The “Ferry” Educational Laws


Between 1880 and 1882, the French parliament passed a set of landmark educational legislation, commonly called the “Ferry Laws” for the Minister for Public Instruction, Jules Ferry, who introduced the bills and, after he had left the Ministry, strongly advocated their passage on the floor of the Senate.  Central to Ferry’s vision for primary schooling was the notion that it should be compulsory, free, and lay.  Ferry’s reasons for advocating lay schooling emerge clearly in the excerpts that follow from the debates in the Senate from 23 December 1880 and 1 July 1881.  In the second part of this document appear the primary sections from two of the most important of these laws, the Law Establishing Free Primary Education of 16 June 1881, and the Law Establishing Compulsory and Neutral [Lay] Primary Education of 28 March 1882.

    

From the Parliamentary Record for the Session of 23 December 1880

Jules Ferry: Gentlemen, the Government believes that the school’s religious neutrality from the perspective of “positive religion” or, as it is said in other countries, from the confessional vantage, is a necessary principle whose time has come and whose application cannot be delayed much longer; it is the same principle from which our entire legislation has proceeded, and if it [neutrality] has been slow to produce its fruits in the realm of education, in the political and social realms it has been fully consecrated, not only by the public powers, but by the entire society.

The school’s religious neutrality, or you wish use a word more common to our political rhetoric, the school’s secularization, is, in my eyes and in the eyes of the Government, the result of the secularization of civil power and all social institutions, for instance, the family, a secularization that constitutes the regime under which we have been living since 1789.

Yes, 1789 secularized all institutions, and especially the family, for it made marriage a civil contract, depending solely on civil law and absolutely independent of religious law (commendation on the left).  This is what I call the secularization of institutions, and I say that the secularization of institutions will necessarily result, sooner or later, in the secularization of the public school (new rounds of applause on the left).

The Bishop of Angers [Mgr Freppel] has tried to contradict this idea by considering notions of practical utility and doctrine.  But if we take his position in the first form that he posed it in the speech he gave the other day, it would seem that the object of debate is really of only mediocre importance.

“What is it about?” [the Bishop] began. “It is a question of a minimum of religious instruction that consists in the recitation of the catechism and sacred history as well as a prayer said at the beginning and end of each lesson…”

But, under these conditions, and if [our adversaries] do not aspire to anything more, if their views their designs do not go any further, is it necessary to proclaim that religious instruction is obligatory?

Moreover, we have just seen emerging, in the argumentation of the eminent Bishop of Angers, despite his intentions, a position very different than the modest one formulated at the beginning.  He started off by saying that all that is wanted is simple tutors [répétiteur] of religion.  And then he moves quickly on to something else: he says that the school, being populated by an immense majority of Catholic children, should be Catholic in its doctrines and its instruction… Very well, Gentlemen, I say that this is the true doctrine, the true idea behind the [Falloux] Law of 1850, the step that it had made past the [Guizot] Law of 1833.  I say this is the truth that really lies in front of us now. Here we have the great abuse, the great legislative error that we are asking you to erase from the educational laws (Very good! Very good! from the left.)  Out of respect, first, for the instructor’s freedom of conscience, out of respect for the great principle that all public offices be accessible to all Frenchmen, regardless of the religion to which they belong, whereas your [Bishop Freppel’s] principle would require excluding all who do not profess the Catholic faith from the teaching ranks (That’s it! Very good! from the left.)…

The state’s independence and sovereignty are the first principles of our public law.  It is this principle that we are essentially charged to defend and maintain… the general secularization of powers, the lay character of the state….

Who is it that has won over the independence of human thought and human science? Who? Is it religious authorities? Religious forces?

No, lay authority, lay forces have done this! These victories which have been made by lay and civil powers can only be guarded by them, and we will
never allow them to be guarded by ecclesiastical powers! (Applause by the center and on the left.)

