as model schools of apprentices. At the head of the higher technical schools came two important institutions, the Conservatoire nationale des arts et métiers and the École Centrale. The former was founded in 1794 and now serves the double purpose of a national museum and an educational centre for students whose time is mortgaged by their employment during the day. For these it provides twenty-three specialised evening courses. The Central School, founded in 1828, became in 1857 a national school of engineering, with a three-years' course and twenty professors. Its students are prepared, not for government service, but for private enterprise. Commercial education of the highest type has been started by chambers of commerce and municipalities and recognised by the State, which controls the teachers, approves the curricula, and awards the diplomas. These higher commercial schools, now fifteen in number, are more and more adapted to local needs and enjoy a wise autonomy. The Paris school may be taken as a standard: it aims at providing (a) a five-years' course of complete commercial instruction; (b) a three-years' course of practical commercial training for those who must enter business life early; (c) a two-years' course of higher, but practical, commercial education for ex-secondary pupils. Perhaps 3000 to 4000 students are in receipt of this higher technical instruction in the whole of France.

Middle Technical Schools.-Secondary technical instruction is given in France by the écoles d'arts et métiers at Châlons-surMarne, Aix, Angers, Lille, Cluny, and, since 1912, at Paris. Boys are admitted between the ages of fifteen and seventeen after a competitive examination. Each school, except that at Paris which is a day-school, receives 300 boarders for a three-years' course: Paris affords as well an extra year's voluntary training for those who have received the diploma at the end of their studies. The aim of these schools is to educate foremen and managers who are trained artisans.

Primary Technical Schools.-At the head of these come the four national professional schools of Armentières, Vierzon, Voiron, and Nantes which aim at educating artisans and foremen in industry, and also at preparing for the competitive examination for admission to the national schools of arts and trades. The boys are boarders, half-boarders, and day boys, and pay accordingly from 500 to 600 fr., from 250 to 300 fr., or nothing. All these schools have courses in iron and wood work, but each specialises in giving theoretical and practical training in regional industries.

Analogous schools are those of watch-making at Cluses and Besançon. Next come the écoles pratiques de commerce et d'industrie, which aim at preparing their pupils for business or the work-shop, while giving at the same time by a limited general education a basic understanding of the problem aimed at by the practical work. They replace the old, discredited apprenticeship by offering well-grounded assistants in commerce and artisans capable of becoming foremen in trade. They are established by municipalities, communes, or departments and receive State aid. In 1910 there were sixty-six such schools, fifty-three for boys and thirteen for girls, educating 10,350 boys and 2858 girls. The girls' schools train for both business and handicrafts: thirty-six of the boys' schools train for both also, but sixteen specialise in industry only and one in commerce. In either case the training is adapted to local needs, while the girls are educated for the home or for flower- or dress-making. All such schools prepare for the certificat des études pratiques commerciales et industrielles granted at the end of the three-years' course.

Thirdly, we must take into reckoning the notable contributions of towns and chambers of commerce to this enterprise. Paris alone maintains seven boys' schools for special industries and eight technical schools that prepare for recognised trades for women; it would take too long to give a list of such provincial schools as the École Martinière at Lyons which have a similar function. The State to-day subsidises about 400 such technical courses throughout France. About 40,000 to 45,000 students follow technical evening-class work, about 13,000 are in the écoles pratiques, about 1500 in the four professional schools, 3500 in the Paris lower technical schools, and about 5000 in private schools; in all, as we have seen, a total of less than 70,000 pupils.

Naturally France is dissatisfied with this result and recent legislature points towards a great advance. By the projet de loi of 1905 we see foreshadowed the compulsory establishment of daytime gratuitous technical instruction by all communes above a certain size; the institution of certificates of aptitude at the end of each year; the compulsory granting by employers of permission to follow these courses during working hours. Schemes for a logical system of local, departmental, and general councils to supervise technical instruction on the same general administrative lines as are to be found in primary education are also to the front, and a normal school at Paris for the training of expert technical teachers is, in law at least, at length a realised ideal. France is

taking very seriously her inferiority to Germany in applied science. She has recognised that a dead-lift is necessary to decuple the quantity, while improving the quality, of the technical training of her people. There is no doubt about the ultimate result.

IX. CONTINUED EDUCATION

In sharp contrast with Germany we find in the France of yesterday no adequate attempt on the part of the State to provide systematic and compulsory instruction for adolescents. We shall see below that a very comprehensive and statesmanlike measure has recently been officially submitted to Parliament to solve this pressing problem. Meanwhile let us review briefly the condition of things before the war.

