ABSTRACT
In 1833, at Mazières-en-Gatine (Deux-Sèvres), out of the 119 inhabitants who were required to sign the civil register only 22 could write their names. This was by no means an unusual state of affairs. 1 To-day everyone has completed a course of elementary education. All children stay at school until the age of 16, while about a third of them stay much longer; soon every child will go for at least five years to a secondary school in which the course of studies has either a classical, modern, or technical bias.
