| Summary: | This dissertation analyzes the intertwined stories of progressive pedagogy and secularization in late nineteenth century France. While popular memory and historians have typically portrayed Catholic and secular forces as stark opponents, my research reveals that French educators in this period were collectively influenced by international progressive pedagogy techniques. I argue, against the prevailing historiographical consensus, that late-nineteenth century Catholic and Republican primary education was rooted as much in theories of progressive education as in a battle between Catholic and Republican interests. With this argument, my dissertation enhances our understanding of the meaning and practices of secularization in France.
The chronological convergence of progressive pedagogy with church-state conflict has obscured both the significance of pedagogical theory in mass primary education and the important role played by Catholic educators, parents, and students in the local implementation of educational reforms. This study returns pedagogy to the center of the project of educational reform in late nineteenth century France, arguing that the project was less a battle than a series of compromises and negotiations. To do so, the dissertation is grounded in a rich archival case study of Seine-Inferieure which uncovers the texture and complexity of secularization and educational change in practice.
For regional administrators and the teachers they supervised, the form of instruction was a prerequisite to changing the content of education. Progressive pedagogy, along with the built environment and material culture that surrounded it, was at the heart of their efforts to bring modern primary education to Seine-Inferieure communities. This common pedagogical heritage gave French classroom practice a base that transcended ideological differences. Returning pedagogy to the center of the Republican educational project, looking to the form of instruction and not solely its content, reveals the convergence of Republican and Catholic forms of primary education in the 1880s and 1890s.
We have long understood the relationship between Catholic and secular primary education in late nineteenth century France to be a contrast between piety and positivism, reaction and republic, superstition and science. This dissertation challenges that interpretation of French educational reform. Instead it traces the convergences and divergences of Republican and Catholic primary education in France, arguing that the dynamic relationship between French Catholicism and French secularism in the 1880 and 1890s created a functional primary education system before breaking apart between 1901 and 1910. In enhancing our understanding of the practice and meaning of secularization in Early Third Republic France, this work speaks to contemporary concerns about a secular public sphere in France as well as placing French educational reforms within a larger current of educational change in the late nineteenth century.
The complexity of this educational transition cannot be reduced to generalizations about church versus state, region versus nation, but instead requires the textured analysis of educational theories, training, and daily life in the classroom that this dissertation undertakes. Mass primary education was contingent on a desire to modernize French society and the progressive pedagogy promoted by both Catholic and Republican educators promised the creation of modern, active citizens. Refocusing our analysis of national primary education in France through the lens of classroom practices allows for a reevaluation of the national experience of secularization; to see it as less of a battle than a series of negotiations and an almost universal desire to bring French primary education to the ideal standards set by the international discourse on pedagogy of the late nineteenth century.
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