The Idea of the Secondary School in Nineteenth‐century Europe

Abstract

The title echoes the well‐known phrase ‘the idea of the university’, and European universities have always been seen as institutions with a strong international dimension, developing according to common patterns. In their case, it was the ‘Humboldtian’ model embodied in the University of Berlin founded in 1810 which prevailed. For secondary schools, the lycées of Napoleon and the German Gymnasien, both taking shape around 1800, share this role. The main features of the lycée/Gymnasium model can be summarized: they were public, secular institutions; they were part of an elite sector with little organic connection with popular education; they were oriented to preparing for higher education, with a predominantly classical curriculum, taught by specialist teachers trained in the universities; and they offered an eight or nine year course culminating in an examination (baccalauréat, Abitur) which came to define a completed secondary education.

Strictly speaking, “universities”: Vorlesungen über die Idee der Universitäten (1809), reprinted in E. Anrich (Ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität (Darmstadt, 1956).

Some of these features came from the common European heritage of humanist education, others were due to political and social developments in which all European countries shared — secularization, the growth of the middle class, the impact of the French revolution, etc. But there could be crucial national differences in the timing of such developments, and in the degree to which the values of old and new elites were fused together. One argument of this paper is that the new model long remained an ‘idea’ or conceptual framework rather than a reality, even in its French and German homelands, and that the uniform concept concealed many historical variations. And after around 1870, new moulding forces took over (industrialization, mass politics, nationalism), though these too gave a strong impulse to uniformity.

The new relationship between secondary schools and universities did not become definitive in many countries until quite late in the 19th century. The word ‘secondary’ could be used in different senses, and boundaries could shift. On the one hand, traditional universities had included forms of preparatory general education which the new model defined as secondary and pushed back into the schools. On the other, as in the Bavarian or Austrian Lyzeum, the Dutch ‘illustrious schools’, or the English Dissenting Academies, intermediate institutions had developed which straddled secondary and higher education. Assimilation to the new pattern usually accompanied adoption of the ‘Humboldtian’ university ideal, and took place mostly between 1848 and the 1870s, though sometimes as late as the 1890s. The acceptance of 18/19 as a ‘natural’ age of transition itself needs explaining, and is clearly connected with the history of adolescence

The existence of a network of secondary schools, often as part of state structures which included precise legal definitions of their function, could conceal huge variations in the real role of schools in their local context. Even in a highly centralized system like the French one, historians are discovering the significance of local initiative and adaptation to local needs. In Germany, recent research has shown quite strikingly that the Gymnasien of the early 19th century were both multi‐functional in their curricula, and diverse in their social recruitment. Educating the elite, and giving an intensive humanist education, were only part of the functions of such schools. Historical generalizations have tended to overlook both the mass of pupils who left them at an early stage, and the diversity of the school pattern itself (religious schools in France, modern schools in Germany, private schools in Britain, etc.). Religious, ethnic and linguistic divisions could overlay those of social class. We should also recall that secondary schooling was a market, in which state policy had to compromise with parental preferences and family strategies. Studies of secondary schooling within its urban social and cultural context are one of the most potentially fruitful lines of current research

In the later 19th century, the multi‐functional role of schools diminished as industrialisation both expanded and differentiated the demand for schooling, a process studied by Fritz Ringer and others. It is in this context, perhaps, that the creation of modern forms of secondary schooling for girls is best seen. Within a new variety of ‘tracks’, the humanist secondary school became a specialized and more privileged type, fiercely defended by academic conservatives. Yet there remained close parallels between the various European systems: developments followed much the same chronology, and models such as the German Realschule were closely studied; even Britain was conforming to ‘continental’ patterns by the 1900s. In the age of the nationstate, great‐power rivalry, mass politics, and universal literacy, the training of a homogeneous national elite, an ‘intellectual aristocracy’ to provide stable leadership, became a general preoccupation. Just as this was true of the major powers, so the formation of such an elite through education was crucial to the demands of ethnic minorities now seeking emancipation within the multi‐national empires, as well as linguistic ones within some unitary states. In recent years, theorists of nationalism have emphasized the importance of education for the emergence of the modern nation‐state, and conversely historians of education must see nationalism as a powerful shaping force. This represents one of the ways in which, as in other fields of historical scholarship, interest has swung from the social themes which dominated research in the 1960s and 1970s to cultural and political ones.

Notes

Strictly speaking, “universities”: Vorlesungen über die Idee der Universitäten (1809), reprinted in E. Anrich (Ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität (Darmstadt, 1956).

Reprinted in R.H. Super (Ed.), The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vols 2 and 4 (Ann Arbor, 1962–1964).

