France -- Civilization; France -- Politics and government; France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Consequently, from 1876 to 1890,[6388] the State expends for superior
instruction, in buildings alone, 99,000,000 francs. Formerly, the
receipts of the Faculties about covered their expenses; at the present
day, the State allows them annually 6,000,000 francs more than their
receipts. It has founded and supports 221 new (professional) chairs, 168
complementary courses of lectures, 129 conférences and, to supply
the attendants, it provides, since 1877, 300 scholarships for those
preparing for the license and, since 1881, 200 scholarships for those
preparing for the aggrégation. Similarly, in secondary instruction,
instead of 81 lycées in 1876, it has 100 in 1887[6389]; instead of
3,820 scholarships in 1876, it distributes, in 1887, 10,528; instead
of 2,200,000 francs expended for this branch of instruction in 1857, it
expends 18,000,000 in 1889.--This overload of teaching caused overloaded
exams: it was necessary to include more science than in the past to
curriculum of the grades delivered and determined by the State. "This
was what was then done whenever possible."[6390] Naturally, and through
contagion, the obligation of possessing more knowledge descended to
secondary instruction. In effect, after this date, we see neo-Kantian
philosophy descending like hail from the highest metaphysical ether
down upon the pupils in the terminal class of the lycées, to the lasting
injury of the seventeen-year old brains. Again, after this date, we see
in the class of special mathematics[6391] an abundance of complicated,
confusing problems so that, today, the candidate for the Polytechnic
School must, to gain admission, expound theorems that were only mastered
by his father after he got there.--Hence, "boxes" and "ovens", private
internats, the preparatory secular or ecclesiastical schools and other
"scholastic cramming-machines"; hence, the prolonged mechanical effort
to introduce into each intellectual sponge all the scientific fluid it
can contain, even to saturation, and maintain it in this extreme state
of perfection if only for two hours during an examination, after which
it may rapidly subside and shrink. Hence, that mistaken use, that
inordinate expenditure, that precocious waste of mental energy, and that
entire pernicious system which overburden for a substantial period the
young, not for their advantage, but, on reaching maturity, to their
intellectual detriment.
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