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In the Early Third Republic (c. 1880–1914), the role of Catholic educators was called into question by the convergence of two different calls for change within French society. As the government of the Third Republic sought to reform primary-school instruction, there were renewed debates in French society about the role of Catholic institutions. Cast as untrained and partisan teachers by advocates of Republican educational reform, Catholic teachers and pedagogues sought to assert their place among modern educators. A close reading of late nineteenth-century Catholic pedagogical materials reveals, however, that objections to Republican education came from its content and not its form. The education of the senses, the progression from known to unknown, and the introduction of children to abstract concepts were all pedagogical techniques that could be reconciled with Catholic educational practice. In response, advocates for the role of Catholicism in primary education stressed their role in shaping future citizens and sought to establish their credentials as educators. This case study, which focuses on French primary education, speaks to the growth in international pedagogical norms in the late nineteenth century and the dynamism of French Catholicism's attempts to reconcile tradition and modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the Catholic education of young women on personal hygiene and body odors during the 19th century in France. Topics discussed include the passage of young women to adulthood through olfactory changes in one's bodies, the advice being given by nuns regarding the cleanliness of one's clothing particularly underwear, and the difference between the hygienic practices being recommended by physicians and religious institutions during the said period.

Wallis and Futuna are a French overseas collectivity in Oceania. In 1969, the French state formally ceded responsibility for the territory's primary education to the Catholic mission and reimburses related expenses. Against this backdrop, this article uses the negotiations about primary education between these two non‐sovereign island territories and their colonial metropole to explore islanders' views of the relationship. We conducted interviews with eight representatives of local institutions associated with primary education and we analyzed relevant official agreements. Our analysis suggests that, from the islanders' perspective, the negotiations with metropolitan France about policies and funding for primary education are driven by different identities located within a shared national identity. We find these identities are not merely different, but complementary in a non‐hierarchical fashion. We also find that these identities seem to be mutually constituted between metropolitans and islanders through negotiations that are often adversarial and—from the islanders' view—predicated on detailed knowledge of the history of these negotiations. In addition, the resulting education policies regularly see primary schools receiving unequal treatment in comparison to schools in metropolitan France. However, in counterweight, islanders can also succeed in giving unequal treatment to metropolitan regulations by bending them to suit local interests or values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"They made neither a profession nor a commodity out of them": printing, schoolbook trading and the Brothers of the Christian Schools in eighteenth-century France From the seventeenth century onwards, there was an increase in the number of teaching communities in France taking on the management of small charitable schools for working-class girls and boys. These communities set out in their regulations the way they wanted the classes to be run. They recommended the collective lesson method, which presupposed that all pupils who were at the same level should have the same book in their hands. This practical constraint meant that different ways of organising the provision of books to pupils emerged among these communities. One community, the Brothers of the Christian Schools, stands out in particular for its highly integrated book system, which was set up by their founder, Jean-Baptiste de La Salle. It included a common corpus for all schools, contracts with printers and direct sales to pupils. This particular aspect of the Lasallian community's history is the focus of this article. The first section considers how both the educationists who served as models for La Salle and other contemporary communities dealt with the question of books. In the Ecole Paroissiale (1654), Jacques de Batencour described the collective lesson method but did not expand on the supply of books, which could be found in the bookshops of the parish of Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet. The Ursulines, whose schools were rapidly increasing in number, did not specify a corpus of common textbooks for the whole community, but their regulations stipulated that each school must stock up on books for resale at cost price to pupils. In actual fact, they made a small profit (20–30% of the book price) to fund book donations for the poorest pupils. This operating model could be found in many female communities, such as the Vatelottes de Toul and the Sisters of Ernemont in Normandy. In Lyon, Charles Démia (1637–1689) established a learning progression method based on the use of a small canon of books that he had part-written. He did not organise the provision of the books to the pupils, but the Office of Schools (Bureau des écoles) entered into contracts with local printers to ensure a plentiful supply of the necessary books. However, as school monitoring visits showed, it was difficult to make the teachers and families