higher levels of the civil service.
A serious problem of German education before World War I was the rigid differentiation between primary education, received by all, and secondary education, received mainly by the children of the more prosperous classes. This division meant that most children of the poor had no access to secondary schooling and subsequent study at the university level. After the war, the Weimar constitution outlined a democratic vision of education that would address the problem: supervision by the state, with broad legislative powers over education; uniform teacher training; a minimum of eight years of primary school attendance; continuing education until the age of eighteen years; and free education and teaching materials. Many of these reform proposals never came to fruition, however.
During the Hitler era (1933-45), the national government reversed the tradition of provincial and local control of education and sought centralized control as part of the regime's aim to impose its political and racist ideology on society. Despite an agreement with the Vatican that theoretically guaranteed the independence of Roman Catholic schools, during the 1930s the regime considerably reduced church control of the parochial school system. Universities also lost their independence. By 1936 approximately 14 percent of all professors had been dismissed because of their political views or ethnic background. The introduction of two years of military service and six months of required labor led to a rapid decline in university enrollment. By 1939 all but six universities had closed.
After the defeat of the Hitler regime in 1945, the rebuilding of the education system in the occupied zones was influenced by the political interests and educational philosophy of the occupying powers: the United States, Britain, and France in what became West Germany; and the Soviet Union in East Germany. As a result, two different education systems developed. Their political, ideological, and cultural objectives and their core curricula reflected the socioeconomic and political-ideological environments that prevailed in the two parts of Germany from 1945 to 1989.
The Western Allies had differing views on education, but the insistence of the United States on the "reeducation" of German youth, meaning an education in and for democracy, proved the most persuasive. Thus, the West German education system was shaped by the democratic values of federalism, individualism, and the provision of a range of educational choices and opportunities by a variety of public and private institutions. Students began to express themselves more freely than before and to exercise a greater degree of influence on education. In West Germany, religious institutions regained their footing and reputation. By contrast, the East German education system was centralized. The communist-controlled Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands--SED) retained a monopoly over education and subjected it to rigid control.
Both Germanys faced the task of "denazifying" teachers and reeducating students, but they moved in different directions. The authorities in the East sought teachers who had opposed fascism and who were committed to a Marxist-Leninist ideology. In the West, authorities dismissed several thousand teachers and replaced them with educators holding democratic values. The ensuing Western reform program included reconstructing facilities and reinvigorating the system. In 1953 reforms were introduced that aimed at standardizing education throughout the Länder . In the 1960s, reforms were undertaken that introduced apprentice shops and new instruction techniques for vocational training.
The 1970s saw further major educational reform, detailed in the document Structural Plans for the Educational System . The plan was approved in 1970 by the Council of Education, which was established in 1957 to serve as an advisory committee for the entire education system, and by each Land minister of education and cultural affairs. The main components of the reform program were the reorganization of the upper level of the Gymnasium , the recruitment of more students into colleges and universities, and the establishment of the comprehensive school (Gesamtschule ). The Gesamtschule brings together the three kinds of secondary schools--the Hauptschule , the Realschule , and the Gymnasium --in an attempt to diminish what some perceived as the elitist bias of the traditional secondary education system. The program also proposed expanding adult education and vocational training programs.
The reform program achieved some but not all of its goals. The university entrance examination was made easier, and the number of students attending institutions of higher education rose from just over 200,000 in 1960 to about 1.9 million in the 1992-93 academic year (see table 11, Appendix). Between 1959 and 1979, twenty new universities were built, and university academic staff increased from 19,000 to 78,000. However, some Germans opposed the lowering of university entrance standards, and some also resisted the introduction of the Ge-samtschule . In addition, the worldwide recession brought on by the oil crisis of 1973 caused serious financial problems for the government at all levels and made reforms difficult to realize.
Despite the different educational policies implemented by the two Germanys between 1945 and 1990, both systems regarded education as a constitutional right and a public responsibility, emphasized the importance of a broad general education (Allgemeinbildung ), taught vocational education through the so-called dual system that combined classroom instruction with on-the-job training, required students to pass the Abitur examination before beginning university studies, and were committed to Humboldt's concept of university students' becoming educated by doing research. Despite these similarities, the systems differed in many important details, and the structural divergence was considerable.
Read more at http://www.mongabay.com/history/germany/germany-historical_background_education.html#oCuGurIOhkejDqSG.99
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One of the more important consequences of the revolution of 1848 was to bring intense attention to the field of education. Reformers and conservatives ali ke saw the educational system both a cause of the revolution and a hope for a renewed society. They differed in their vision of what the new society should be. Historians have differed too concerning the ultimate effects of the Revolution depending on whether they have emphasized short-term results or the fulfillment decades later of principles enunciated in the heady few months following the February Revolution. Most historians have concentrated on the debates concerning the role of schooling in societ y, but the most immediate effects on the Revolution were on those then intimately involved on the system-- students and teachers.
Uniquely in the history of French education from the Restoration to the end of the nineteenth century, student enrollment declined in primary schools between 1847 and 1850 -- by 208,000 students (6 percent) from 3,530,000 to 3,322,000. This decline occurred during a steady annual growth rate of 2 to 3 percent between 1840 (2,897,000) and 1860 (4,287,000). About 1,500 school teachers lost their jobs (precisely how many were fired for political reasons or for other reasons is impossible to determine). And funding for the écoles d'arts et metiers whose students and graduates had participated in the uprisings of 1848 was cut in the budgets of 1850 and 1851. The immediate social effects of the revolution were disruptive on the school system.