It is important for the Republic, for civil society, for all those who have in their hearts the spirit of 1789 that the direction of the schools and their inspection not be placed in the hands of ministers of religion whose opinions on these ideas that are most dear to us and on which our modern society rests are separated from ours by a deep abyss.  (Very good! Very good! on the left.)  It is thus, gentlemen, in the general interest, which is why we are asking you now to pass a law that establishes [religiously] neutral schools.


From the Parliamentary Record for the Session of 1 July 1881 (debates on moral education)

Jules Ferry: … I don’t hesitate to state that all these amendments [relative to ‘lay’ education in the schools] are of the same sort, tending all to diminish, to enfeeble the law, to reprise lost positions (lively commendation on the left).

Did the law that you approved in the first reading lack clarity? (Yes! on the right.) Do the words “moral and civic instruction” require commentary?
Many voices on the right: Certainly!

JF: Do we need [church] councils, if not theologians, or at least philosophers?

Viscount de Lorgeril: We do not want your sans-culotte morality!…

JF: What do you ask of us? The definition of civic instruction?  As if that were something new?  During the first deliberations, I established how inoffensive was this “innovation” and at the same time how necessary.  I demonstrated to the Senate that this was not at all an enterprise against the political conscience of families, but rather an endeavor that we could consider quite tardy in our country of universal suffrage, with a view to commence from a young age the education of the future elector (rumblings on the right! – Very good! on the left)… of the future elector or the future citizen, it’s the same thing.

A senator on the right: And as for young girls?

JF: It is, in effect, a future elector, because it is also a future citizen, and I find legitimate – as I’ve already had the honor to say – I find an essentially conservative politics not to leave the mass of children, these young intelligences for whom all intellectual nourishment is restricted to the period of schooling, and often a very small part of schooling at that, not to leave them without an understanding of la Patrie, an understanding of the Government, an understanding of the Constitution, a notion of society. (Very good! Very good! on the left; noise on the right).

We have thus given you these explanations; and we will provide them again whenever one demands an interpretation of the words “civic instruction.”
But moral instruction, morality – it is necessary to define morality before a French assembly, in the year of grace 1881 (laughter on the right). And you could only tolerate, accept, admit it in a text of law if it [morality] was escorted by all sorts of epithets? (Interruptions on the right.)

Permit me to say it, but the true morality, the great morality, the eternal morality, is the morality without epithets (commendation on the left, new noise on the right).

In our French society, morality, thank God, after so many centuries of civilization, no longer needs to be defined.  Morality is greater when one does not define it, it is greater without epithets (ironic laughter on the right).

M. Buffet:  But one has to define it to teach it.

JF: I just gathered, with great satisfaction, from the demonstration, the striking avowal in the first part of the speech by the honorable M. de Parieu.  Is this morality, the old morality as M. Delsol called it; the eternal morality, as I dared to call it (interruptions on the right), is this morality really the exclusive prerogative of modern society, or even the sole prerogative of Christianity?

No, he tells us.  It is the old morality of the philosophes; it is the morality of Socrates, of Aristotle, of Cicero, a morality that Christianity has refined, perfected, indeed revealed.  But it’s the eternal morality like the human soul itself (Very good! Very good! on the left).

M. Buffet: All the philosophers attached the idea of morality with God.

M. Schoelcher: Religious morality maintained slavery.

M. le Baron de Lareinty: You applaud when one lauds the morality of antiquity that organized and established slavery.

JF: It is the morality of duty, ours and yours, Gentlemen, the morality of Kant and of Christianity.  I am delighted to have heard confirmed just now the wonderful unity of all these moralities!  It is this morality that lies at the very foundation of humanity, of the human conscience, and its unity is the proof itself of the unity of conscience.  Let us refrain thus from adding epithets to morality…
   

Law Establishing Free Primary Education of 16 June 1881

Article 1. Tuition shall no longer be charged for public primary schools, nor for public kindergartens (salles d’asile).  Boarding charges in the normal schools are suppressed.

[Articles 2 –4, obliges communes and departments to provide for the costs of primary education, in accordance with the laws of 15 March 1850, 10 April 1867, and 19 July 1875.]

