Ceding to the Circumstances: State Institutions, Civil Society,and Running the Schools in Maine-et-Loire, 1815-1875 Open Access
Gavorsky, Scott Allen (2009)
Published
Abstract
Abstract Ceding to the Circumstances: State Institutions, Civil Society, and Running the Schools in Maine-et-Loire, 1815-1875 By Scott A. Gavorsky In the nineteenth century, public schools transformed how French citizens understood the relationship between the individual, local authorities, and the nation-state--but not just through classroom lessons. Through an analysis of primary education development in the western department of Maine-et-Loire between the Bourbon Restoration (1815) and the solidification of the Third Republic (1875), this dissertation argues that debates over funding, operating and monitoring primary schools became a field to negotiate and delineate local and national values and responsibilities, ultimately structuring attitudes and policies towards public institutions and collective ideals of citizenship. Rather than the still-influential state-centric model of development in the 1870s exemplified by Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen, functional school systems were developed locally by municipal authorities and an active education-oriented civil society starting in 1816. This educational civil society comprised a range of non-state actors, from individuals leaving endowments to subscription-based organizations promoting specific pedagogies to parish councils (fabriques). Although state interest increased following the Guizot Law of 1833, educational civil society continued to work closely with communes to expand primary education. By the 1850s, however, the relationship between the communes, educational civil society (especially Catholic organizations), and an increasingly powerful state education bureaucracy had resulted in open competition between the providers of primary education. This competition forced new debates on the roles and responsibilities of communes, local civil society, and the state. The culmination was a political culture that privileged a direct relationship between the local community and a national body--either the state or the Catholic Church--that provided vital resources and direction. The institutional result was the emergence of a preference for centralized national systems by the mid-1870s. The trade-off was that local civil society became merely a pressure group to support education policy determined elsewhere--a retreat from local praxis in favor of national politics.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction 1 The Historiography of French Primary Education 5 Educational civil society: Between Sociabilité and Democracy 11 Educational civil society in the Ancien Régime and the Revolution 15 Maine-et-Loire as a Case Study 17 History of Maine-et-Loire 22 Structure of the Study 29 Sources 29
Chapter One: The Development of Primary Schooling in Maine-et-Loire 36 The Early History of Primary Education in Maine-et-Loire 39 Education under the Restoration 41 The Explosion of Schooling and the Guizot Reaction 51 Falloux's Experiment: Liberté de l'enseignement and the Decline of Civil Society 57 The (re)Development of Primary Education 63 Conclusion 69
Chapter Two: Not-So-Silent Partners: Educational Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century France 71 Educational civil society under French Law 73 Providing for Education: Congregations and Liberalités 77 Providing Education as Vocation: The Teaching Congregations 77 Individual Provision for Education: Dons et Legs 84 Owning and Providing Education 89 The Fabriques 89 Private Organizations 93 The Operation of the Private Organizations 102 The Question of Toleration: Civil Society without a Right of Association 104 Relationships between Components of Civil Society 104 Relationships with Authorities 108 Conclusion 113
Chapter Three: Building and Running Schools in Maine-et-Loire 116 Cholet 119 The opening of the école mutuelle de Cholet 121 Arguments Against Education: Opening Catholic Schools in Cholet 125 Opening Schools without Municipal Support 132 Beaufort-en-Vallée 138 The Re-Opening of the College and the First Primary School 139 Education Outside the College 141 The Shift to Catholic Education 147 Russé 150 Small Communes and Réunion 151 Russé's Efforts to Open a School 156 The opening of the école de Russé 160 Conclusion 164 The First Narrative: Popular Hostility to Primary Education 164 The Second Narrative: Inadequate Resources 166 The Growing Reliance on the State and its Limitations 167
Chapter Four: L'État comme propriétaire? Owning the Schools in Maine-et-Loire 169 The Legal Environment: Schools as a Form of Property 172 The Legacy of the February Ordinance 173 The Intertwining of Private and Public: Establishing the Schools in Angers 181 The Suppression of the école mutuelle 187 Curtailing Private Ownership: The State Building Schools 195 The Power of the Purse and the Selection of Teachers 201 State Oversight and Inspection Régimes 204 Conclusion 210
Chapter Five: Alternatives to the State-- Liberalités, Dons et Legs 212 The Return of Private Charity after the Revolution 216 The Établissements d'utilité publique 220 The mutuellistes and charity 223 Growing Concerns: The Rejection of the Association 227 Curtailing Private Charity: The Fabriques 233 Why Fabriques? 234 Vieil-Baugé and the Legs Langotière 235 Conclusion: Education as the Property of the State 239
Chapter Six: Pedagogies of Primary Education 242 Pedagogical Effervescence: The Pedagogies of Primary Education 244 The Frères and Mode Simultané 248 Enseignement Mutuel 254 Towards a French Method of Education 263 The Public Judges Education 267 The Education Pamphlet War 269 Inspecting the Schools 278 Local School Inspection Committees 279 Private School Inspection 283 The End of the Notables? 287 A New Professional Inspectorate 287 The Distribution des Prix 290
Chapter Seven: The Decline and Rise of Civil Society 294 Educational Civil Society and the New Generation 295 The Society Sells Its Schools 299 Mgr. Freppel and the Oeuvre des Écoles Chrétiennes 302 The Ligue d'Enseignement and the Oeuvre pour les Frères 305 Towards A Real State Monopoly 308 The New Republican Governments 308 The Final Separation of Church and State 312 Conclusion: Blockheads and Hearts of Gold 314
Bibliography 318 Public and Private Archival Collections 318 Published Primary Documents 319 Document Collections 322 Secondary Sources 322
About this Dissertation
| School | |
|---|---|
| Department | |
| Degree | |
| Submission | |
| Language |
|
| Research Field | |
| Keyword | |
| Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor | |
| Committee Members |
Primary PDF
| Thumbnail | Title | Date Uploaded | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Ceding to the Circumstances: State Institutions, Civil Society,and Running the Schools in Maine-et-Loire, 1815-1875 () | 2018-08-28 14:18:56 -0400 |
|
Supplemental Files
| Thumbnail | Title | Date Uploaded | Actions |
|---|