Preparing French School Teachers by Means of the Science of Education (1883–1914)

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth century, in France, the Ecoles Normales were in charge of the training of all future school teachers and delivered to them a basic knowledge in the different school subjects, as well as a practical preparation. A new academic discipline, called Science of Education, was created in 1883 at the Sorbonne by the republican reformers of schools, in order to train the future teachers and to prepare them to teach civics and non-religious morals. This was extended to all the universities but two at the beginning of the twentieth century. As the new discipline could not be grounded on a previous branch of knowledge, it was dominated exclusively by professors of philosophy, and because it was not recognised as a ‘real’ discipline, most of these professors tried to get rid of it. Thus, most of the lectures became rather general, abstract, philosophical reflections on education and human nature. A small number of them turned into general abstract sociological considerations or, occasionally, psychological knowledge. In both cases, they were oriented towards a long-lasting theoretical conception of university training.