书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
19097600001182

第1182章

The director (of the gymnase) informs parents where families can be found willing to receive boarders and he must satisfy himself that their hospitality is unobjectionable. . . . In the new gymnases there is no room for boarders." - Demogeot et Montucci, "Rapport sur l'enseignement secondaire en Angleterre et en Ecosse," 1865. - (Iventure also to refer the reader to my "Notes sur l'Angleterre," for a description of Harrow-on-the-Hill and another school at Oxford, made on the spot.)[49] Taine, "Notes sur l'Angleterre," P.139. The pupils of the superior class (sixth form), especially the first fifteen of the class (monitors), the first pupil in particular, have to maintain order, insure respect for the rules and, taking it all together, take the place of our maitres d'étude.

[50] Bréal, "Quelques mots, etc.," pp.281, 282. The same in France, "before the Revolution, . . . except in two or three large establishments in Paris, the number of pupils was generally sufficiently limited. . . . At Port-Royal the number of boarders was never over fifty at one time." - " Before 1764, most of the colleges were day-schools with from 15 to 8o pupils," besides the scholarships.

and peasant boarders, not very numerous. - "An army of boarders, comprising more than one half of our bourgeois class, under a drill regulated and overlooked by the State, buildings holding from seven to eight hundred boarders - such is what one would vainly try to find anywhere else, and which is essentially peculiar to contemporary France."[51] Bréal, ibid., 287, id., " Excursions pedagogiques," p. 10. "Itook part (with these pupils) in a supper full of gayety in the room of the celebrated Latinist, Corssen, and I remember the thought that passed through my mind when recurring to the meal we silently partook of at Metz, two hundred of us, under the eye of the censor and general superintendent, and menaced with punishment, in our cold, monastic refectory."[52] Even though Taine had visited Eton and other English schools, he appears to have a somewhat rosy picture of life inside these institutions. I have been 9 years to a similar school and can assure the reader that the headmaster's wife is no suitable substitute for a real mother and her table does not replace one's own home. The rector of my school once stated that boarding schools should only be resorted to when one could not remain at home. It was my impression that this school had two effects upon me: the first that I wanted, in spite of good grades, to stop my studies and get a job and the second that Ibecame, like Taine, an opponent to the system. Later on in life Ishould come to appreciate all the useful things like languages, literature, math and physics which I had learned in this well-organized school. I also came to understand that much worse than harsh discipline is no discipline and no learning at all, something which happened to my children when they attended, for one year only, the American School in Bangkok. (SR.)[53] Pelet de la Lozère, " Opinions de Napoleon au Conseil d'état,"p.172. (Session of April 7, 1807:) "The professors are to be transferred from place to place in the Empire according to necessity."- Decree of May 1, 1802, article 21 : "The three functionaries in charge of the administration and the professors of the 1ycées may be transferred from the weakest to the strongest lycées and from inferior to superior places according to the talent and zeal they show in their functions."[54] A splendid description which also fits the international civil servants working for the United Nations. I know this because I was one for 32 years of my life. I suspect it also fits members of the police forces, secret or not. (SR.)[55] Act of Jan. 11, 1811. - Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 101and 102.

[56] Boissier ("Revue du Deux Mondes," Aug. 15, 1869, p. 919): "The externe lycées cost and the interne lycées bring in."[57] "Statistique de l'enseigncnient secondaire" (46,816 pupils, of which 33,092 internes and 13,724 externes). - Abbé Bougaud, "Le Grand Péril de l'Eglise du France," p. 135. - "Moniteur," March 14, 1865, Speech of Cardinal Bonnechose in the Senate.

[58] Name of the navy school-ship at Brest. - TR.

[59] Bréal, "Quelques mots, etc.," p. 308: "We need not be surprised that our children, once out of the college, resemble horses just let loose, kicking at every barrier and committing all sorts of capers.