France -- Civilization; France -- Politics and government; France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
[Footnote 6154: 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."]
[Footnote 6155: Fabry, ibid, III., 120. (Abstract of the system of
lycées by a pupil who passed many years in two lycées.) Terms for board
900 francs, 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."]
[Footnote 6156: 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. I
gave preference to seniority by giving the most senior man the chance to
prove himself once a higher post fell vacant. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6157: 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!'"]
[Footnote 6158: Id., ibid., II.,339.--"Decree of November 15, 1811 art.
17."]
[Footnote 6159: Id., ibid., II.,353.]
[Footnote 6160: 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.]
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