ABSTRACT
The “tragic year” of 1870–71 marks the beginning of a new impetus to French patriotism. The influence of that impetus affected vitally the development of education in the formative days of the Third Republic and persists in French education to-day. It reveals itself in school programmes and textbooks. The defeat of monarchism, signalized by the resignation of MacMahon in 1879, naturally carried with it the defeat of clericalism. The field was now free for the Republicans. For the first time they were in a position to carry out definitively the principles of the French Revolution, to conclude the oft-interrupted work of the men of 1789. The school, once used to foster in the children of France piety and loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church, now became saturated with the spirit of nationalism. There has been a general reorganization of the school programmes since the war.
