ABSTRACT
Napoleon understood that public education was important for the modernization of France and the staffing of an Imperial government. He created a system of education in France for these purposes. Napoleon and Tolstoy both proclaimed important truths about education. Napoleon proclaimed that the essence of education is discipline. In America the unions dwindled, while the Gompers’s dreams, more books and less guns, more leisure and less greed, more school-houses and less jails, were tacitly abandoned. Napoleon understood that public education was important for the modernization of France and the staffing of an Imperial government. Tolstoy proclaimed that the essence of education is freedom. These two doctrines seem to be diametrically opposed. For Tolstoy, education meant opening the eyes of ordinary children to the wonders of the world around them. For Napoleon, education meant cramming docile children with the specialized knowledge.