J.C. Albisetti, Secondary School Reform in Imperial Germany (Princeton, 1983); F. Ringer, Fields of Knowledge: French Academic Culture in Comparative Perspective 1890–1920 (Cambridge, 1992); B. Simon, Education and the Labour Movement 1870–1920 (London, 1965). More recent work on England has focused on earlier phases of reform in the 1860s–70s: S. Fletcher, Feminists and Bureaucrats: a Study in the Development of Girls' Education in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1980); D.I. Allsobrook, Schools for the Shires: the Reform of Middle–Class Education in Mid–Victorian England (Manchester, 1986); J. Roach, A History of Secondary Education in England 1800–1870 (London, 1986); C. Shrosbree, Public Schools and Private Education: the Clarendon Commission 1861–64 and the Public Schools Acts (Manchester, 1988).

E. Durkheim, L’ Évolution pédagogique en France, II: De la Renaissance à nos jours (Paris, 1938).

A useful collection in English is D.K. Müller, F. Ringer & B. Simon (Eds), The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural Change and Social Reproduction 1870–1920 (Cambridge, 1987).

P. Bourdieu & J.C. Passeron, Les héritiers: les étudiants et la culture (Paris, 1964); P. Bourdieu & J.C. Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (London, 1977) [original edition: La Reproduction (Paris, 1970)].

F.K. Ringer, Education and Society in Modern Europe (London, 1979), pp. 272, 316.

K.E. Jeismann, Das Preussische Gymnasium in Staat und Gesellschaft. II. Höhere Bildung zwischen Reform und Reaktion 1817–1859 (Stuttgart, 1996), p. 28.

Ibid., p. 608.

Super, Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 4, p. 68.

See especially R.A. Müller, Akademische Ausbildung zwischen Staat und Kirche: Das Bayerische Lyzealwesen 1773–1849 (Paderborn, 1986).

F. Ponteil, Histoire de l'enseignement en France: les grandes étapes 1789–1964 (Paris, 1966), pp. 61, 102; M.M. Compère, Du collège au lycée (1500–1850): généalogie de l'enseignement secondaire français (Paris, 1985), pp. 185–186.

Historia de la Educación en España, II: De las Cortes de Cádiz a la Revolución de 1868 (Madrid, 1985), p. 52.

J.S. Blackie, On the Advancement of Learning in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1855), p. 21.

P. Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (Harmondsworth, 1973), pp. 171 ff.

M. Kraul, Gymnasium und Gesellschaft im Vormärz: Neuhumanistische Einheitsschule, Städtische Gesellschaft und Soziale Herkunft der Schüler (Göttingen, 1980), p. 144; D.K. Müller, Sozialstruktur und Schulsystem: Aspekte zum Strukturwandel des Schulwesens im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1977), pp. 60–65; R.D. Anderson, “Secondary Schools and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth Century”, Past and Present, CIX (1985), pp. 176–203.

Müller, Sozialstruktur und Schulsystem. For Müller's views in English, see D. Müller, “The Qualifications Crisis and School Reform in Late Nineteenth‐Century Germany”, History of Education, IX (1980), pp. 315–331, and his chapter in Müller, Ringer & Simon, Rise of the Modern Educational System.

Kraul, Gymnasium und Gesellschaft; H.J. Apel, Das Preussische Gymnasium in den Rheinlanden und Westphalen 1814–48 (Köln, 1984); Müller, Akademische Ausbildung; M.E. Hofmann, Offene Schule und Geschlossene Welt: Die Höhere Schule in der Ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts im Königreich Bayern (Köln, 1991). Cf. G. Grimm, Elitäre Bildungsinstitution oder “Burgerschule”? Das Österreichische Gymnasium zwischen Tradition und Innovation 1773–1819 (Frankfurt, 1995), pp. 24–30.

P. Harrigan, Mobility, Elites, and Education in French Society of the Second Empire (Waterloo, Ont., 1980). Cf. R.D. Anderson, “Secondary Education in Mid Nineteenth‐Century France: some Social Aspects”, Past and Present, LIII (1971), pp. 121–146, and id., “New Light on French Secondary Education in the Nineteenth Century”, Social History, VII (1982), pp. 147–165.

For example M. Gontard, L'Enseignement secondaire en France de la fin de l'Ancien Régime à la loi Falloux (1750–1850) (Aix‐en‐Provence, 1984), pp. 169–171, 250–251.

See for example F. Cadilhon, De Voltaire à Jules Ferry: l'enseignement secondaire en Aquitaine aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles (Bordeaux, 1995).