Nevertheless, the revolution of 1848 had little long-term effects on the systematic development of schooling. Enrolm ent in primary schools grew at about the same pace in the decade before the revolution and in the two decades after it by which time nearly every child in France was completing primary school. The number and qualifications of teachers steadily increased, and, despite an increase in the number of nuns teaching during the Second Empire, the number of lay teachers increased steadily until full laicization of the system was achieved at the beginning of the twentieth century. The écoles d'arts et metie rs flourished and evolved into true professional schools with their graduates holding major positions in both private enterprise and state. Within the general history of the systemic development of the French educational system, established by the 1830s, 1848 represented but an aberration, important for the teachers and students of the time but not for long-range trends.
The proposals made about schooling and the visions expressed at the time illuminate social tensions about the social role of sch ools, the competing interest of church and state, and the twists and turns that French education would take over the next half century. Despite a number of proposed bills, no significant legislation was passed during the second republic until the controversial Falloux law of March 15, 1850, but the proposals of Hippolyte Carnot, minister of public instruction and religion during the four months immediately following the February revolution, presaged the Ferry Laws passed thirty years later under the Third Republic.
On March 6 Carnot sent a circular to all the rectors of the academies (administrative units of public instruction) exhorting them to enlist school teachers in the republican cause. Teachers should prepare manuals, modelled after the Catholic catechism, to teach children the rights and duties of citizens under the republic and "guarding against ignorance". This Rousseauian idea of forming man was to have a distinctly secular and republic base, which would supersede religious and local cu lture. It would be only in the Third Republic that such citizenship manuals would be produced however.
Carnot's most famous and far-reaching "project of law" was that submitted to the assembly on June 30 and under study by a committee for six months until the newly-elected president, Louis Napoleon, withdrew it. Articles 2 and 6 respectively would have made primary schooling for both sexes both obligatory so that citizens could properly exercise universal suffrage and without charge, in order to abolish distinctions between rich and poor within public institutions. The curriculum would be expanded. Teachers would receive three years of training in a normal school without fee, though they would be obligated to teach for ten years, and guaranteed a minimum wage of 600 to 1200 francs for men, 500 to 1000 for women. All of these proposals would eventually become law -- minimum wages for teachers in 1850 and free and obligatory education in the Ferry laws of 1880.
In one significant manner, the Carnot project differed from the Ferry Laws. Despite his exhortations to teachers to prepare republican catechism, Carnot did not intend for schooling to be exclusively lay or the monopoly of the state. Indeed, Carnot's project included a provision for the liberty of education. He insisted that parents had the right to choose the teacher who would instruct their children. Moreover, "moral education" would include liberty, equality, and fraternity but also religion. It was this provision for liberty of education that would first become law less than two years later under Carnot's successor, Frédéric, Comte de Falloux.
The Falloux law, presented to the chamber of June 1849 and passed on March 15, 1850, has been recognized as a major event in the political and educational history of France but denounced by republican historians as a conservative reaction to the revolution of 1848. Its most important and controversial provision was the legal incorporation of the principle of "libe rty of education," which had the effect of expanding the role of the Church in schooling and making it partner with the state at the secondary level as it had been at the primary level. It was passed at a time of political conservatism following the June Days and demonstrated in the elections of May 1849, and made no provision for free and obligatory primary education as Carnot had proposed. The committee rejected those principles as inconsistent with the historical tradition of France, too expensive, an d an interference with parental rights.
But recognition of the principle of liberty of education was not a sudden turning point. The Guizot law permitted the church to operate primary schools. Charles Forbes Montalembert had led a Catholic campaign for it throughout the 1840s. Carnot had proposed it, and it was enshrined in article IX of the constitution of 1848. The commission itself was a moderate one (nine members from the University, six representatives of the church -- but only one priest -- and nine other deputies); Falloux had deliberately excluded both vocal anticlericals and Catholic extremists like Louis Veuillot. Hardly anyone wanted a monopoly for either church or state. So concerned about "socialist" tendencies among lay teachers, Thiers, chairman of the committee, offered a monopoly of primary schooling to the Church only to find that Catholic members would have no part of it. He was adamant, however, about state supervision of Catholic secondary schools and was dismayed that the final law did not exclude Jesuits from teaching. Because the Falloux law made no mention of the "unauthorized" religious congregations, the Jesuits and other large religious orders were able to establish secondary schools for boys and nuns -- with a "letter of obedience" from their superior -- to open a plethora of primary schools for girls. The law's silence about the congregations, growing social demand for schooling, and the conservative climate of the Second Empire led to an explosive growth in Cath olic schools that was unforeseen even by Catholic proponents of liberty of education.
