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The Primary Education of French Girls: Pedagogical Prescriptions and Social Realities, 1880–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Linda L. Clark
Linda L. Clark*
Affiliation:
Millersville State College, Pennsylvania
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Extract

“Woman is the guardian of the foyer. Her place is at home, in the house of her parents or husband…; it is for the foyer that she must reserve all her grace and good humor…. A woman who does not love her home, who has no taste for household duties… cannot remain a virtuous woman for long.” Such were the instructions and warnings about the domestic mission of women which Madame Henry Gréville offered to French schoolgirls in one of the most widely used textbooks for moral and civic education in girls' public primary schools during the late nineteenth century. Gréville's teaching conformed to the wishes of the Ministry of Public Instruction which ordered that primary schools should prepare boys to become workers and soldiers and initiate girls in the “care of the household and ouvrages de femmes.”

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , Winter 1981 , pp. 411 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

I wish to thank the National Institute of Education and the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College for a grant which made possible much of the research on which this paper is based. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a colloquium of the Bunting Institute in April 1980.Google Scholar

1. Durand-Gréville, Alice [Mme. Henry Gréville], L'Instruction morale et civique des jeunes filles (Paris, 1882), pp. 152–153.Google Scholar

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26. The publisher Armand Colin advertised the Tu seras texts as “véritables manuels d'apprentissage de la vie.” Tu seras ouvrière (Paris, 1892) had been adopted by more than one third of the departments whose 1909 book lists are in AN F17 11656.Google Scholar

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31. Nolleau, Henri, “Les Femmes dans la population active de 1856 à 1954,” Economie et Politique (October, 1960): 10.Google Scholar

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35. For evidence of the use of separate science books for boys and girls as of the early 1970s, see Prefecture de Paris, Direction de l'Enseignement, Liste des ouvrages classiques qui peuvent être fournis gratuitement aux frais de la ville de Paris dans les écoles primaires, collèges d'enseignement général, commercial et industriel (Paris, 1971.Google Scholar

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40. Republican texts: Payot, Jules, La Morale à l'école, 3d ed. (Paris, 1908), p. 191; Souché, Aimé, Le deuxiéme livre de morale de la jeune française (Paris, 1926), pp. 5–6. Catholic: Thiéry, Lisette, p. 32; Darcey, Mlle., Petit cours d'enseignement ménager, 8th ed. (Lyon, 1935), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

41. Foulon-Lefranc, Mme. and Laurent, G., L'Ecole du bonheur (Paris, 1938), p. 9.Google Scholar

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46. Souché, , Le deuxiéme livre, pp. 13, 103–106; Foulon-Lefrance, and Laurent, , Ecole, p. 10.Google Scholar

47. Computed from figures in Bairoch, P., ed., La Population active et sa structure (Brussels. 1968), p. 167.Google Scholar

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49. For example, Broutet, Felix and Reynier, Marguerite depicted 22 male and 5 female occupations in their Livre des métiers, 5th ed. (Paris, 1938). The female occupations were seamstress, grocery store owner, milkseller, laundress and ironer.Google Scholar

50. Mézières, A, Education morale et instruction civique (Paris, 1883), pp. 60, 154; Ligny, Armand, En route pour la vie, 7th ed. (Paris, 1919), p. 162; Grill, Chanoine C. and Le Floch, P., L'Enseignement scientifique par l'observation et l'expérience, Garçons (Paris, 1937), p. 393.Google Scholar

51. For enrollments in post-primary schools, see Prost, , Enseignement, p. 346. A primary school pupil wishing to transfer to a secondary school had to do so at age 11 to start Latin with others of his age, but by so doing he left the primary school before preparing for the certificat d'études primaires and thus, if he later dropped out of school or did not obtain a baccalauréat, ran the risk of having no degree.Google Scholar

52. Hoffman, Stanley, “Paradoxes of the French Political Community,” in In Search of France, ed. Hoffmann and Others (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), p. 3; Dupeux, Georges, French Society 1789–1970 , trans. Wait, Peter (London and New York, 1976), Chapters 4, 5.Google Scholar

53. Dupeux, , French Society, pp. 1–4.Google Scholar

54. Gréville, , Instruction, pp. 36–37; Stella, Lectures, p. 99.Google Scholar

55. Republican texts: Challaye, Fèlicien and Reynier, Marguerite, Cours de morale, 8th ed. (Paris, 1939), p. 140; Souché, , Le deuxième livre, p. 21. Catholic: Bourceau and Fabry, Lectures, pp. 93, 350; Marduel, , Morale, p. 17.Google Scholar

56. Lefèvre, G., “Une enquête pédagogique dans les cours moyens des écoles primaires du Nord,” Revue pédagogique 36 (January, 1900): 8.Google Scholar

57. Prost, , Enseignement, pp. 10–12, 330.Google Scholar

58. Statistique de l'enseignement primaire (1884), pp. 248–249; (1909), pp. 266–269; Rivet, R., “L'Enseignement primaire en France depuis la guerre,” Bulletin de la Statistique générale de la France 25 (1936): 327; Annuaire statistique de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1906), pp. 396–397, (1920), p. 355. In 1934 only 50% of primary school pupils nearing the end of their studies tried for the certificate and only 40% obtained it.Google Scholar

59. Daric, , Activité, p. 31.Google Scholar

60. Unlike the 1940 edition, the 1951 version of Hamayon, and Bragade, , André, Jacqueline, had a chapter on the domestic mission of women (pp. 242–245). For public school texts see Souché, , Les nouvelles leçons de morale au cours moyen (Paris, 1947), pp. 38–43, 218–222; Ballot, M. and Aveille, R., Education morale et civique (Paris, 1952), p. 86.Google Scholar

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63. Institut national pour la documentation et recherche pédagogiques, “Images de la femme dans les manuels scolaires,” Bibliographie de France 19, part 2 (May 7, 1975): 766–787. For similar findings, see Délégation régionale à la condition féminine, L'Image de la Femme dans les manuels scolaires et les livres d'enfants (Paris, 1979), issued by the Prefecture de la Région Ile de France.Google Scholar