A. Corbin, Archaïsme et modernité en Limousin au XIXe siècle 1845–1880 (Paris, 1975), vol. 1, pp. 363–373; R. Gildea, Education in Provincial France 1800–1914 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 179–208; R. Gildea, “Education and the Classes Moyennes in the Nineteenth Century”, in D.N. Baker & P.J. Harrigan (Eds), The Making of Frenchmen: Current Directions in the History of Education in France 1679–1979 (Waterloo, Ont., 1980), pp. 275–299.

G. Bodé & P. Savoie (Eds), “L'offre locale d'enseignement. Les formations techniques et intermédiaires XIX^e–XX^e siècles”, Histoire de l’Éducation, No. 66 (1995, numéro spécial); P. Savoie, “The Role of Cities in the History of Schooling: a French Paradox (Nineteenth–Twentieth Centuries)”, Paedagogica Historica, XXXIX (2003), pp. 37–51.

The twenty volumes of the Taunton Commission report of 1867–1868 are a remarkably under‐exploited source. Similar material for Scotland is surveyed in R.D. Anderson, Educational Opportunity in Victorian Scotland: Schools and Universities (Oxford, 1983), pp. 103–161.

T.W. Bamford, Rise of the Public Schools (London, 1967).

See chapter by H. Steedman in Müller, Ringer & Simon, Rise of the Modern Educational System.

See J. Kocka & A. Mitchell (Eds), Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth‐Century Europe (Oxford, 1993). This collection derives from a project at the University of Bielefeld on the comparative history of the middle classes.

L. O'Boyle, “A Possible Model for the Study of Nineteenth‐Century Secondary Education in Europe”, Journal of Social History, XII (1978–1979), pp. 236–247.

Jeismann, Das Preussische Gymnasium, pp. 19–20.

Cited in A. Prost, Histoire de l'enseignement en France 1800–1967 (Paris, 1968), p. 41.

P. Gerbod, “François Guizot et l'Instruction secondaire”, in Actes du Colloque François Guizot (Paris, 1976), pp. 63–74; V. Cousin, Défense de l'Université et de la Philosophie: Discours prononcés à la Chambre des Pairs dans la discussion de la Loi sur l'Instruction secondaire (avril et mai 1844) (Paris, 1845); cf. A.J. Tudesq, Les Grands Notables en France (1840–1849). Étude historique d'une psychologie sociale (Paris, 1964), vol. 2, pp. 695 ff.

A. Thiers, Discours parlementaires de M. Thiers, vol. 6 (Paris, 1880), pp. 450–451.

Jeismann, Das Preussische Gymnasium, p. 31.

M. Moretti & I. Porciani, “Il Sistema Universitario tra Nazione e Città: un Campo di Tensione”, in M. Meriggi & P. Schiera (Eds), Dalla Città alla Nazione: Borghesie Ottocentesche in Italia e in Germania (Bologna, 1992), p. 292.

P. Villari, Scritti Pedagogici (Florence, 1868), p. 318. Cf. M. Barbagli, Disoccupazione Intellettuale e Sistema Scolastico in Italia (1859–1973) (Bologna, 1974), pp. 91–93.

S. Citron, “Enseignement secondaire et idéologie élitiste entre 1880 et 1914”, Le Mouvement Social, XCVI (1976), pp. 81–101; Ringer, Fields of Knowledge, pp. 141–195.

V. Duruy, Notes et Souvenirs (1811–1894) (Paris, 1902), vol. 1, p. 198.

E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: the Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914 (London, 1977). For an attempt at comparative synthesis, see A. Green, Education and State Formation: the Rise of Education Systems in England, France and the USA (Basingstoke, 1974).

E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983); E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1992).

C.A. Macartney, The Habsburg Empire 1790–1918 (London, 1968), p. 661.

V. Karady, “Dualité scolaire et dualité sociale dans la formation des élites en Hongrie au début du 20^e siècle”, in V. Karady & M. Kulczykowski (Eds), L'Enseignement des élites en Europe centrale (19–20^e siècles) (Cracow, 1999), pp. 121–136.

Müller, “Qualifications Crisis” Jeismann, Das Preussiche Gymnasium, pp. 633–641.

Albisetti, Secondary School Reform, pp. 87–98.

G.B. Cohen, Education and Middle‐Class Society in Imperial Austria 1848–1918 (West Lafayette, 1996), pp. 249–255.

C. Charle, Les élites de la République (1880–1900) (Paris, 1987); W.D. Rubinstein, “Education and the Social Origins of British Elites, 1880–1970”, Past and Present, CXII (1986), pp. 163–207; H. Perkin, “The Recruitment of Elites in British Society since 1800”, Journal of Social History, XII (1978–1979), pp. 222–234.

F. Mayeur, L'enseignement secondaire des jeunes filles sous la Troisième République (Paris, 1977). Cf. J. Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women: Secondary and Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1988). A comparable standard work for Britain is lacking.