École normale supérieure

“ Fustel de Coulanges was the most conscientious of men, the most systematic and uncompromising of historians. Appointed to a lectureship at the École Normale Supérieure in February 1870, to a professorship at the Paris faculty of letters in 1875, and to the chair of medieval history created for him at the Sorbonne in 1878, he applied himself to the study of the political institutions of ancient France. The invasion of France by the German armies during the war of 1870–71 attracted his attention to the Germanic invasions under the Roman Empire. ”

“ The students on the scientific side of the Paris school, in spite of the fact that their studies and researches are looked after by fourteen professors entitled Maîtres de Conférences, attend certain of the courses at the Sorbonne and the Collége de France, and this is one of the reasons why many of the men and researches which have enriched French science hail from the École Normale. ”

“ The future masters for the different lyceums and colleges are all educated in a special school known as the École Normale, founded under the First Republic, and where, according to the government order calling it into existence, the students have not only to receive instruction, but to be taught the art of imparting it. ”

“ It is accepted by all here as an important truth, that the longer we can keep a student the better it will be for him and the institution and the work. The students in the collegiate department give tone to the whole institution. Every department is lifted to a higher standard by the high standard of the college department. As the college graduates go out into the world, they have, without an exception, taken advanced positions as teachers or other professional men. ”

“ Whatever may have been true for the earlier time, when the American college first grew up and flourished, it is beyond question that the undergraduate department which takes the place of the college today cannot be rated as an institution of the higher learning. At the best it is now a school for preliminary training, preparatory to entering on the career of learning, or in preparation for the further training required for the professions ”

“ Before doing so, however, it may be well to state that the colleges provide adequately, but not extravagantly, for the teaching of classics and mathematics, for elementary teaching in many other subjects, and for individual assistance to the student and supervision of his work in the subjects taught in the University. The collegiate system also ensures a close contact and intercourse between teacher and student not otherwise or elsewhere attainable. ”

“ The study is largely restricted to preparing the student for his advanced professional and technical work. The university goes further and arranges its courses of study so as to supplement the instruction given in college and direct the student in an advanced grade of work in any department of intellectual life. The courses have the broadest scope and embrace departments in liberal arts, law, medicine, theology and science, each having a faculty composed of able professors. ”

“ The governing body of the university is the senate, which is made up of graduates who possess the degree of Master of Arts, which is had without examination about four years after graduation. The relation between the colleges and the university is much like that between the individual states of this country and the Union as a whole. The course in any college covers three years, during which the students are called freshmen, junior sophomores and senior sophomores. ”

“ It seems, also, that the examinations are so managed, doubtless partly in deference to public sentiment, that men of higher education are not encouraged to enter. In 1891, 629⁄10 per cent of those who took the examinations on the basis of a common-school education passed, 773⁄10 per cent f those who had been through high school, and only 671⁄10 per cent of the college men. ”

“ The university is coming to have greater respect for and more confidence in the high school and its work. Whereas in the earlier days all entrance work was rigidly prescribed, now, in nearly all of our higher institutions, several units are open to free choice from a list of accepted subjects. In a goodly number these units may be chosen from any subjects offered by an approved high school. ”

“ An institution to be ranked as a college, must have at least six professors giving their entire time to college and university work, a course of four full years in liberal arts and sciences, and should require for admission, not less than the usual four years of high school preparation, or its equivalent. ”

“ An examination of the table of admission units required in the liberal arts colleges of state universities, shown below, indicates a stricter adherence to type and quite a marked tendency toward a hardening of lines in the establishment of certain prescribed studies for entrance to the colleges of state universities. Under ordinary circumstances one would expect a closer coordination between the state universities and the secondary schools than in the instance of the privately endowed schools and the high school. ”

“ Besides the collegiate department, the university has schools of music and commerce, a preparatory department, and a normal college. The bachelor's degree in arts, philosophy, science, and pedagogy is given in course and the master's degree after one year's graduate work. ”

“ By this arrangement the college -- undergraduate department -- falls into the position of an appendage, a side issue, to be taken care of by afterthought on the part of a body of men whose chief legitimate interest runs -- should run -- on other things than the efficient management of such an undergraduate training-school, -- provided always that they are a bona fide university faculty, and not a body of secondary-school teachers masquerading under the assumed name of a university. ”

“ The university, University College, and the school of practical science embrace in their conjoint teaching a comprehensive system of training in arts and science; and in them upwards of 500 students receive their training in arts, in the natural and applied sciences, and in engineering. There is also a medical faculty, reorganized under a recent Act, in conjunction with the department of science in the university. The university and college constitute unitedly the state institution maintained by public funds, and strictly secular. ”

“ There has been a sharp and at times unfriendly clash between normal schools and colleges in the effort to secure answers to such questions. The normal school often takes the position that it administers only high-grade courses, while the colleges express a frank doubt as to the value of these courses for mature students. ”

