[52] Id., ibid., 168. (Session of March 20, 1806.)[53] Hermann Niemeyer, "Beobactungen auf einer Deportation-Reise nach Frankreich im J. 1807 (Halle, 1824), II.,353. - Fabry, " Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de l'instruction publique," III., 120. (Documents and testimony of pupils showing that religion in the lycées is only ceremonial practice.) - Id., Riancey, "Histoire de l'instruction publique," II.,378. (Reports of nine chaplains in the royal colleges in 1830 proving that the same spirit prevailed throughout the Restoration: "A boy sent to one of these establishments containing 400pupils for the term of eight years has only eight or ten chances favoring the preservation of his faith; all the others are against him, that is to say, out of four hundred chances, three hundred and ninety risk his being a man with no religion."[54] Fabry, ibid., III., 175. (Napoleon's own words to a member of his council.) - Pelet de la Lozère, ibid., 161: "I do not want priests meddling with public education." - 167: "The establishment of a teaching corps will be a guarantee against the re-establishment of monks. Without that they would some day come back."[55] Fabry, ibid, III., 120. (Abstract of the system of lycées by a pupil who passed many years in two lycées.) Terms for board 900francs, insufficiency of food and clothing, crowded lectures and dormitories, too many pupils in each class, profits of the principal who lives well, gives one grand dinner a week to thirty persons, deprives the dormitory, already too narrow, of space for a billiard-table, and takes for his own use a terrace planted with fine trees.
The censor, the steward, the chaplain, the sub-director do the same, although to a less degree. The masters are likewise as poorly fed as the scholars. The punishments are severe, no paternal remonstrance or guidance, the under-masters maltreated on applying the rules, despised by their superiors and without any influence on their pupils. -"Libertinage, idleness self-interest animated all breasts, there being no tie of friendship uniting either the masters to the scholars nor the pupils amongst themselves."[56] Finding myself in charge of a numerous staff of technicians, artisans, operators and workers hired by the United Nations to serve a military mission in Lebanon I was faced with motivating everyone, not only when they would become eligible for promotion, but also during the daily humdrum existence. I one day coined the phrase that "everyone wants to be important" and tried to make them feel so by insisting that all tasks, even the most humble had to be done well. Igave preference to seniority by giving the most senior man the chance to prove himself once a higher post fell vacant. (SR.)[57] Hermann Niemeyer, "Beobachtungen," etc., II.,350. "A very worthy man, professor in one of the royal colleges, said to me: 'What backward steps we have been obliged to take! How all the pleasure of teaching, all the love for our art, has been taken away from us by this constraint!'"[58] Id., ibid., II.,339. - "Decree of November 15, 1811 art. 17.
[59] Id., ibid., II.,353.
[60] Hermann Niemeyer, ibid., 366, and following pages. On the character, advantages and defects of the system, this testimony of an eye-witness is very instructive and forms an almost complete picture.
The subjects taught are reduced to Latin and mathematics; there is scarcely any Greek, and none of the modern languages, hardly a tinge of history and the natural sciences, while philology is null; that which a pupil must know of the classics is their "contents and their spirit" (Geist und Inhalt). - Cf. Guizot, "Essai sur l'histoire et l'état actuel de l'instruction publique," 1816, p.103.
[61] "Travels in France during the Years 1814 and 1815" (Edinburgh, 1816), vol. I., p. 152.