Tendencies of French Education.

natural development, mental, moral, and physical— has failed when universally adopted. Whether the teachers have been at fault they do not say. But this explanation would not certainly be admitted by any foreigner who has had the privilege of seeing the French teachers at work. Probably in no country in the world has the teaching profession attained to such a high standard of skill and to such a pitch of devotion. For his brilliancy of expression, scientific delicacy of touch-if the term may be used-and tenderness of sympathy, the French teacher is unequalled. Neither is he behind those of any other land in his love of country and his admiration of national language and literature. If any teachers could have succeeded in carrying out all that was best in the educational theories of Rousseau, surely it was the French. If they have failed, it is due to the innate and ineradicable characteristics of their pupils. Among these characteristics not the least strongly marked is social ambition-the heritage of that irresistible movement which was to bring about social equality, not on the basis afforded by taking the average between the highest and the lowest, but on the level of the highest. It is owing to this that France has found herself overrun with déclassés and dévoyés.

The school, then, has to catch those who are inclined to pursue ambitions which they have

little chance of satisfying, and put them on the path which leads to contentment. This was most easily and surely achieved by spreading a net of technical education over the primary schools. The educational ladder of which we have heard so much in England had to be broken down, and probably in no country is there now so little connection between the higher and lower branches of education. The teachers, it is true, with to a certain extent the sympathy of the Ministry of Public Instruction, have fought against this movement.

And it is to be traced to their influence that the purely educational aim has in any degree been maintained in the higher primary system, and that scholarships have been provided at the secondary schools for those talented children of poor parents who are able to profit from the instruction and education which they offer. But the plutocratic influence, which has always been thrown into the scale against them, has turned the balance in favour of the policy adopted by the Ministry of Commerce. The technical net is ever being widened and strengthened. In its main features the system which is growing up, and in a great measure already exists, may be shortly described as follows. From the primary school those children who are not forced immediately to earn their own living proceed to the higher primary school, with its technical tendencies, or to the practical

Tendencies of French Education.

schools of commerce and industry, which may be regarded as purely technical. From thence, if they continue their education still further, they pass into the Écoles Nationales d'Arts et Métiers.

The strife between the technical and the purely educational idea is still being waged around the children of the poorer classes. It may safely be said that this struggle will decide the moral fate, and therefore the material prosperity, of France. It is fortunate for us that social conditions have not yet appeared which give us any cause for spreading the net to catch soaring ambitions. Where it has been done it has not been due to any conscious design. A few earnest educationists in our midst, with a preference for France often to be traced to their ignorance of the German language, have visited the French schools, and not fully appreciating the causes underlying their development, have returned to England to persuade eager authorities to adopt the French line of progress. But the results that have followed cannot last; for they lack that vital force which can alone be supplied by national needs or irresistible national tendencies.

Before concluding that the French system is the natural outcome of democracy, it is wise to give a thought to what is being done in the schools of that other great exponent of democracy which is more nearly akin to ourselves.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FOUNDATIONS LAID IN AMERICA.

One

THE great American Republic contains a population half as large again as that of the British Isles spread over an area nearly twenty-five times as great. The different conditions of political and social organization which such a comparison suggests must be borne in mind throughout a study of the American system of education. other point must not be overlooked. The tie of kinship between the United States and England is undoubtedly strong; it is true that there are common traits of character to be found in both peoples which must ever influence them, even if with decreasing force, to develop along parallel lines. But we are perhaps inclined in England to overrate the influence of our parentage on this great nation, just as we are inclined to exaggerate its influence on the younger colonies which we have planted. Speaking generally, it cannot be said that traces of our influence predominate in the actual development of American education. The Americans have, of course, a certain natural

American Variety.

power of appreciating what is best in the educational results which we have achieved. But when we have said that they have profited from our experiences, from our successes and our failures, we have probably stated the extent of their indebtedness to us. As far as their actual system is concerned, they probably owe more to other nations than to the English.

There is no national system of education in the United States of America of the kind which exists in Germany and in France; that is to say, a system controlled and organized by the national Government. The history of the making of the United States would lead us, indeed, to expect to find the greatest possible variety of educational organization. Even the early English colonists represented a number of different social, political, and religious views, all of which manifested themselves in the systems of schools which they founded. Some brought with them the English social prejudices of the time against the education of the lower orders-prejudices which in the mother land, however, did not prevent the man of talent from obtaining his rightful place in the aristocracy of intellect. We accordingly find some of the early colonists refusing to establish public schools. Berkeley, the Governor of Virginia, stated the policy of his colony in this matter in no uncertain or wavering terms.