SECONDARY INSTRUCTION IN FRANCE.

I COME next to Secondary Instruction. It is either given in the establishments of the government called Lyceums, or in those maintained by towns, which are called Colleges.

There are in France about seventy-five or eighty lyceums, and two hundred and fifty colleges, situated, the former in the principal places of the departements, the latter in the principal places of the arondissements. Besides these public institutions there are also schools founded and governed by individuals, either secular or under church influence; so that in a certain sense it cannot be denied that liberty of instruction exists in France. Any individual of good record who has attained a certain rank at the University can obtain permission to open a school and obtain pupils. But, on the other hand, this liberty is fettered to such a degree that it can hardly be said to exist.

In the first place, the authority of the government must be obtained, and this the government can either give or refuse. Besides, the University alone can confer the degrees indispensable to a man who intends opening a school. There is yet more. The competition of the state destroys private enterprise. The state has at its disposition large resources, because it can draw on the purses of tax-payers. It can have installations more magnificent, and consequently professors more capable than the private individual, who cannot risk but a certain part of his capital Nor is this all. You can, it is true, teach whatever you choose in these private schools, but the University courses are directed by the government. You are forced to follow the plan of study fixed upon for the examinations for your baccalaureat. The University alone confers the degree of bachelor; therefore you must conform to its programme. Without receiving this degree one can become neither lawyer nor judge nor physician. The degree of bachelor is the door which opens nearly all the most honorable careers.

Thus you perceive that the programme of secondary instruction is the same for all France. Before, however, making you acquainted with this programme, let me first point out one peculiarity. In your country there is a natural transition from the common schools to the high schools, and from these last to the colleges. Scholars who wish to make their course complete, generally follow through the grades of these schools. They rise, insensibly, by examinations, from the primary school to college. With us there is nothing similar. Primary instruction is enclosed within an impassable barrier. The scholar who goes to a primary school can keep on going all his life; he will never pass on to that which is the object of secondary instruction. And the schoolmaster will remain a schoolmaster to all eternity; he may be transferred to a city, if he is a capable man, instead of remaining in some small locality; never can he pass the barrier which retains him in primary teaching and come to secondary teaching. With you the one runs naturally into the other; the second is, so to speak, but the prolongation of the first. With us there is no connection between them, no transition from one to the other. This involves a twofold inconvenience. First, for the scholar; if his aptit des show themselves tardily, and he then wishes to pursue classical studies, he is obliged to begin his course of study at an age when those who at the outset embraced secondary instruction have accomplished nearly the half of their course. The second inconvenience of this system affects the teachers of primary schools, who, not having any distant perspective before them, or the hope of any advancement, lack that most powerful stimulant, personal ambition, and become either dull or discouraged.

Professors of secondary instruction are found usually among the scholars of the superior normal school, intended specially to form professors. There is a normal school of letters, and one of sciences. Every year there is an assembly of candidates who intend to devote themselves to teaching. A person to be able to present himself must not be over twenty-one years of age. But a limited number are received. Those who are admitted remain three years in the school, at the end of which time they have the position of professor in the University. The degree of licencie, however, gives one just as honorable a place in teaching, without having passed through the normal school.

All professors of colleges and lyceums are appointed by the minister of Public Instruction. This is another of the numerous faults of instruction given by the state. The minister does not always appoint the best men, but those who come to him the most strongly recommended, or those whose ideas are most conformable to his own. These professors - modest men, a truly honorable body - thus find themselves, in some sort, public functionaries. In 1852, after the coup d'etat of December, they were required to swear allegiance to the Empire. Certain of them, either because they had already sworn allegiance to the Republic, or because their sense of justice and morality was shocked by an illegal act, refused to swear allegiance to a government sprung from a violation of law, and were removed from their positions without any regard to their past services, or consideration of their abilities.

V. J. R.