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Revolution and Education in Late Nineteenth Century France: The Early Career of Paul Robin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Angus McLaren
Angus McLaren*
Affiliation:
University of Victoria, British Columbia
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Extract

In the orthodox, “Whig” interpretations of the history of education of nineteenth-century France the focus of attention has traditionally been on the triumph of free, obligatory and secular education. In recent years historians have attempted to provide a more balanced picture by also chronicling the activities of the “losers” in this confrontation — the defenders of religious education. But one group has been left out of both accounts—the propagandists for a working-class education free of the interference of both the Catholic Church and the capitalist state. Of this latter group of thinkers the most interesting was Paul Robin, not simply because his views were the most radical, but because for over a decade this educational anarchist controlled an institution in which he could test his theories in practice. The purpose of the following account of Robin's work is first to illustrate the links that bound together the sexual, political and educational concerns of the libertarian left and secondly to show how deeply rooted in the past century are the current debates regarding the education of women and workers.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , Fall 1981 , pp. 317 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. See for example Ponteil, Félix, Histoire de l'enseignement en France (Paris, 1966) and Prost, Antoine, Histoire de l'enseignement en France 1800–1967 (Paris, 1968).Google Scholar

2. See for example Bush, John W., “Education and Social Status: The Jesuit College in the Early Third Repubic,” French Historical Studies, (1975): 125–140; Gildea, Robert, “Education in Nineteenth-Century Brittany, Ille-et-Vilaine, 1800–1914,” Oxford Review of Education, (1976): 215–230; Zind, Pierre, L'enseignement religieux dans l'instruction primaire publique en France de 1850 à 1873 (Lyon, 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. The standard biography of Robin is Giroud, Gabriel, Paul Robin (Paris, 1937); see also Dommanget, Maurice, Paul Robin (Paris, 1951) which forms the basis for a chapter in Dommanget, Les grands socialistes et l'éducation de Platon à Lenine (Paris, 1970); and Maitron, Jean, Histoire du mouvement anarchiste en France, 1880–1914 (Paris, 1951), pp. 320–324.Google Scholar

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9. Unless otherwise indicated the details on Robin's life are drawn from Giroud, , Robin, pp. 1–14.Google Scholar

10. From Comte Robin drew both a belief in the importance of education for all and a concern that overspecialization be overcome, by establishing relationships between different sorts of knowledge. But Comte complained of the lack of universal education out of a fear of disorder whereas Robin hoped that education would be a force for social change. See Compayré, Gabriel, The History of Pedagogy (London, 1913, first ed. 1887), pp. 529–531; Simon, W. M., European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1963); Charlton, D. G., Positivist Thought in France During the Second Empire (Oxford, 1959).Google Scholar

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13. Oukhow, , Documents, pp. 190–193.Google Scholar

14. Guillaume, , L'Internationale, Vol. I, p. 182.Google Scholar

15. On Robin's character see Guillaume, , L'Internationale, Vol. II, p. 226, 251; Lehning, , Archives vol., VI, p. 273; Grave, Jean, Quarante ans de propagande anarchiste, (Paris, 1973), pp. 342–343.Google Scholar

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23. Robin, to Kropotkin, , March 27, 1877 in Stafford, , Anarchism, p. 72. Robin did attend the August 4–6, 1877 anarchist congress at St. Imier. See Guillaume, , L'Internationale, vol. IV, p. 223; Nettlau, Max, La Première Internationale en Espagne, 1868–1888 (Dordrecht, 1969), pp. 295, 307.Google Scholar

24. Giroud, , Robin, p. 22.Google Scholar

25. Bulletin; Orphélinat Prévost (November 1882).Google Scholar

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27. Giroud, , Robin, pp. 25–34.Google Scholar

28. Freymond, , L'Internationale, Vol. I, p. 326.Google Scholar

29. Duveau, Georges, La pensée ouvrière sur l'éducation pendant la second république (Paris, 1948), pp. 94–95.Google Scholar

30. Marx did not provide a full analysis of education but the tenth point of the Communist Manifesto called for “Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of child factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.” In Capital by an examination of the workings of the Factory Acts in England he optimistically concluded that such a system was in part already emerging. The Acts “…proved for the first time the possibility of combining education and gymnastics with manual labour, and, consequently, of combining manual labour with education and gymnastics. The factory inspectors soon found out by questioning the schoolmasters, that the factory children, although receiving only one half the education of the regular day scholars, yet learnt quite as much and often more…. From the factory system budded, as Robert Owen has shown us in detail, the germ of the education of the future, an education that will, in the cases of every child over a given age, combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings.” In attacking the German Socialists demand for elementary education to be provided for by the state Marx turned to America for a model: “Defining by a general law the expenditures of the elementary schools, the qualifications of the teaching staff, the branches of instruction, etc., and, as is done in the United States, supervising the fulfillment of these legal specifications by state inspectors, is a very different thing from appointing the state as the educator of the people! Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school.” See Capital (London, 1967), Vol. I, 483–484; Padover, Saul K., Karl Marx on Education, Women and Children (New York, 1977), pp. 32–33, 40–41.Google Scholar

31. On Bakunin see Lehning, A., ed., Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings (New York, 1973), p. 174 and Dolgoff, Sam, ed. Bakunin on Anarchy (New York, 1972), p. 119; for working-class views of children see Duveau, , La pensée, p. 95.Google Scholar