“ If a University surrenders the right of examining those who wish to be admitted, the tutors will often have to do the work of school-masters, and the professors can never know how high or how low they should aim in their public lectures; and the result will be a lowering of the standard at the Universities, and consequently at the public schools. Some Universities, on the contrary, like over-anxious mothers, have multiplied examinations so as to make quite sure, at the end of each term or each year, that the pupils confided to them have done at least some work. ”

“ As for the state university, it will allow the widest range of free electives, and as an university it will aim to comprise within itself every possible department of practical activity, such as business administration, journalism, banking and finance, foreign trade, political science, psycho-analysis, mining, sanitary engineering, veterinary surgery, as well as law, medicine, agriculture, and civil and mechanical engineering. ”

“ While it is the work of science and scholarship, roughly what is known in American usage as graduate work, that gives the university its rank as a seat of learning and keeps it in countenance as such with laymen and scholars, it is the undergraduate school, or college, that still continues to be the larger fact, and that still engages the greater and more immediate attention in university management. ”

“ By force of conventional propriety a "college course" -- the due term of residence at some reputable university, with the collegiate degree certifying honourable discharge -- has become a requisite of gentility. So considerable is the resulting genteel contingent among the students, and so desirable is their enrolment and the countenance of their presence, in the apprehension of the university directorate, that the academic organization is in great part, and of strategic necessity, adapted primarily to their needs. ”

“ The College Royal has twenty-eight professors, who give gratuitous lectures on astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, chemistry, natural history, law, ethics, etc. etc. There is a college of Natural History, connected with the Jardin des Plantes, with fifteen professors. The Ecole Normale is an institution for the education of students who intend to become candidates for professorships. There are in Paris besides these, five royal colleges where a student is boarded as well as educated. The [Pg 193] charge for board is two hundred dollars a year ”

“ In order to supply the need of a more thorough preparation, a preparatory department has been maintained in many colleges. The present aim and tendency of our educational system is to introduce the pupil from the high school to the rank of Freshman in college. ”

“ The presence here of an unusually large number of graduates in Arts, on whom Degrees have this day been conferred, testifies to the fact that the regulations of this University are no hindrance to higher education. Year by year, the tests become more efficient and practical, and a Degree in Arts, Law, Medicine, or Engineering is not granted until the candidate has shown a competent knowledge of the subjects in which he is examined. ”

“ The next step was the expansion of the department of education into the Teachers College, or School of Education, as it is getting to be called, which is now recognized as a professional school of equal rank with the School of Law or the School of Medicine. An essential element of its equipment is a high school for observation and practise under expert supervision, just as an elementary practise school is an essential part of a well equipt normal school. ”

“ In several of the American institutions known as colleges, but not easily distinguishable from the universities, courses of general or technical instruction are provided of all intermediate grades, but above that given in the high schools. In addition to these there are some well-known institutions which provide courses of professional and general instruction of the highest grade under professors of eminence and distinction, and facilities for research which are not surpassed in any German university or technical high school. ”

“ What counts toward the advancement of learning and the scholarly character of the university is the graduate work, but what gives statistically formidable results in the way of a numerous enrolment, many degrees conferred, public exhibitions, courses of instruction -- in short what rolls up a large showing of turnover and output -- is the perfunctory work of the undergraduate department, as well as the array of vocational schools latterly subjoined as auxiliaries to this end. ”

“ The explanation of this lack of uniformity is to be found in the fact that normal schools have never been a part of the system of higher education evolved in this country. Normal schools have grown up in isolation. While the colleges have been in the closest touch with each other through the organization of entrance examination boards and accrediting institutions, while high schools have been brought together by standard definitions of units, normal schools have stood apart. ”

“ Only when the professional schools are real graduate departments, requiring under-graduate training for admission, is the university doing its work properly. This was the rule in the past--hence the precious lessons for the present in the story of these old-time universities. ”

“ The university as such requires the man to pass certain examinations, and the precise methods in which he prepares himself for this, are, comparatively speaking, matters of indifference to it. It is the university, and not the head of the college, that arranges the examination and confers the various degrees; the work of the head of the college is simply to see that the candidate is duly prepared. In the process of such preparation he may, as a private gentleman, enter into whatever social or other relations he may think proper with his pupil ”

“ The pedagogical department of a college, and too, a thoroly reputable college, may be, and usually is, merely one of the many departments of the institution, represented on its faculty by a single professor and offering but a limited range of professional work—a few courses in the history of education, principles of education, and "pedagogy," usually. A teachers college, on the other hand, has an organization and, sometimes, a financial status of its own. Its relationship to the institution as a whole is getting to be the same as that of the other professional schools. ”

“ Not only do two distinct institutions differ in the scope and character of their questions, but the same university varies its demands from year to year. The only safe course to pursue is, therefore, a generally comprehensive one. ”

“ Besides these preparatory schools, every university has three or four professors of divinity, as many of civil and canon law, and seldom less of medicine. The students are not required to live in colleges. There are, however, establishments of this kind for undergraduates; but being, for the most part, intended for a limited number of poor boys, they make no part of the Academic system. Yet some of these colleges have, by a strange combination of circumstances, risen to such a height of splendour and influence, that I must digress into a short sketch of their history. ”