Word: children
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...three incidents, illustrating the character of Agassiz, have recently come under our notice. A lady tells us that, on his way to the Museum, he often stopped to exhibit his most valuable specimens to her little children; these he was in the habit of carrying to and fro in an old soapbox...
...Auvergne or in Lower Brittany. I maintain, therefore, that it is not in the number of teachers that we are deficient. And yet we are in reality behind the other nations in matters of education. Whence does this arise? There are several reasons. In the first place, the children are not sent to school, or are taken away too young. Every commune, as I told you, pays its own teacher. It gives him a fixed salary, varying between four hundred and eight hundred francs a year. But this salary paid, the instruction is still not free. Each child...
...allege poverty as the cause of their ignorance. Besides the fact that a son a day is not a large sum to find, every year the prefect makes out a list of the indigent; that is to say, that in each village there are ten, fifteen, or twenty-five children who receive their education free. This system, it must be admitted, has several faults. These objects of charity go to school generally unwillingly, and ordinarily are neglected by the teacher. Their comrades, too, know their position, and either despise them or reproach them on account of their poverty...
...with any enlightenment of the people. As a result, it is as much religious instruction that is given in our schools as primary instruction. The pupils learn little reading or writing, but much catechism; little history, but in its stead prayers to the Virgin. While, as regards giving our children some indispensable principles of life, some idea of their rights and duties as citizens, - for they must some time become citizens, good or bad, - that is not to be thought of. That would be an unheard-of piece of audacity, a wild undertaking, the thought of which none...
...department, for the purpose of examining candidates and conferring this certificate. When an individual has obtained it, he can be appointed to any vacant post; but it is the government that appoints him. The communes have no voice in the selection of the men to whom their children are intrusted. They have only to provide his salary, furnish a suitable room for a schoolroom, and a lodging for the master. It seems hardly possible, that when it is the commune that pays, the commune that sends its children to be instructed, when, in a word, it is the commune that...