[The Origins of Contemporary France<br> Volume 6 (of 6) by Hippolyte A. Taine]@TWC D-Link book
The Origins of Contemporary France
Volume 6 (of 6)

CHAPTER II
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159.] [Footnote 6205: Maggiolo, "Les Ecoles en Lorraine avant et apres 1789," 3rd part, p.22 and following pages.

(Details on the foundation or the revival of primary schools in four departments after 1802.) Sometimes, the master is the one who taught before 1789, and his salary is always the same as at that time; I estimate that, in a village of an average size, he might earn in all between 500 and 600 francs a year; his situation improves slowly and remains humble and wretched down to the law of 1833 .-- There are no normal schools for the education of primary instructors except one at Strasbourg established in 1811 by the prefect, and the promise of another after the return from Elba, April 27, 1815.
Hence the teaching staff is of poor quality, picked up here and there haphazard.

But, as the small schools satisfy a felt want, they increase.
In 1815, there are more than 22,000, about as many as in 1789; in the four departments examined by M.Maggiolo there are almost as many as there are communes .-- Nevertheless, elsewhere, "in certain departments, it is not rare to find twenty or thirty communes in one arrondissement with only one schoolmaster....

One who can read and write is consulted by his neighbors the same as a doctor."-- ("Ambroise Rendu," by E.
Rendu, p.107, Report of 1817.)] [Footnote 6206: Decree of May 1, 1802, articles 2, 4 and 5 .-- Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 5, 8 and 117.] [Footnote 6207: E.Rendu, Ibid., pp.39 and 41] [Footnote 6208: Id., ibid., 41.

(Answers of approval of the bishops, letter of the archbishop of Bordeaux, May 29, 1808.) "There are only too many schools whose instructors neither give lessons nor set examples of Catholicism or even of Christianity.


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