At the level of secondary schooling, the law allowed anyone who was twenty-five years of age or older and had a baccalaureate or five years teaching in a secondary school to found a secondary school. The state had the right to inspect all schools and it alone the right to administer the baccalaureate. The law created a partnership between church and state in public instruction. It further permitted any town to transfer its public college to the clergy; the result was that the number of colleges communaux declined by 25 percent in a decade. Enrolment in Catholic secondary schools meanwhile exploded. By 1854 21,195 students attended an ecclesiastical school (about 20,000 in Catholic ones); by 1867, 36,924 attended one; another 20,000 to 25,000 enrolled in a minor seminary, most of whom never intended a priestly vocation. Private lay schools, taking advantage of the law, prospered too; their enrolment in 1854 was in fact twice that of Catholic schools, but such schools proved unable to compete against the twin powers of church and state and atrophied. Catholic schools sustained growth , however -- a growth rate of 75 percent versus 34 percent for the whole secondary system 1854-1867.
At the elementary level, the law continued the tradition of non-obligatory, paid schooling, with tuition waivers for the poor. Both teachers and their training school (école normale) suffered more regulation; enseigne ment primaire supérieure disappeared -- a backward step that explains in part the popularity of special secondary programs during the Second Empire. But the curriculum was expanded, a girls' school was required of communes of 800 or more inhabitants, and teachers were guaranteed a minimum wage of 800 francs -- all proposals consistent with Carnot's project. The law encouraged girls' schooling such that 6,000 (21,000 to 27,000) new girls' schools were established between 1850 and 1863 (only 2,000 mo re would be established in the thirteen years following 1863) but 5,000 of those schools were directed by nuns. Enrollment in all primary schools during that period would grow by 1,000,000 students, 650,000 of those in Catholic schools. Liberty of education at both the primary and secondary level came to mean instruction by priests and nuns. As long as the system was expanding, Church and State could co-operate in the education of France's next generation. By the Third Republic, however, the system had r eached fulfillment with nearly all school-age children in school; then Church and State began to compete with each other for the same students. Then, not in the 1850s, demands for a lay, state monopoly of schooling or, at least, severe restrictions on "liberty of education" became a major political issue.
The revolution of 1848 disrupted schooling in France for about three years. Liberal principles and an increased influence of the church produced a greater role for the church in education. A s ocial and political reaction to the revolution created a climate in which Catholic schools were preferred by many, particularly in the countryside where the educational system was less established. Republicans of the Third Republic harkened back to republican ideals of the second republic as ideals that had been subverted by an aggressive church. The Revolution of 1848 affected perceptions of future generations much more than it did schooling which experienced systematic growth from the July Monarchy thro ugh the Third Republic.
The industrial revolution
In 1751 the population of the British mainland stood at seven million. By 1821 - after seventy years of industrial revolution - it had reached fourteen million, and by 1871 it would reach twenty-six million. The rapid expansion in the overall population was matched by increases in the proportion of people who lived in towns and cities, and in the proportion of the population who were children.
England's industrial revolution began in the second half of the 18th century. At first, new agricultural techniques freed workers from the land and made it possible to feed a large non-agricultural population.
In the 19th century, relative world peace, the availability of money, coal and iron ore, and the invention of the steam engine, all combined to facilitate the construction of factories for the mass production of goods. The factory system increased the division and specialisation of labour and resulted in large numbers of people moving to the new industrial cities, especially in the midlands and the north. It also resulted in low wages, slum housing and the use of child labour.
Thus the industrial revolution exacerbated the problems of a society 'divided into those with land or capital or profession and those with no wealth, no possessions and no privileges' (Benn and Chitty 1996:2).
Perhaps the first sign that the state was beginning to acknowledge some responsibility for the conditions in which the poor - and particularly poor children - lived, was Peel's Factory Act of 1802: 'An Act for the preservation of the health and morals of apprentices and others employed in cotton and other mills and cotton and other factories'. The Act required an employer to provide instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic during at least the first four years of the seven years of apprenticeship. Such secular instruction was to be part of the twelve hours of daily occupation beginning not earlier than 6am and ending not later than 9pm. Many of the apprentices were young pauper children who were frequently brought from distant workhouses to labour in the cotton mills.
Alongside the upheaval of industrialisation, the process of democratisation got under way with the Representation of the People Act 1832 (commonly known as the Reform Act), which gave a million people the right to vote.
This dramatic social, political and economic transformation served to reveal the utter inadequacy of England's educational provision. A number of reports highlighted the deficiencies and called for more and better schools. One such report looked at 12,000 parishes in 1816, and found that 3,500 had no school, 3,000 had endowed schools of varying quality, and 5,500 had unendowed schools of even more variable quality.
New types of school
To fill the gaps, and to provide for England's newly-industrialised and (partly) enfranchised society, various types of school began to be established to offer some basic education to the masses.
Sunday schools
The Sunday schools taught the poor - both children and adults - to read the Bible, but not to do writing or arithmetic or any of the 'more dangerous subjects' which were 'less necessary or even harmful' (Williams 1961:136).
