L’école primaire entre l’Église et l’État : le compromis de la loi Guizot (28 juin 1833)

Abstract

The Law Guizot represents the birth of the public primary school. For Guizot, the «government of the minds» is important: In the country of France that has been traumatized by the Revolution and the agitations of the years 1830, he wants to moralize and to educate the people. This becomes the responsibility of the State, but it is necessary that moral education, which has priority, be also religious, which accounts for the strongly encouraged collaboration between the teacher and the priest. The supervision committees established by the Law reflect this apparent symbiosis between Church and State as well as the proclamation of the freedom of education. However, the parliamentary archives show a legislative path much less smooth. The context is characterized by suspicion concerning the priest-party, so active under the Restauration and suspected to channel ideas that are hostile to the new regime. Shouldn’t the first objective of the law be to channel the power of the clergy rather than giving it a primary role?

Keywords

• Public primary school
• Church and State
• Popular education
• Freedom of education