Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART ONE THE RURAL BACKGROUND
- 1 THE AGRICULTURAL SETTING
- 2 THE NATURE OF WORK FOR CHILDREN IN AGRARIAN SOCIETY
- 3 EDUCATION IN RURAL SOCIETY
- PART TWO THE IMPACT OF INDUSTRIALIZATION
- PART THREE THE STATE INTERVENES
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - EDUCATION IN RURAL SOCIETY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART ONE THE RURAL BACKGROUND
- 1 THE AGRICULTURAL SETTING
- 2 THE NATURE OF WORK FOR CHILDREN IN AGRARIAN SOCIETY
- 3 EDUCATION IN RURAL SOCIETY
- PART TWO THE IMPACT OF INDUSTRIALIZATION
- PART THREE THE STATE INTERVENES
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Education amongst the peasantry of nineteenth-century France continued to be dominated by the Medieval notion of apprenticeship. Following this approach, children were plunged headlong into the world of adults as early as possible in order to learn the ‘art of living’ from those around them. All of the ideas, the beliefs and the values of peasant society were transmitted in this way, as well as the manual skills needed for work. In the absence of specialized institutions, education melted imperceptibly into the normal round of activities in the village. However, as the century wore on, this informal type of education came increasingly to be supplanted by a new rival: the elementary school. A very different philosophy of education was percolating down from middle- and upper-class circles, one which required children to be sheltered from an outside world judged too dangerous and too corrupt for their sensibilities. Children were now to be taught systematically in the cloistered atmosphere of the school, before being launched on their chosen occupations. The profound upheaval in customs that this extension of childhood implied was not to be achieved in the short term. The movement to school the population was spread over several centuries, starting in the case of primary education with the petites écoles of the reign of Louis XIV, and ending with the free, compulsory schooling of the Third Republic.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Childhood in Nineteenth-Century FranceWork, Health and Education among the 'Classes Populaires', pp. 61 - 94Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988