Schools of industry
'Schools of industry' were set up to provide the poor with manual training and elementary instruction. Such a school opened at Kendal in the Lake District in 1799. According to the Records of the Society for Bettering the Conditions of the Poor (III. 300-312):
the children were taught reading and writing, geography and religion. Thirty of the older girls were employed in knitting, sewing, spinning and housework, and 36 younger girls were employed in knitting only. The older boys were taught shoemaking, and the younger boys prepared machinery for carding wool. The older girls assisted in preparing breakfast, which was provided in the school at a small weekly charge. They were also taught laundry work. The staff consisted of one schoolmaster, two teachers of spinning and knitting, and one teacher for shoemaking. (Hadow 1926:3-4)In 1846 the Committee of Council on Education, under Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, its Secretary from 1839 to 1849, began making grants to day schools of industry towards the provision of gardens, trade workshops, kitchens and wash-houses, and for gratuities to the masters who taught boys gardening and crafts and to the mistresses who gave 'satisfactory instruction in domestic economy' (Hadow 1926:9).Monitorial schools
In the rival systems of Lancaster and Bell, as in the Sunday schools, the teaching was based on the Bible, but using a new method which Bell called 'the steam engine of the moral world' (quoted in Williams 1961:136). (Incidentally, Young and Hancock (1956:830) ascribe this quotation to Brougham, of whom more below).
Bell's method involved the use of monitors and standard repetitive exercises so that one master could teach hundreds of children at the same time in one room. It was the industrialisation of the teaching process.
The curriculum in these monitorial schools was at first largely similar to that of the schools of industry - the 'three Rs' (reading, writing and 'rithmetic) plus practical activities such as cobbling, tailoring, gardening, simple agricultural operations for boys, and spinning, sewing, knitting, lace-making and baking for girls.
A small group of thinkers led by Bentham and Place, impressed by developments in Scotland, Prussia, France and Holland, sought to establish higher grade elementary schools and monitorial secondary schools to meet the needs of the class immediately above the very poor. Unfortunately, Bentham's 'Chrestomathic Scheme' for the education of 7 to 14 year olds, devised around 1816, proved too encyclopaedic a course of studies, and the proposal met with little support.
Kay-Shuttleworth recognised the shortcomings of the monitorial schools and made an important contribution to the general development of primary education by introducing a modified form of the pupil teacher system, so preparing the way for a large supply of adult teachers (see Hadow 1931:7).
Infant schools
The first infant school was established by Robert Owen (1771-1858) in New Lanark, Scotland, in 1816. Children were admitted at the age of two and cared for while their parents were at work in the local cotton mills. The instruction of children under six was to consist of 'whatever might be supposed useful that they could understand, and much attention was devoted to singing, dancing, and playing' (Hadow 1931:3).
Infant schools were thus at first partly 'minding schools' for young children in industrial areas; but they also sought to promote the children's physical well-being and to offer opportunities for their moral and social training and to provide some elementary instruction in the 3Rs, so that the children could make more rapid progress when they entered the monitorial school.
In 1818 a group led by the radical Whig politician Henry Brougham and the historian and philosopher James Mill (both Scots) established an infant school on Owen's lines in London, and imported a teacher from New Lanark.
Owen's ideas were developed by Samuel Wilderspin (1792-1866), who worked out a system of infant education which left its mark for many years on the curriculum and buildings of elementary schools. He had 'a mistaken zeal for the initiation of children at too early an age to formal instruction' (Hadow 1931:3).
The Home and Colonial Institution (later known as the Home and Colonial Society) was founded in 1836 to establish infant schools and to train teachers for them. The principal promoter of the Society, Revd Charles Mayo (1792-1846), was much influenced by the work of Pestalozzi, the Swiss educational reformer.
Elementary schools
The question of how to organise children above the age of six in elementary schools was first addressed in Great Britain by David Stow (1793-1864), who began his work in Glasgow around 1824. He founded the Glasgow Normal School and became a significant figure in the development of educational theory and practice. He believed that in primary education the living voice was more important than the printed page, so he laid great stress on oral class teaching.
He also conceived a graded system of elementary education, with an initiatory department for children of two or three to six years of age, and a juvenile department for children between the ages of six and 14, itself divided into junior and senior divisions. He described this scheme in his 1836 book Training System of Education for the Moral and Intellectual Elevation of Youth, especially in large Towns and Manufacturing Villages.
There were several practical objections to his system in the first half of the 19th century: it was costly; the school life of most children was short; and teachers could not be obtained in sufficient numbers. As a result, few schools were established using Stow's system, and the usual arrangement was an infant department for children up to the age of six, and a senior department for 6-12 year olds.
The small 'all-age' school for children between 6 and 12 often developed into a school with three or more classes, in which one teacher took a section for an oral lesson, while assistant teachers took other sections for written work in arithmetic and for exercises in reading, dictation and composition. This system became common after about 1856 (see Hadow 1931:7).
Impressed by the practical work he had seen in Swiss schools, Kay-Shuttleworth attempted to introduce more practical instruction into England's elementary schools. In the Regulations for the education of pupil teachers and stipendiary monitors, which he submitted to the Privy Council in December 1846, it was provided that pupil teachers at the end of their fourth year should be examined by the Inspector 'in the first steps in mensuration with practical illustrations, and in the elements of land surveying and levelling'. The women pupil-teachers in every year of their course were expected 'to show increased skill as seamstresses, and teachers of sewing, knitting, etc' (see Hadow 1926:8-9).
However, Kay-Shuttleworth's efforts had little effect on the great mass of elementary schools, most of which were set up and run by university graduates with literary and scientific interests. They wanted more culture in the schools, and there was a noticeable tendency to emphasise the superiority of a general non-manual education over any sort of vocational training such as that given in the schools of industry.