Adult schools (cours d'adultes) have been in existence through private or municipal enterprise for a hundred years: in 1869 they numbered 28,172 with an attendance of 800,000. In 1884 a ministerial decree organised them throughout France, but too great hopes were put for the moment on the all-sufficiency of the primary school and in 1894 these adult schools numbered only 8228. Since then there has been a rapid revival, resulting in the existence of 54,351 such schools when the war broke out in 1914. To this total we can add about 5000 technical classes, cours professionnels, organised by syndicates and other bodies. The total attendance is nearly a million. Since 1887 the minimum age for attendance has been lowered to thirteen: except in the large towns these cours d'adultes are mixed schools. The length and frequency of the classes are left to local option: there is as yet no legal obligation to attend. Certificates are given to regular scholars and their value is recognised by employers. In 1907 the State grant only amounted to 350,000 fr. and about the same sum was received from private subscriptions. The burden falls therefore on the towns and departments, which in 1903-4 gave subsidies to the value of 1,751,211 fr., and most of all on the primary teachers, who since 1895 have been deprived of the paltry 150 fr. a year which had previously been assigned to those engaged in this voluntary extra work. The State contents itself with honorary rewards, some towns pay a small subsidy, thirty departments refuse all help. In some cases the teachers themselves defray the cost of lighting and heating. It is an amazing state of affairs.

The cours d'adultes is usually held between 7.0 and 8.30 p.m. on two or three nights a week and lasts from late autumn till Easter.

Sometimes a summer Sunday-afternoon course is organised. These classes have gradually been divided into three types: (1) those for the illiterate who are generally ashamed to make use of them; (2) continuation classes proper, cours complémentaires ; and (3) technical classes, cours professionnels. The cours complémentaires, like the higher primary schools, develop the work of the elementary school, and besides giving useful general instruction, give special training adapted to local needs, teaching such subjects as agriculture in the country, and shorthand, bookkeeping, drawing, and arithmetic in the towns. By 1902-3 these schools had reached the number of 15,354. The cours techniques represent for working adolescents and adults what the écoles professionelles and the écoles de commerce et d'industrie, which are all day schools and limited in number, stand for in the technical training of the young who are not forced immediately to become wage-earners. In number about 5000 and owing their existence to private enterprise, they are held in the evenings and on Sunday mornings. Their teachers are artisans and their object is to give manual workers a knowledge of the scientific principles which underlie their practice. Each trade is provided with its special equipment and there is much training in experimental science. The success of this admirable movement is shown by the fact that in 1905 1300 students applied to enter the courses organised in the manual training workshops of twelve Paris schools. Unhappily there was room for only 1000. Every Thursday the artisan teachers are themselves trained.

Other Educational Agencies.—(a) Libraries are nominally established in each primary school and subsidised by the State to a small extent. In 1902 they numbered 43,411, but there were in 1898 still 30,000 schools without them. In 1902 there were 2911 municipal libraries, besides the seventy-eight in Paris. All over France, however, libraries still suffer from lack of funds.

(b) Lectures and public readings. The lectures, conférences, are given by the staff of the schools and in 1903-4 as many as 110,842 were given to an audience of 3,000,000. Lantern slides are posted free and distributed by the Musée Pédagogique in Paris. The public readings are a more recent development. Societies have been formed to tour the provinces and interest artisans in the great modern writers.

(c) Societies for Educating the People.-In France these are literally legion and space available is unhappily in inverse ratio

Y

to their utility and importance. To name only a few of the most famous: the Association Philotechnique had in 1900 714 classes and 13,000 students of technical subjects; the Société d'Enseignement Moderne had 726 classes and 14,211 students; the Union Française de la Jeunesse had an attendance of 9000, the Association Philomathique of 7500. These figures refer to Paris only. The provinces have affiliated branches and innumerable societies of local origin, which often combine physical and mental training and give great encouragement to social intercourse besides. Especially active are the Catholic patronages which embrace all these objects. Special mention must be made here of the Universités Populaires, started in Paris in 1899 for higher education and mutual improvement, and rapidly spreading in the provinces, until in 1903 there were nineteen in Paris and 138 in the rest of France. They aim at informal discussion of political and social problems, at educational lectures, and at artistic cultivation. In Paris they are essentially working men's clubs though often instituted by university men and, except the Catholic Universités Populaires started in rivalry, of a distinctly syndicalist and advanced atmosphere. In the provinces, on the other hand, they seem to have more strictly educational objects and the opposition they encountered from the bourgeoisie has made them go slowly and consolidate their position. Owing their initiative almost entirely to working men and managed by them, they have much in common, in their spirit and activities, with the English Workers' Educational Association. Financially they are flourishing, whereas high rents and a moving population cause in Paris one unending financial crisis.

In spite, however, of all these signs of life and expanding energy, especially on the part of private bodies, in educating the people, France, like England, has for some time realised that only the State can make continued education really effective. The war and the economic problems that it has brought with it have provided the urgency which transforms ideals into actuality. Just as 1870 resulted in the compulsory education of the child, so this present war is certain to result in the compulsory education of the adolescent. On March 13, 1917, M. Viviani, then Minister of Education, submitted to Parliament a projet de loi which indicates clearly the intended line of advance. It is so important that I shall venture to deal with it at some length.

The object of the law is to produce good workmen, good citizens, good soldiers. It aims, therefore, at instituting through