ABSTRACT
Party writers who are bound to gainsay the work of the French Revolution in the matter of education, generally put under contribution, to serve their political prejudices, the old communal archives. Instruction was reduced to the catechism, to reading and writing in schools. Talleyrand and Condorcet desired first, to organize, under the form of a public service, a system of national education in which all might participate. Condorcet establishes for the first time higher primary schools, and demands one for each district, and in addition one for each town of four thousand inhabitants. Corporal punishments were more than ever the order of the day. The schoolmasters were far less teachers than sextons, choristers, beadles, bell ringers, clock-makers, and even grave diggers. The school masters attended kinds of teachers fairs, for the purpose of being hired. Mirabeau cherished the dream of the most complete liberty of teaching. Liberty of teaching is the demand of philosophic liberty against ecclesiastical and secular authority.