use the books listed in the Règlemens pour les écoles de la ville et diocèse de Lyon (regulations for schools in the city and diocese of Lyon) (1688). The teachers continued to use whatever syllabaries and children's devotional books their pupils brought in, such as the Heures de Notre-Dame. When La Salle founded the Brothers of the Christian Schools, he had been partly inspired by the Lyon schools model. However, he took this a step further, writing all the educational materials himself so that they corresponded with the dual catechetical and literacy mission of his foundation. This heritage did not fossilise the Brothers' pedagogical reflection during the eighteenth century. The Lasallian syllabary was contested very early on and was gradually replaced by a more classical form of syllabary combined with the common prayers. The collection of psalms used in the schools evolved in line with musical trends. Textbooks for grammar and arithmetic, which were produced in response to the needs of the urban middle classes, were added in the 1770s. La Salle combined his specification of this corpus with the commercial organisation that was lacking in the Démia schools (but present, for example, in the Ursuline schools), whereby the Brothers sold the books that the children were to use. Drawing on local archives, the second section of this article examines the many objections generated by this "school bookshop". Booksellers were the main opponents of this system. They appealed against the unfair competition to the royal administration, since it was theoretically forbidden for non-booksellers to practise bookselling. There were also objections from schoolteachers, who tried to discredit the Brothers by accusing them not only of making a profit on the sale of school supplies but also of favouring children from the urban middle classes over the poor, who were the supposed focus of their mission. Finally, the families themselves opposed this system because they were unhappy about the forced purchases, which conflicted with the domestic recycling practices that prevailed where school supplies were concerned. The third section of this article highlights the major breakthrough that this community-run system for producing schoolbooks represented. Production was concentrated in the community's three provincial capitals, namely Rouen and Avignon from the early eighteenth century onwards and Nancy from the 1770s onwards. In all three cases, the provincial capital was located in a centre that was very active in terms of publishing, thus facilitating a large-scale supply to the schools. This was not just a fortuitous coincidence, because the dynamics that drove the Christian schools were not unrelated to those that maintained the prosperity of the local printing houses. In these three "letterpress capitals", the Brothers entered into contracts with the printers, negotiated prices and acquired real expertise in printing matters. Schools located in and around these cities could be easily equipped with the corpus of books specified by their founder. For schools further afield, it is possible that the corpus was adapted according to the titles available from local printers and booksellers, as shown for the schools in Reims, Montauban and Grenoble. Although Lasallian pedagogical practice did not always adhere fully to the plan set out by its founder and while the children did not always work through the entire corpus of La Salle's books, his schools nevertheless became the models to be followed and imitated in the closing decades of the century. With their printing presses and their bookselling teachers, the Brothers' schools thus marked a considerable milestone in the slow diffusion of the simultaneous method of teaching in small French schools right up to the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ecole Royale Militaire of Soreze (Royal Military School) was located in the French province of Languedoc. On the eve of the 1789 Revolution it was still a religious institution run by the Benedictine monks, known for having broken with certain traditional models. The establishment offered special forms of instruction, stressing certain scientific and literary disciplines, and also physical education (fencing, dancing, horse riding, and equestrianism). Pupils' best results were also recorded in swimming. At the end of every school year, all the results were confirmed by public examinations, labelled Exercices publics, and recorded in the Cahiers d'exercices. These materials enable the reconstruction the evolution of the school's programmes over a period of more than a century. The incalculable richness of Sorèze's programmes, by distinguishing the elements already present in the military training of the period from the pedagogical innovations that were introduced, demonstrate the special place that was reserved for physical exercise. This Catholic institution was thus able to develop a total coherence of the scholarly programme, considered as a source of 'Christian Patriotism', in pre-Revolutionary France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of secularisation on society demand a rethinking of the identity and mission of Catholic schools in France. In 2013, the French bishops published a new directory which offers new approaches, described here, based on the three challenges facing Catholic education in France: linking social responsibility and evangelisation, setting up educational communities to carry out the Church’s mission and forming teachers. These challenges can be summed up in just one: working out new educational practices which will transform schools into social models of charity in the name of the Kingdom of God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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