1802 Law of Public Instruction

May I, 1802 (II Floréal, Year X)

1. Instruction shall be given:
   1st. In the primary schools established by the communes;
   2d. In the secondary schools established by the communes or kept by private masters;
   3d. In the lycées and the special schools maintained at the expense of the public treasury.

2. ...
3. The instructors shall be chosen by the mayors and tile municipal councils; their stipend shall consist of: 1st, the dwelling provided by tile communes; 2d, a fee paid by the parents, and fixed by tile municipal councils.
4. The municipal councils shall exempt from the fee those of the parents who may be unable to pay it; nevertheless, this exemption cannot exceed a fifth of the children received into the primary schools.
5. The sub-perfects shall be especially charged with the organization of the primary schools; they shall render monthly to the prefects an account of their condition.

6. Every school established by the communes or kept by individuals, in which instruction is given in tile Latin and French languages, the first principles of geography history, and mathematics, shall be considered a secondary school.
7. The government encourages the establishment of secondary schools and will recompense good instruction which shall be given there, either by the grant of a habitation or by the distribution of gratuitous places in the lycées to those of the pupils of each department who shall most distinguish themselves, and by the bounties granted to the fifty masters of those schools which shall have had the most pupils admitted to the lycées.
8. Secondary schools cannot be established without the authorisation of the government. The secondary schools, as well as all the private schools whose instruction shall be higher than that of the primary schools, shall be placed under the special surveillance and inspection of the prefects.

9. Lycées shall be established for instruction in letters and the sciences. There shall be at least one lycée for each tribunal of appeal district.
10. Instruction shall be given in the lycées in the ancient languages, rhetoric, logic, ethics, and the elements of the mathematical and physical sciences.

    The number of professors in the lycée shall never be less than eight; but it can be increased by the government, as well as the number of the subjects of instruction, according to the number of pupils who shall attend the lycées.

11. There shall be in the lycées, study masters, and masters of drawing, military exercises, and of accomplishments, [i.e. music and dancing].
12. Instruction shall he given there:
    To pupils whom the government shall place there;
    To the pupils of the secondary schools who shall be admitted there by a competition;
    To pupils whose parents shall have placed them there to board;
    To day scholars.
13. The administration of each lycée shall be confided to a principal; he shall have immediately under him a study-critic and a proctor conducting the affairs of the school.
14. The principal, the critic, and the proctor shall be appointed by the First Consul: they shall form the council of administration for the school.
15. ln each of the cities where a lycée is established there shall be a bureau of administration for that school. This bureau shall be composed of the prefect of the department the president of the tribunal of appeal, the commissioner of the government before this tribunal, the commissioner of the government before the criminal tribunal the mayor and the principal.
16. ...
17. The First Consul shall appoint three inspectors-general of studies who shall visit the lycées at least once a year, shall definitely settle their accounts, shall examine all parts of the instruction and administration, and shall render an account thereof to the government.
18. ...
19. The first appointment of the professors of the lycées shall be in the following manner: three inspectors-general of studies, in conjunction with three members of the national institute, designated by the First Consul, shall go over the departments and shall there examine the citizens who present themselves to occupy the different places of professors. For each place they shall indicate to the government two persons, one of whom shall be appointed by the First Consul.
20. When the lycées are once organized and a chair becomes vacant, the three inspectors-general of studies shall present one person to the government; the bureau, in conjunction with the council of administration and the professors of the lycées shall present another; the First Consul shall appoint one of the two candidates.
21. ...
22. ...

23. The last grade of instruction shall include in the special schools the complete and profound study of the sciences and the useful arts, as well as the perfecting thereof.
24. The special schools now in existence shall be preserved, without prejudice to the modifications which the government believes that it must order for the economy and the welfare of the service. When the place of a professor shall become vacant, including the school of law which shall be established at Paris, it shall be filled by the First Consul from three candidates who shall be presented the first by one of the classes of the national institute, the second by the inspectors-general of studies, and the third by the professors of the school in which the place shall be vacant.
25. The following new special schools shall be instituted:
    1st. Ten law schools can be established: each, of them shall have four professors at most;
    2d. Three new schools of medicine can be created, which shall have at most eight professors each, and one of which shall be devoted especially to the study and treatment of the diseases of the troops of the army and navy;
    3d. There shall be four schools of natural history, physics, and chemistry, with four professors in each;
    4th. The mechanical and chemical arts shall be taught in two special schools; there shall be three professors in each of these schools;
    5th. A school of transcendental mathematics shall have three professors;
    6th. A special school of geography, history, and public economy shall be composed of four professors;
    7th. In addition to the schools of the arts of design existing at Paris, Dijon, and Toulouse, there shall be formed a fourth one with four professors;
    8th. The observatories in operation at present shall each have a professor of astronomy;
    9th. There shall be in several lycées professors of the living languages;
    10th. There shall be appointed eight professors of music and composition.
26. The first appointment of the professors for these new special schools shall be made in the following manner: The classes of the institute corresponding to the places which are to be filled shall present one person to the government; the three inspectors-general of studies shall present a second: the First Consul shall choose one of the two.

    After the organization of the new special schools, the First Consul shall appoint to the vacant places from among the three persons who shall be presented to him as is provided in article 24....

27. Six thousand four hundred boarding pupils shall be supported at the expense of the Republic at the lycées and the special schools.
28. Out of these six thousand four hundred pensioners, two thousand four hundred shall be chosen by the government from among the sons of military men and of civil, judicial, administrative, or municipal functionaries who shall have served the Republic well; and for ten years only, from among the children of citizens of the departments united with France, although they may have been neither military men nor public functionaries.
29. These two thousand four hundred pupils must be at least nine years of age and know how to read and write.
30. The other four thousand pupils shall be taken from a double number of pupils of the secondary schools, who shall be presented to the government in consequence of an examination and a competition. Each department shall furnish a number of these latter pupils proportional to its population.
31. The pupils supported in the lycées cannot remain there more than six years at the expense of the nation. At the end of their studies they shall undergo an examination, in consequence of which one-fifth of them shall be placed in the different special schools, according to the inclination of these pupils, in order to be supported there for from two to four years at the expense of the Republic.