There was another reason why vocational training took second place to academic studies: it was soon discovered that any effective form of practical instruction cost much more than the teaching of the three Rs. Moreover, it was almost impossible to arrange for such instruction in large classes taught by monitors. Owing to the growth of commerce and sea-borne trade in the mid 19th century there was a great demand for clerks, and in schools where advanced work for older pupils was attempted it was found that it was much easier to train them for clerical work than for manual occupations. Matthew Arnold, writing about 1858, considered that the humane studies in the upper classes of the best elementary schools were by far the most interesting part of the curriculum.
Technical education
Because the industrial revolution had given Britain a head start in world trade, the government saw no reason why the state should be involved in the training of industrial recruits. So modernisation of the old apprenticeship system was left to voluntary agencies. Several Mechanics' Institutes opened in the mid 1820s and by 1850 there were 610 such Institutes in England and 12 in Wales, with a total membership of over 600,000.
The state did establish a 'Normal School of Design' in London in 1837 and made some annual grants for the maintenance of some provincial schools of design from 1841 onwards, but otherwise it did nothing until the Great Exhibition of 1851 drew public attention to the lack of facilities for technical education in England compared with those provided in various continental countries.
So in 1852 a Department of Practical Art was created under the Board of Trade. In 1856 this was moved into the Education Department as the Department of Science and Art, and in 1859 it began setting examinations - for both teachers and students - in branches of science related to industrial occupations (see Spens 1938:51).
Hostility to mass education
All the schools described above were established by individuals and groups who believed in - and campaigned for - mass education. But they found themselves up against vicious hostility to the very idea of educating the poor. One Justice of the Peace, for example, opined in 1807 that:
It is doubtless desirable that the poor should be generally instructed in reading, if it were only for the best of purposes - that they may read the Scriptures. As to writing and arithmetic, it may be apprehended that such a degree of knowledge would produce in them a disrelish for the laborious occupations of life. (quoted in Williams 1961:135)And when the Parochial Schools Bill of 1807 was debated in the Commons, Tory MP Davies Giddy warned the House that:
However specious in theory the project might be of giving education to the labouring classes of the poor, it would, in effect, be found to be prejudicial to their morals and happiness; it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture and other laborious employments to which their rank in society had destined them; instead of teaching them the virtue of subordination, it would render them factious and refractory, as is evident in the manufacturing counties; it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books and publications against Christianity; it would render them insolent to their superiors; and, in a few years, the result would be that the legislature would find it necessary to direct the strong arm of power towards them and to furnish the executive magistrates with more vigorous powers than are now in force. Besides, if this Bill were to pass into law, it would go to burthen the country with a most enormous and incalculable expense, and to load the industrious orders with still heavier imposts. (Hansard, House of Commons, Vol. 9, Col. 798, 13 July 1807, quoted in Chitty 2007:15-16)In some respects things were even worse than in previous centuries. Although the poor had never been educated en masse, there had been parishes where exceptional provision was made, and a few able boys from poor homes had even been offered university places. But by the start of the 19th century, education was organised, like English society as a whole, on a more rigid class basis. The result was
a new kind of class-determined education. Higher education became a virtual monopoly, excluding the new working class, and the idea of universal education, except within the narrow limits of 'moral rescue', was widely opposed as a matter of principle. (Williams 1961:136)But the calls for more and better education were increasing in number and volume. They were endorsed by school inspectors. In reports for 1847 (quoted in Hadow 1926:8), for example, two inspectors commented:
I adhere, however, to the opinion which I formerly expressed, and which I now repeat, having had the advantage of conversing with many of the most experienced supporters of education upon the subject, that in most country districts it would be advisable to have a preparatory school in each village, and a completely organised school, under the charge of able teachers, in a central locality. (Rev FC Cook)and
I think it very desirable that district schools should be formed for three, four, or five parishes, wherein, under an efficient master with apprentices, a superior education may be provided not only for the elder children of labourers, but also for such of the farmers, small tradesmen, and mechanics, as may choose to avail themselves of it. (Rev HW Bellairs)Source: Derek Gillard
German Education
The defeat of Prussia by France led to a reform of education by the Berlin scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). His reforms in secondary schools have shaped the German education system to the present day. He required university-level training for high school teachers and modernized the structure and curriculum of the Gymnasium , the preparatory school. He also proposed an orientation phase after the Gymnasium and a qualifying examination known as the Abitur for university admission. In 1810 Humboldt founded the university in Berlin that now bears his name. Humboldt also introduced the three principles that guided German universities until the 1960s: academic freedom, the unity of teaching and research, and self-government by the professors. Also of much influence in education, both within Germany and abroad, was Friedrich Froebel's development of the kindergarten in 1837.
For much of the nineteenth century, Germany had two distinctive educational tracks: the Gymnasium , which provided a classical education for elites; and the Volksschule , which was attended for eight years by about 90 percent of children. The two schools were administered and supervised separately. Later in the century, two additional types of school emerged: the Realgymnasium , which substituted modern languages for the classics, and the Oberrealschule , which emphasized mathematics and science. Most children, however, could not attend the schools that prepared students for the professions or university entrance because of the schools' high standards and long duration. Hence, around the turn of the century, the Mittelschule , or middle school, was introduced to meet parental demand for expanded educational and economic opportunities. Children entered the Mittelschule after three years of elementary school, and they attended that school for six years.
