The qualifications required for admission to the work are sufficient to secure a body of efficient teachers, a large proportion of whom have been specially trained for the service. They evince great enthusiasm and professional skill, and but little tendency to mechanical methods, the women especially being full of ingenuity.

Instruction by observation, called in France méthode intuitive, has large development, and the teachers are aided in its use by the admirable collection of material with which nearly every school is supplied.

The formation of school museums (musées scolaires) has been promoted chiefly by the efforts of M. F. Buisson, director of primary instruction. His enthusiasm has proved contagious, and by the combined efforts of teachers, pupils, and parents, and the assistance of local funds, nearly 14,000 museums have been formed.

Excellent discipline is maintained in the schools, the pupils being as a rule very tractable. Corporal punishment is strictly prohibited; reprimands and suspensions are ordinary penalties, and final expulsion the extreme resort.

Each scholar at the time of his entrance into a school receives a blank book, which he is expected to keep as long as he remains in school.1 In this book he performs the first exercise of each month in each class of studies, a task to be done in school without help from others. The series of exercises show the course of instruction and the progress of the scholar from year to year. This book is kept in the school and is known as the monthly record.

At the beginning of the school year a time table is prepared by the teacher of each school, and after approval by the primary inspector, is put up in the class rooms.

Pupils are promoted annually. The certificate of primary studies is conferred upon those who complete the course and pass the required examination, to which, however, no one under eleven years of age is admitted. Attendance upon this examination is not obligatory. The reports show, however, a steady increase in the number of candidates. In 1887 the number of certificates awarded was 144,046, as against 91,153 in 1882.

Text books and material.-Every year the teachers of each department meet together under the direction of the primary inspector to prepare a list of desirable text-books. These lists are revised by a special commission presided over by the academic inspector; the final list for each department is submitted to the approval of the academic rector. The multiplication of text-books has been a natural consequence of the development of the state system, and the number of books in the market shows a wholesome competition between rival publishers.

The official list of approved text-books, made up to July, 1888, contains a total of 1,531 works. While many of these are poor, the list in

See article by Felix Martel, in Monographies pédagogiques, Tome I.

cludes books which are models of simple lucid composition and. logical arrangement, and stamped with the genius of some of the most distinguished French authors.'

French publishers have given great attention to maps and models of every kind, and the schools are abundantly supplied with such apparatus. School libraries both for pupils and for teachers are very freely provided.

Primary normal schools.-The departmental normal schools are boarding schools, to which, however, day scholars are admitted.

The buildings and material are provided by the departments. All the schools have practice schools of primary grade annexed, and nearly all have a second school or class for the training of directresses of infant (i. e., maternal) schools.

The course of study is arranged for three years.

The normal schools are in session ten and a half months annually. Secondary schools.-The representative establishments for secondary instruction are the lycées or state schools. They have boarding departments, the household and scholastic affairs being kept entirely distinct. Both are regulated down to the minutest detail by provisions from the central authority. The head of the lycée is the principal or proviseur, who is simply an administrative oflicer.

The most important functionary of the lycée next to the proviseur is the censor of studies (censeur des études), who regulates the discipline and studies.

The head of the household is the steward (économe), and there must always be a resident chaplain. All of these officials are appointed by the minister of public instruction, and are directly responsible to the academic rector.

The professors, who reside outside of the establishment, confine themselves entirely to the work of instruction. The students are under the immediate surveillance of tutors (maîtres répétiteurs), to each of whom is assigned a group of about thirty, for whose studies and conduct he is responsible. The students are hoarders (internes) or day students (externes). The former are said to belong to the internat, the latter to the externat. The boarders may be either pensionnaires, full boarders, or demi-pensionnaires, who take one meal daily in the school. The average number of students in a lycée is five hundred; the aver age staff comprises thirty-eight officers and professors.

The course of study, which has been already described, covers ten years and is arranged in three divisions, elementary, grammar, and superior. The two lower divisions consist of three classes each, the highest division of four classes.

The lowest class is called the preparatory; the next seven are named from the ordinal numbers, eight to second inclusive. These are fol lowed by the class of rhetoric and the class of philosophy.

See on this subject La librairie scolaire, by Paul Delalain, Monographies pédagogiques, Tome III.

Pupils generally enter the lycées at 8 years of age and are expected to spend a year in each class, thus completing the full course at 18, and the special secondary course at 16 or 17.

The discipline of the lycée is extremely rigid and mechanical. The routine is not exactly the same in all, but the following is a fair representation of a day's program.1

The pupils rise at 5:30 and retire at 8:30.

