ABSTRACT
A PEDAGOGICAL system, according to Durkheim, is born of the need to reflect on all the data of the educational situation instead of accepting them as unalterable facts; this need for reflection only arises intermittently when the times are out of joint and a co-ordinating principle is vital to restore order to society.1 Fourier lived and wrote during such a period. The time of his early and formative years saw a most remarkable outburst of interest in education.2 The dissemination of the ideas of the Enlightenment, the works of Rousseau, the demand for secular instruction, the recurrent crisis in recruitment within the Church, the suppression of the Society of Jesus creating as it did many vacancies in the colleges, were some of the causes which served to bring education to the forefront of public discussion.3