In the nineteenth century, new universities were established in a number of major German cities, including Munich, Hamburg, and Frankfurt am Main. The older universities had been located mainly in smaller cities, such as Heidelberg. Many of the new universities were technical universities, and Germany soon attained a leadership in science that it lost only with World War II. Universities were state supported but largely independent in matters of curriculum and administration. A university degree brought much social status and was the prerequisite for entering the professions and the higher levels of the civil service.
A serious problem of German education before World War I was the rigid differentiation between primary education, received by all, and secondary education, received mainly by the children of the more prosperous classes. This division meant that most children of the poor had no access to secondary schooling and subsequent study at the university level. After the war, the Weimar constitution outlined a democratic vision of education that would address the problem: supervision by the state, with broad legislative powers over education; uniform teacher training; a minimum of eight years of primary school attendance; continuing education until the age of eighteen years; and free education and teaching materials. Many of these reform proposals never came to fruition, however.
During the Hitler era (1933-45), the national government reversed the tradition of provincial and local control of education and sought centralized control as part of the regime's aim to impose its political and racist ideology on society. Despite an agreement with the Vatican that theoretically guaranteed the independence of Roman Catholic schools, during the 1930s the regime considerably reduced church control of the parochial school system. Universities also lost their independence. By 1936 approximately 14 percent of all professors had been dismissed because of their political views or ethnic background. The introduction of two years of military service and six months of required labor led to a rapid decline in university enrollment. By 1939 all but six universities had closed.
After the defeat of the Hitler regime in 1945, the rebuilding of the education system in the occupied zones was influenced by the political interests and educational philosophy of the occupying powers: the United States, Britain, and France in what became West Germany; and the Soviet Union in East Germany. As a result, two different education systems developed. Their political, ideological, and cultural objectives and their core curricula reflected the socioeconomic and political-ideological environments that prevailed in the two parts of Germany from 1945 to 1989.
The Western Allies had differing views on education, but the insistence of the United States on the "reeducation" of German youth, meaning an education in and for democracy, proved the most persuasive. Thus, the West German education system was shaped by the democratic values of federalism, individualism, and the provision of a range of educational choices and opportunities by a variety of public and private institutions. Students began to express themselves more freely than before and to exercise a greater degree of influence on education. In West Germany, religious institutions regained their footing and reputation. By contrast, the East German education system was centralized. The communist-controlled Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands--SED) retained a monopoly over education and subjected it to rigid control.
Both Germanys faced the task of "denazifying" teachers and reeducating students, but they moved in different directions. The authorities in the East sought teachers who had opposed fascism and who were committed to a Marxist-Leninist ideology. In the West, authorities dismissed several thousand teachers and replaced them with educators holding democratic values. The ensuing Western reform program included reconstructing facilities and reinvigorating the system. In 1953 reforms were introduced that aimed at standardizing education throughout the Länder . In the 1960s, reforms were undertaken that introduced apprentice shops and new instruction techniques for vocational training.
The 1970s saw further major educational reform, detailed in the document Structural Plans for the Educational System . The plan was approved in 1970 by the Council of Education, which was established in 1957 to serve as an advisory committee for the entire education system, and by each Land minister of education and cultural affairs. The main components of the reform program were the reorganization of the upper level of the Gymnasium , the recruitment of more students into colleges and universities, and the establishment of the comprehensive school (Gesamtschule ). The Gesamtschule brings together the three kinds of secondary schools--the Hauptschule , the Realschule , and the Gymnasium --in an attempt to diminish what some perceived as the elitist bias of the traditional secondary education system. The program also proposed expanding adult education and vocational training programs.
The reform program achieved some but not all of its goals. The university entrance examination was made easier, and the number of students attending institutions of higher education rose from just over 200,000 in 1960 to about 1.9 million in the 1992-93 academic year (see table 11, Appendix). Between 1959 and 1979, twenty new universities were built, and university academic staff increased from 19,000 to 78,000. However, some Germans opposed the lowering of university entrance standards, and some also resisted the introduction of the Ge-samtschule . In addition, the worldwide recession brought on by the oil crisis of 1973 caused serious financial problems for the government at all levels and made reforms difficult to realize.
Despite the different educational policies implemented by the two Germanys between 1945 and 1990, both systems regarded education as a constitutional right and a public responsibility, emphasized the importance of a broad general education (Allgemeinbildung ), taught vocational education through the so-called dual system that combined classroom instruction with on-the-job training, required students to pass the Abitur examination before beginning university studies, and were committed to Humboldt's concept of university students' becoming educated by doing research. Despite these similarities, the systems differed in many important details, and the structural divergence was considerable.