The fifteen waking hours are divided as follows:

The communal colleges may be full or partial course secondary schools. The communes take the initiative in their establishment, and their boarding departments are controlled either by the municipalities or by private proprietors.

Their scholastic régime is similar to that of the lycées.

The law of December 21, 1850, creating lycées and communal colleges for girls completed the general provision for secondary instruction. The administration and studies of these institutions are managed with special reference to the aptitudes, needs, and probable careers of young women. Pupils enter at twelve years of age. The course is divided into two periods of three and of two years respectively, thus allowing five years for the full period. A sixth year may be added for students who desire to prepare for admission to superior institutions or for special vocations.

Attendance at all classes of the secondary schools is stimulated by public scholarships (bourses) and peculiar enthusiasm is excited by means of annual public competitive exercises, which have all the attractive features of great festivities.

A normal school, designed to prepare a teaching force for the service of special secondary instruction, was opened at Cluny in 1866, and in 1881 a normal school for the preparation of women to serve as professors in the lycées and colleges for women was established at Sèvres.

In many particulars of organization and conduct the lycées follow the model of the Jesuit colleges. See in this connection Educational Reformers, by Robert Herbert Quick, Chapter IV.

For an interesting study of the organization of lycées see Quelque mots sur l'instruction publique en France, by Michel Bréal, chapter entitled "De l'internat;" also Education et instruction; enseignement secondaire, par Oct. Gréard, Tomes I, II

There are also secondary normal schools established at the lycées of the chief towns of each academy, where the assistant teachers are gathered together for special instruction in the courses and to facilitate their promotion to professorships.

The following tabulation shows the status of the lycées and communal colleges for 1837, the latest year included in the official report of the minister of public instruction:

INSTITUTIONS FOR SUPERIOR INSTRUCTION.

The institutions for superior instruction belonging to the State are facultés, and professional and special schools.

The facultés comprise groups of professional men assigned to each academic district for the service of liberal and professional education. These groups are of five orders: Protestant theology, law, medicine, letters, and sciences. Paris alone has all five of the facultés. Montpellier, Nancy, Lyons, and Lille have all save Protestant theology. In two academic districts the different facultés are not located in the same city. The facultés retain in many respects the characteristics impressed upon them by Napoleon, who constituted them professional bodies within the University, to maintain lectures, and to examine for and confer degrees.

The present Government has greatly extended the teaching functions of the facultés, and has taken the first steps toward giving them the attributes and powers of corporate bodies.

The necessity of providing for practical courses of instruction was felt in respect to the facultés of medicine at an early period in their his tory, and led in 1854 to the creation of professional schools, which are found in several of the academic districts. These schools are of two classes-preparatory and full course (écoles de plein exercice). Similar schools have also been provided for sciences and letters. These schools with the conférences and complementary courses supply the essential conditions of effective instruction. The development in this respect is shown by the fact that since 1877, conférences to the number of 129 and complementary courses to the number of 200 have been created, and 201 new professorships established. Meanwhile, students have been allured by the special inducement of scholarships (i. e., bourses), of which five hundred have been provided.

The extension of the teaching functions has been further stimulated by the vast increase of material equipments, buildings, laboratories, etc. The results of these efforts are shown, says the minister in his official report, by the fact that of the 17,630 students upon the register of the facultés in 1887-88, 3,693 were veritable students in the facultés of letters and of science; whereas in 1875, if any were entered for those courses, they did not really pursue their studies in the facultés, but merely registered themselves," an essential prerequisite to the rights of the degree examinations.

The separate facultés have always had an official organization. The head of each group is the dean (doyen). An assistant is appointed, who may act for the dean if necessary, and a secretary for the service of the body. Until a very recent date, however, the different facultés of a district (académie) were separate from each other, and after 1875 were wanting in all the attributes of autonomy. Civil personality was secured to them by a decree of July 25, 1885, which empowered them to receive, hold, and administer property; a right conferred upon them in 1801, but suspended in 1875. A decree of December 28, 1885, carried the work of organization still further. This decree constituted in each academic district à council general of all the facultés of the district for the consideration of matters of common interest. The president of this council is the academic rector; the remaining members are the deans of the facultés, the directors of superior schools of pharmacy in districts where such schools have been formed, the director of a full course or of a preparatory school of pharmacy or of medicine, two delegates from each faculté elected for three years by the assembly of the facultés from the full professors, and a delegate from each full course or preparatory school elected in the same manner.

The deans and directors of schools are charged, under the authority of the rectors, with the execution of the decisions of the council. Any decision of the council contrary to laws and rules is referred immedi