Military schools and courses of instruction in the science and art of war,: in France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Sardinia, England, and the United States. Drawn from recent official reports and documents. Revised Edition
History
Military schools and courses of instruction in the science and art of war,: in France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Sardinia, England, and the United States. Drawn from recent official reports and documents. Revised Edition
Military education
It will only be necessary to add a few sentences in explanation of the
methods pursued in the upper classes of the _Lycées_. The classes are
large--from 80 to above 100; the lessons strictly professorial lectures,
with occasional questions, as at the Polytechnic itself. In large
establishments the class is divided, and two professors are employed,
giving two parallel courses on the same subject. To correct and fortify
this general teaching, we find, corresponding to the interrogations of
the Polytechnic, what are here called conferences. The members of the
large class are examined first of all in small detachments of five or
six by their own professors once a week; and, secondly, a matter of yet
greater importance, by the professor who is conducting the parallel
course, and by professors who are engaged for this purpose from other
_Lycées_ and preparatory schools, and from among the _répétiteurs_ of
the Polytechnic and the Ecole Normale themselves. It appeared by the
table of the examinations of this latter kind which had been passed by
the pupils of the class of Special Mathematics at the _Lycée_ St. Louis,
that the first pupil on the list had in the interval between the opening
of the school and the date of our visit (February 16th) gone through as
many as twenty-four.
The assistants, who bear the name of _répétiteurs_ at the _Lycées_, do
not correspond in any sense to those whom we shall hereafter notice at
the Ecole Polytechnique. They are in the _Lycées_ mere superintendents
in the _salles d’étude_, who attend to order and discipline, who give
some slight occasional help to the pupils, and may be employed in
certain cases, where the parents wish for it, in giving private tuition
to the less proficient. The system of _salles d’étude_ appears to
prevail universally; the number of the pupils placed in each probably
varying greatly. At the Polytechnic we found eight or ten pupils in
each; at St. Cyr as many as 200. The number considered most desirable at
the _Lycée_ of St. Louis was stated to be thirty.
It thus appears that in France not only do private establishments
succeed in giving preparation for the military schools, but that even in
the first-class public schools, which educate for the learned
professions, it has been considered possible to conduct a series of
military or science classes by the side of the usual literary or arts
classes. The common upper schools are not, as they used to be, and as
with us they are, _Grammar_ schools, they are also _Science_ schools. In
every _Lycée_ there is, so to say, a sort of elementary polytechnic
department, giving a kind of instruction which will be useful to the
future soldier, and at the same time to others, to those who may have to
do with mines, manufactures, or any description of civil engineering.
There is thus no occasion for Junior Military Schools in France, for all
the schools of this class are more or less of a military character in
their studies.
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