Read more at http://www.mongabay.com/history/germany/germany-historical_background_education.html#oCuGurIOhkejDqSG.99
Chinese Education
. Throughout the thousands of years of imperial rule, even as one dynasty gave way to the next, the Chinese were steadfast in their belief that socially and intellectually they had no peers, especially as compared with Western cultures. They had a highly developed culture, and with the “four inventions” (gunpower, the compass, movable type and paper), they felt also that they had a rich technological tradition. However, with the humiliating defeat at the hands of the British in the Opium War (1840-1842), the Chinese were forced to grudgingly re-evaluate their dominance, at least in the area of science and technology. Following the defeat in the Opium War and the ensuing cessation of Hong Kong to Great Britian, Western education gradually began to take root in China, for the most part through schools founded by Christian missionaries. While the majority of Chinese gentry looked upon these developments with a sense of humiliation and extreme suspicion, a few more pragmatic and liberal-minded officials saw the opportunity for a balanced approach to education, where Confucian classics would continue to form the core, augmented by a component of Western technology.
Against a backdrop of massive illiteracy, the system of civil service examinations continued to be the only route to officialdom. However, with the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the Chinese finally became convinced that their own future would rest, at least in part, on the acceptance of certain aspects of Western-style education. [3] (Indeed, Japan had already been successful in adapting Western education to a non-Western society.) In 1905 the civil service examination system was dismantled, and a series of reform measures were issued by the Qing Dynasty court calling for the old academies to be reorganized into a modern system of primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education, to be based on Western models.
Shortly thereafter, in 1911, the Qing Dynasty itself was overthrown in the bourgeois revolution, and a Republican form of government was established. By this time, there were already European, American and Japanese education models on Chinese soil. Because of Japan's successful adaptation, their system was tried first, implemented by a large number of Japanese-trained Chinese scholars. During the chaotic warlord period of the early 1920s, this gradually gave way to a system more closely patterned on American models. Even before this, however, especially during the “May Fourth Period” of 1915-1920, there were intense debates and disputes over the cloning of Western-style education systems in a country trying to find a new identity after millennia of dynastic rule. [4] Of course, it is inaccurate to say that the debates were centered only on educational matters; they were largely political, inspired in part by the Russian revolution and the subsequent takeover by the Marxist government. In turn, the Chinese Communist Party was born in 1921, with its own ideas about the “correct” form of education in China.[5]
All sides in the debate agreed that a system was needed that could provide for the technological needs of the country without sacrificing its Chinese identity, and at the same time could be expanded so as to reach the masses in a predominately rural society. During this period a number of experiments were attempted, including the short-lived Hunan Self-Study University established by Mao Zedong and friends in 1921. One of the prime objectives of this experimental university was to bring higher education to those who otherwise could not afford it. [6] With the Japanese invasion in the late 1930s, this and other experiments and debates were suspended until after the Liberation in 1949.
Source: David B. Surowski
French Education
Uniquely in the history of French education from the Restoration to the end of the nineteenth century, student enrollment declined in primary schools between 1847 and 1850 -- by 208,000 students (6 percent) from 3,530,000 to 3,322,000. This decline occurred during a steady annual growth rate of 2 to 3 percent between 1840 (2,897,000) and 1860 (4,287,000). About 1,500 school teachers lost their jobs (precisely how many were fired for political reasons or for other reasons is impossible to determine). And funding for the écoles d'arts et metiers whose students and graduates had participated in the uprisings of 1848 was cut in the budgets of 1850 and 1851. The immediate social effects of the revolution were disruptive on the school system.
Nevertheless, the revolution of 1848 had little long-term effects on the systematic development of schooling. Enrolm ent in primary schools grew at about the same pace in the decade before the revolution and in the two decades after it by which time nearly every child in France was completing primary school. The number and qualifications of teachers steadily increased, and, despite an increase in the number of nuns teaching during the Second Empire, the number of lay teachers increased steadily until full laicization of the system was achieved at the beginning of the twentieth century. The écoles d'arts et metie rs flourished and evolved into true professional schools with their graduates holding major positions in both private enterprise and state. Within the general history of the systemic development of the French educational system, established by the 1830s, 1848 represented but an aberration, important for the teachers and students of the time but not for long-range trends.
The proposals made about schooling and the visions expressed at the time illuminate social tensions about the social role of sch ools, the competing interest of church and state, and the twists and turns that French education would take over the next half century. Despite a number of proposed bills, no significant legislation was passed during the second republic until the controversial Falloux law of March 15, 1850, but the proposals of Hippolyte Carnot, minister of public instruction and religion during the four months immediately following the February revolution, presaged the Ferry Laws passed thirty years later under the Third Republic.
On March 6 Carnot sent a circular to all the rectors of the academies (administrative units of public instruction) exhorting them to enlist school teachers in the republican cause. Teachers should prepare manuals, modelled after the Catholic catechism, to teach children the rights and duties of citizens under the republic and "guarding against ignorance". This Rousseauian idea of forming man was to have a distinctly secular and republic base, which would supersede religious and local cu lture. It would be only in the Third Republic that such citizenship manuals would be produced however.
Carnot's most famous and far-reaching "project of law" was that submitted to the assembly on June 30 and under study by a committee for six months until the newly-elected president, Louis Napoleon, withdrew it. Articles 2 and 6 respectively would have made primary schooling for both sexes both obligatory so that citizens could properly exercise universal suffrage and without charge, in order to abolish distinctions between rich and poor within public institutions. The curriculum would be expanded. Teachers would receive three years of training in a normal school without fee, though they would be obligated to teach for ten years, and guaranteed a minimum wage of 600 to 1200 francs for men, 500 to 1000 for women. All of these proposals would eventually become law -- minimum wages for teachers in 1850 and free and obligatory education in the Ferry laws of 1880.