32. Even Bakunin in the “Revolutionary Catechism” spoke of primary education being necessarily authoritarian. “As the child grows older, authority will give way to more and more liberty, so that by adolescence he will be completely free and will forget how in childhood he had to submit unavoidably to authority.” Dolgoff, , Bakunin, p. 95; cf. p. 375. See also Cabet, Etienne, Voyage en Icarie (Paris, 1848), Corbon, Anthyme, De l'enseignement professional (Paris, 1859), Perdiguier, Agricol, Le livre du compagnonnage (Paris, 1857), Nadaud, Martin, Histoire des classes ouvrier̀es en Angletere (Paris, 1872), Proudhon, P. J., L'Idée générale de la révolution au XIX e siécle (Paris, 1851).Google Scholar

33. On the parallel discussion in Germany at a slightly later date see Nettl, J. P., Rosa Luxemburg (London, 1966), Vol. I, pp. 388–396; Olson, James M., “Radical Social Democracy and School Reform in Wilhelmian Germany,” History of Education Quarterly, 17 (1977): 3–16; Jacobs, Nicolas, “Workers' Education: The German Social Democratic Party School in Berlin, 1906–1914,” History Workshop, 5 (1979): 179–187.Google Scholar

34. Zeldin, David, The Educational Ideas of Charles Fourier (London, 1969). Robin also cited Rabelais and Rousseau as precursors.Google Scholar

35. La philosophic positive, V (1869), 271–297; VII (1870), 109–126; IX (1872), 123–138. These articles were republished as Sur l'enseignement intégral (Paris, 1872).Google Scholar

36. Robin, , Sur l'enseignement, part III.Google Scholar

37. Arbousse-Bastide, Paul, La doctrine de l'éducation universelle dans la philosophic d'Auguste Comte (Paris, 1957), 2 vols. On the slow growth in France of a child psychology sensitive to the needs of the infant see Zeldin, Theodore, France, 1848–1945 (Oxford, 1973), vol. I, pp. 322–326.Google Scholar

38. Robin, , Sur l'enseignement, part II.Google Scholar

39. Freymond, , L'Internationale, Vol. I, p. 213.Google Scholar

40. Freymond, , L'Internationale, Vol. I, pp. 221–223.Google Scholar

41. Freymond, , L'Internationale, Vol. I, pp. 217–218.Google Scholar

42. Freymond, , L'Internationale, Vol. I, pp. 220–221.Google Scholar

43. Giroud, Gabriel, Cempuis (Paris, 1900). Giroud was to become Robin's son-in-law.Google Scholar

44. Dommanget, , Robin, p. 26 Google Scholar

45. Freymond, , L'Internationale, Vol. I, p. 139.Google Scholar

46. Duveau, , La pensée, p. 94.Google Scholar

47. Dommanget, , Robin, p. 17.Google Scholar

48. L'Éducation intégrale (March-April 1891), 20.Google Scholar

49. Robin, Paul, L'Anthropométrie à l'école (Cempuis, 1887): Topinard, Paul, an important pioneer in anthropometric surveying, was the author of L'Anthropologie (Paris, 1876) and Eléments d'anthropologie générale (Paris, 1885).Google Scholar

50. L'Éducation intégral (September-October 1892), 124–125 and see also Robin, , Sur l'enseignement, part III, p. 13.Google Scholar

51. For a rare laudatory account of Robin's activities see Fischer, Henri Dr., De l'éducation sexuelle (Paris, 1903), pp. 175–6, 180.Google Scholar

52. Dommanget, , Robin, p. 32.Google Scholar

53. Bullétin: Orphélinat de Cempuis (November 1882), p. 9.Google Scholar

54. Giroud, , Cempuis, , p. 178 and see also L'Éducation intégral (September-October 1891), 71.Google Scholar

55. Giroud, , Robin, p. 208.Google Scholar

56. For the attack on Robin see Giroud, , Robin, p. 88; Giroud, , Cempuis, pp. 218ff; Journal Officiel, Chambre des deputés (November 10, 1894), pp. 1793 ff.Google Scholar

57. On English visitors see National Reformer (July 20, 1884), 58.Google Scholar

58. On Robin, and Ferrer, see Ullman, Joan Connelly, The Tragic Week: A Study of Anti-clericalism in Spain 1875–1912 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 94 and on the general issue of radical education see Boyd, Caroline P., “The Anarchists and Education in Spain, 1869–1909,” Journal of Modern History, 48 (1976): 125–172 and on later anarchist, educational experiments in France see Maitron, , Histoire, pp. 325 ff.Google Scholar

59. Pelloutier, Fernand, Histoire des bourses du travail (Paris, 1946, first ed. 1901), pp. 178ff.; Spitzer, Alan B., “Anarchy and Culture: Fernand Pelloutier and the Dilemma of Revolutionaary Syndicalism,” Interntional Review of Social History, 8 (1963): 379–388; Julliard, Jacques, Fernand Pelloutier et les origines du syndicalisme d'action directe (Paris, 1971), pp. 254 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60. On the pupils of Cempuis see Journal Officiel, pp. 1795 ff.Google Scholar

61. Hoare, Quintin and Smith, G. N., Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York, 1971), pp. 24–44 and see also Sorel, Georges, The Illusion of Progress in Stanley, J. L. ed., From George Sorel (Oxford, 1976), p. 189.Google Scholar