Article 5.  Should the resources enumerated in Articles 2, 3, and 4 of the present law prove insufficient [to fund the primary schools], the shortfall will be covered by a state subvention.

Article 6.  The salaries for school teachers currently in service, whether full- or part-time, may never under any circumstances become inferior to the salaries they have enjoyed during the three years preceding the application of the present law….

Article 7.  To the degree that they have been created, the commune is also obliged to maintain the following types of schools as primary establishments, in keeping with the prescriptions of Article 2 of the law of 10 April 1867:

Law Establishing Compulsory and Neutral Primary Education of 28 March 1882

Article 1.  Primary education encompasses:
Moral and civic instruction;
Reading and writing;
French language and the elements of French literature;
Geography, especially that of France;
History, especially that of France up to the present day;
Basic understanding of law and political economy;
The basics of natural, physical, and mathematical science; their application to agriculture, hygiene, industrial arts, manual labor, and the usage of the tools of the principal trades;
Elements of design, modeling, and music;
Gymnastics [physical education];
For boys, military exercises,
For girls, needlework.

Article 23 of the law of 15 March 1850 is hereby abrogated.  [Trans. note: Religious education is no longer mandatory, or even mentioned as part of the official school curriculum.]

Article 2.  The primary schools will hold one day free, apart from Sunday, to permit parents to have their students receive, if they wish, religious instruction outside of the schoolhouse.  Religious instruction is optional in private schools.

Article 3.  The dispositions of Articles 18 and 44 of the law of 15 March 1850, which gave ministers of religion rights of inspection, supervision, and direction in public primary schools and kindergartens are hereby abrogated, as well as the second paragraph of Article 31 of the same law, which gave [Protestant] consistories the right to present candidates for school teacher [vacancies].

Article 4.  Primary education is obligatory for the children of both sexes from the time they have turned six until they have turned thirteen.  This instruction may be given either in primary or secondary schools, in public or private schools, or even at home, either by the father of the household himself or by someone he designates.

A future regulation will determine the means by which to assure primary education for the deaf and blind.

Article 5.  A municipal school board will be established in each commune to supervise and encourage school attendance.  It will be composed of the mayor, [as] president,; one of the cantonal delegates, and for the communes comprising several cantons, as many cantonal delegates as there are cantons, as designated by the inspector of the Académie; and members designated by the city council equal in number, at the most, to one third of the council’s membership. [Trans. note: Thus, clergy no longer are members of these bodies.]

[Discussion of special conditions for creating school boards in Paris and Lyons, as well as the terms of office for the members of all school boards]
The primary school inspector is an ex officio member of all the school boards in his district.

Article 6.  There shall be established a certificate of primary studies, which shall be granted after a public examination open to all children of at least eleven years of age.  Those who have obtained this certificate shall be dispensed from further obligation to attend school….

[Articles 7 through 15 discuss the placement of students in schools (or home-schooling), the drawing up of class lists, and the handling of absences and truancies.]

Article 16.  Children who are schooled at home must, each year after the second year of obligatory instruction, take an exam on the subjects of instruction covered in the public schools for their particular age group, in the manner and according to the programs established by ministerial decree in the Superior Council.

The examination commission shall be composed of: the primary inspector or his delegate, president, a cantonal delegate, one person who holds either a university diploma or a school [teaching] certificate; the judges will be selected by the inspector of the academy.  For the examination of girls, the person holding the teaching credential must be female.

Should the child not perform well on the examination and if the jury does not receive a satisfactory explanation for it, the parents will be required to send the child either to a public or private establishment within a week and to inform the mayor which school has been selected….

   
Sources:  J. Palmèro, Histoire des institutions et des doctrines pédagogiques par les texts (Paris: S.U.D.E.L, 1958), 306-08; Digithèque MJP “Grandes lois de la République” (http://mjp.univ-perp.fr/france/grandeslois.htm).  Translations by Anthony J. Steinhoff, all rights reserved.