In one significant manner, the Carnot project differed from the Ferry Laws. Despite his exhortations to teachers to prepare republican catechism, Carnot did not intend for schooling to be exclusively lay or the monopoly of the state. Indeed, Carnot's project included a provision for the liberty of education. He insisted that parents had the right to choose the teacher who would instruct their children. Moreover, "moral education" would include liberty, equality, and fraternity but also religion. It was this provision for liberty of education that would first become law less than two years later under Carnot's successor, Frédéric, Comte de Falloux.
The Falloux law, presented to the chamber of June 1849 and passed on March 15, 1850, has been recognized as a major event in the political and educational history of France but denounced by republican historians as a conservative reaction to the revolution of 1848. Its most important and controversial provision was the legal incorporation of the principle of "libe rty of education," which had the effect of expanding the role of the Church in schooling and making it partner with the state at the secondary level as it had been at the primary level. It was passed at a time of political conservatism following the June Days and demonstrated in the elections of May 1849, and made no provision for free and obligatory primary education as Carnot had proposed. The committee rejected those principles as inconsistent with the historical tradition of France, too expensive, an d an interference with parental rights.
But recognition of the principle of liberty of education was not a sudden turning point. The Guizot law permitted the church to operate primary schools. Charles Forbes Montalembert had led a Catholic campaign for it throughout the 1840s. Carnot had proposed it, and it was enshrined in article IX of the constitution of 1848. The commission itself was a moderate one (nine members from the University, six representatives of the church -- but only one priest -- and nine other deputies); Falloux had deliberately excluded both vocal anticlericals and Catholic extremists like Louis Veuillot. Hardly anyone wanted a monopoly for either church or state. So concerned about "socialist" tendencies among lay teachers, Thiers, chairman of the committee, offered a monopoly of primary schooling to the Church only to find that Catholic members would have no part of it. He was adamant, however, about state supervision of Catholic secondary schools and was dismayed that the final law did not exclude Jesuits from teaching. Because the Falloux law made no mention of the "unauthorized" religious congregations, the Jesuits and other large religious orders were able to establish secondary schools for boys and nuns -- with a "letter of obedience" from their superior -- to open a plethora of primary schools for girls. The law's silence about the congregations, growing social demand for schooling, and the conservative climate of the Second Empire led to an explosive growth in Cath olic schools that was unforeseen even by Catholic proponents of liberty of education.
At the level of secondary schooling, the law allowed anyone who was twenty-five years of age or older and had a baccalaureate or five years teaching in a secondary school to found a secondary school. The state had the right to inspect all schools and it alone the right to administer the baccalaureate. The law created a partnership between church and state in public instruction. It further permitted any town to transfer its public college to the clergy; the result was that the number of colleges communaux declined by 25 percent in a decade. Enrolment in Catholic secondary schools meanwhile exploded. By 1854 21,195 students attended an ecclesiastical school (about 20,000 in Catholic ones); by 1867, 36,924 attended one; another 20,000 to 25,000 enrolled in a minor seminary, most of whom never intended a priestly vocation. Private lay schools, taking advantage of the law, prospered too; their enrolment in 1854 was in fact twice that of Catholic schools, but such schools proved unable to compete against the twin powers of church and state and atrophied. Catholic schools sustained growth , however -- a growth rate of 75 percent versus 34 percent for the whole secondary system 1854-1867.
At the elementary level, the law continued the tradition of non-obligatory, paid schooling, with tuition waivers for the poor. Both teachers and their training school (école normale) suffered more regulation; enseigne ment primaire supérieure disappeared -- a backward step that explains in part the popularity of special secondary programs during the Second Empire. But the curriculum was expanded, a girls' school was required of communes of 800 or more inhabitants, and teachers were guaranteed a minimum wage of 800 francs -- all proposals consistent with Carnot's project. The law encouraged girls' schooling such that 6,000 (21,000 to 27,000) new girls' schools were established between 1850 and 1863 (only 2,000 mo re would be established in the thirteen years following 1863) but 5,000 of those schools were directed by nuns. Enrollment in all primary schools during that period would grow by 1,000,000 students, 650,000 of those in Catholic schools. Liberty of education at both the primary and secondary level came to mean instruction by priests and nuns. As long as the system was expanding, Church and State could co-operate in the education of France's next generation. By the Third Republic, however, the system had r eached fulfillment with nearly all school-age children in school; then Church and State began to compete with each other for the same students. Then, not in the 1850s, demands for a lay, state monopoly of schooling or, at least, severe restrictions on "liberty of education" became a major political issue.
The revolution of 1848 disrupted schooling in France for about three years. Liberal principles and an increased influence of the church produced a greater role for the church in education. A s ocial and political reaction to the revolution created a climate in which Catholic schools were preferred by many, particularly in the countryside where the educational system was less established. Republicans of the Third Republic harkened back to republican ideals of the second republic as ideals that had been subverted by an aggressive church. The Revolution of 1848 affected perceptions of future generations much more than it did schooling which experienced systematic growth from the July Monarchy thro ugh the Third Republic.
Source: Ohio University
