The instruction of the people in every kind of knowledge that can be of use to them in the practice of their moral duties as men, citizens, and Christians, and of their political and civil duties as members of society and freemen, ought to be the care of the public, and of all who have any share in the conduct of its affairs, in a manner that never yet has been practiced in any age or nation. The education here intended is not merely that of the children of the rich and noble, but of every rank and class of people, down to the lowest and poorest. It is not too much to say that schools for the education of all should be placed at convenient distances and maintained at the public expense. The revenues of the State would be applied infinitely better, more charitably, wisely, usefully, and therefore politically in this way than even in maintaining the poor. This would be the best way of preventing the existence of the poor. . . .

Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.

Having founded, as Lincoln so well said later at Gettysburg, "on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," and having built a constitutional form of government based on that equality, it in time became evident to those who thought at all on the question that that liberty and political equality could not be preserved without the general education of all. A new motive for education was thus created and gradually formulated in the United States, as well as in revolutionary France, and the nature of the school instruction of the youth of the State came in time to be colored through and through by this new political motive. The necessary schools, though, did not come at once. On the contrary, the struggle to establish these necessary schools it will be our purpose to trace in subsequent chapters, but before doing so we wish first to point out how the rise of a political theory for education led to the development of a theory as to the nature of the educational process which exercised a far-reaching influence on all subsequent evolution of schools and teaching.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What do the proposals of La Chalotais, Rolland, and Turgot indicate as to the degree of unification of France attained by the time they wrote? 2. What new subjects did Diderot add to the religious elementary school of his time?

3. Show how the decline in efficiency of the Jesuits was a stimulating force for the evolution of a system of public instruction in France.

4. Show the statesman-like character of the proposals made in the legislative assemblies of France for the organization of national education. 5. Assuming that there had been peace, and funds to carry out the law (1793) of the Convention for primary instruction, what other difficulties would have been met that would have been hard to surmount?

6. Compare the Lakanal school with an American elementary school of a half-century ago.

7. Show that many of the important educational reforms of Napoleon were foreshadowed in the National Convention.

8. Was Napoleon right in his attitude toward education and schools? 9. Explain the lack of success of the revolutionary theorists in the establishment of a state system of education.

10. Explain why the breakdown of the old religious intolerance came earlier in the American Colonies than in the Old World.

II. Show the great value of the Laws of 1642 and 1647 in holding New England true to the maintenance of schools during the period of decline. 12. What might have been the result in America had the New England Colonies established the school as a parish institution, as did the central Colonies?

13. Analyze the Massachusetts constitutional provision for education, and show what it provided for.

14. Show the similarity of the University of the State of New York to the proposals for governmental control in France.

15. Explain why the French revolutionary ideas as to education were realized so easily in the new United States, whereas France did not realize them until well into the nineteenth century.

16. Compare Jefferson's proposed law with the proposals of Talleyrand for France.

17. Just what type of educational institutions did Washington have in mind in the quotation from his Farewell Address? John Jay? John Adams?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are reproduced:

254. Dabney: The Far-Reaching Influence of Rousseau's Writings. 255. La Chalotais: Essay on National Education.

256. Condorcet: Outline of a Plan for Organizing Public Instruction in France.

257. Report: Founding of the Polytechnic School at Paris. 258. Barnard: Work of the National Convention in France.

(a) Various legislative proposals.

(b) The Law of 1795 organizing Primary Instruction.

259. American States: Early Constitutional Provisions relating to Edu

cation.

260. Ohio: Educational Provisions of First Constitution.

261. Indiana: Educational Provisions of First Constitution.
262. American States: Early School Legislation in.
263. Jefferson: Plan for Organizing Education in Virginia.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Explain the conditions of society under which the emotional writings of a man of the type of Rousseau could have made such a deep impression (254) on the nation.

2. In how far do nations to-day accept the theories of La Chalotais (255)? 3. What type of administrative organization was proposed by Condorcet (256)?

