Educational Standards: Mapping Who We Are and Are to Become.

Would it not be a great satisfaction to the king to know at a designated moment every year the number of his subjects, in total and by region, with all the resources, wealth & poverty of each place: [the number] of his nobility and ecclesiastics of all kinds, of men of the robe, of Catholics and of those of the other religion, all separated according to the place of their residence? ... [Would it not be a useful and necessary pleasure for him to be able, in his own office, to review in an hour's time the present and the past condition of a great realm of which he is the head, and be able himself to know with certitude in what consists his grandeur, his wealth, and his strengths? (Marquis de Vauban, proposing an annual census to Louis XIV in 1686, cited in Scott, 1998. p. 11). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]