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French Influence in American Institutions of Higher Learning, 1784–1825

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Roland G. Paulston
Roland G. Paulston*
Affiliation:
Teachers College Columbia University Team with the United States Aid Mission to Peru
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Extract

During a period of several decades before and after the American Revolution, France played an influential if not formative role in numerous attempts to create a new American higher learning. After independence, the English college model, dominant for well over a century, no longer inspired or satisfied a small but influential group who demanded republican form and content in higher education as in government. It was to France, the protector of the revolution, that these leading Americans looked for a continuation of inspiration and example in their attempts to found institutions of higher education befitting, to use Seymour Lipset's term, the first new nation.

Type
Europe and America I
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Summer 1968 , pp. 229 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © 1968 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. See McKee, George H., the thesis, Th. Jefferson: Ami de la Révolution Française (Lorient, 1928), pp. 221–63.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. 223.Google Scholar

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5. A wide sample of this work is included in Guillaume, M. J., Proces-Verbaux du Comité d'Instruction de la Convention Nationale (Paris, 1891), pp. 40–101.Google Scholar

6. McKee, , op. cit. , p. 143.Google Scholar

7. Rapport et Project de Decret, (1792), pp. 1–2, as quoted in Jarman, T. L., Landmarks in Higher Education (London: John Murray, 1963), p. 210.Google Scholar

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13. Important in this respect are the works of Abbes Mably and Raynal, the Marquis de Chastellux and the Duc de Rochefoucould-Liancourt, as well as DuPont de Nemours.Google Scholar

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32. Ibid., p. 93.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., p. 95.Google Scholar

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36. Wiggin, , op. cit. , p. 123.Google Scholar

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44. Woodward, , long a resident of Washington and close friend of L'Enfant, attempted to duplicate the Frenchman's city plan in Detroit. Shaw, , op. cit , p. 7.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., p. 5.Google Scholar

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48. Putnam, , op. cit. , pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

49. For an exhaustive account of the early history of the university, see Shaw, Wilfred B., The University of Michigan: An Encyclopedic Study (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1942), Vol. I. Shaw interestingly also points out that John Dewey became interested in early childhood education at Michigan where certain unusual higher-elementary relationships remained during his time at the university (p. 321).Google Scholar

50. Honeywell, Roy J., The Educational Work of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Russell & Russell Publishers, 1964), pp. 106–73.Google Scholar

51. Letter to Carr, Peter, September 7, 1814, as quoted in Honeywell, , op. cit. , p. 164.Google Scholar

52. Arrowood, , op. cit. , p. 74.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., p. 75.Google Scholar

54. Ibid. Google Scholar

55. Honeywell, , op. cit. , p. 163.Google Scholar

56. Letter to Destutt de Tracy, May 15, 1817, as quoted in Chinard, Gilbert, Thomas Jefferson (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1943), pp. 169–70.Google Scholar

57. Butts, , op. cit. , p. 210.Google Scholar

58. Letter to Carr, Peter, September 7, 1814, as quoted in Arrowood, op. cit. , p. 75. (Italics mine.) Google Scholar

59. Elson, Ruth Miller, Guardians of Tradition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964). See particularly Chapter 5, “Nations and Nationality.” Google Scholar