4. What does the founding of the Polytechnic School (257) indicate as to the French interest in science?

5. What real progress was made by the National Convention (258 a), and to what degree did it fail?

6. Explain the type of school system proposed and the conception of education lying behind the early constitutional provisions (259) for education in each of the American States.

7. In what respects were the educational provisions of the first Ohio constitution (260) remarkable?

8. In what respects were the educational provisions of the first Indiana constitution (261) remarkable?

9. Characterize the early school legislation reproduced (262).

10. Just what type of educational system did Jefferson propose to organize in Virginia (263)?

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Barnard, Henry. American Journal of Education, vol. 22, pp. 651-64. Compayré, G. History of Pedagogy, chapters 15, 16, 17.

Cubberley, E. P. Public Education in the United States, chapter 3.

CHAPTER XXI

A NEW THEORY AND SUBJECT-MATTER FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

IN chapters XVII and XVIII we traced the development of educational theory up to the point where John Locke left it (p. 436) after outlining his social and disciplinary theory for the educational process, and in the chapter preceding this one we traced the evolution of a new state theory as to the purpose of education to replace the old religious theory. The new theory as to state control, and the erection of a citizenship purpose for education, made it both possible and desirable that the instruction in the school, and particularly in the vernacular school, should be recast, both in method and content, to bring the school into harmony with the new secular purpose. In consequence, an important reorganization of the vernacular school now took place, and to this transformation of the elementary school we next turn.

I. THE NEW THEORY STATED

Iconoclastic nature of the work of Rousseau. The inspirer of the new theory as to the purpose of education was none other than the French-Swiss iconoclast and political writer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose work as a political theorist we have previously described. Happening to take up the educational problem as a phase of his activity against the political and social and ecclesiastical conditions of his age, drawing freely on Locke's Thoughts for ideas, and inspired by a feeling that so corrupt and debased was his age that if he rejected everything accepted by it and adopted the opposite he would reach the truth, Rousseau restated his political theories as to the control of man by society and his ideas as to a life according to "nature" in a book in which he described the education, from birth to manhood, of an imaginary boy, Émile, and his future wife, Sophie. In the first sentence

of the book Rousseau sets forth his fundamental thesis:

All is good as it comes from the hand of the Creator; all degenerates under the hands of man. He forces one country to produce the fruits of another, one tree to bear that of another. He confounds climates, elements, and seasons; he mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave; turns

everything topsy-turvy, disfigures everything. He will have nothing as nature made it, not even man himself; he must be trained like a managed horse, trimmed like a tree in a garden.

His book, published in 1762, in no sense outlined a workable system of education. Instead, in charming literary style, with much sophistry, many paradoxes, numerous irrelevant digressions upon topics having no relation to education, and in no systematic order, Rousseau presented his ideas as to the nature and purpose of education. Emphasizing the importance of the natural development of the child (R. 264 a), he contended that the three great teachers of man were nature, man, and experience, and that the second and third tended to destroy the value of the first (R. 264 b); that the child should be handled in a new way, and that the most important item in his training up to twelve years of age was to do nature might develop his character properly (R. 264 e); and that from twelve to fifteen his education should be largely from things and nature, and not from books (R. 264 f). As the outcome of such an education Rousseau produced a boy who, from his point of view, would at eighteen still be natural (R. 264 g) and unspoiled by the social life about him, which, after all, he felt was soon to pass away (R. 264 i). The old religious instruction he would completely supersede (R. 264 h).

nothing (R. 264 c, d) so that

So depraved was the age, and so wretched were the educational practices of his time, that, in spite of the malevolent impulse which was his driving force, what he wrote actually contained many excellent ideas, pointed the way to better practices, and became an inspiration for others who, unlike Rousseau, were deeply interested in problems of education and child welfare. One cannot study Rousseau's writings as a whole, see him in his eighteenth-century setting, know of his personal life, and not feel that the far-reaching reforms produced by his Émile are among the strangest facts in history.

The valuable elements in Rousseau's work. Amid his glitter