The French Lycées de jeunes filles in International Perspective, 1878–1910

Abstract

In preparing the law that established the French system of public secondary schools for girls, Camille Sée and his supporters conducted a major survey of female education in other countries. Yet they used the information gathered much more to demonstrate French backwardness than to provide guidelines for the new schools; with regard to the possibility of male directors and of teaching ancient languages to girls, foreign evidence was brushed aside. Alternative models of municipal or private schools, as well as of coeducational institutions, received little attention. After creation of the girls' lycées, many foreign observers commented on them but only Belgium adopted a similar law. Contrary to the usual picture of German influence on French institutions in this era, several Germans did advocate imitating aspects of the girls' lycées.

Notes

Viviane Isambert‐Jamati, Crises de la société, crises de l'enseignement: Sociologie de l'enseignement secondaire français (Paris, 1970).

Françoise Mayeur, L'Enseignement secondaire des jeunes filles sous la Troisième République (Paris, 1977). See also her broader survey, L'Education des filles en France au XIX^e siècle (Paris, 1979). There was an earlier study, Gaston Coirault, Les cinquante premières années de l'enseignement secondaire féminin (Tours, 1940).

Karen Offen, “The Second Sex and the Baccalauréat in Third Republic France, 1880–1924”, French Historical Studies, XIII/2 (Fall 1983), pp. 252–286; Jo Burr Margadant, Madame le Professeur: Women Educators in the Third Republic (Princeton, 1990); Rebecca Rogers, Les demoiselles de la Légion d'honneur (Paris, 1992); Marilyn Mavrinac, Reshaping French Secondary Education: Girls' Lycées and collèges from 1900 to 1940 (Education dissertation, Harvard University, 1991).

Among many examples, see Germaine Bourgade, Contribution à l'étude de l'éducation féminine à Toulouse de 1830 à 1914 (Toulouse, 1980); Viviane Eleuche‐Santini, Le lycée de jeunes filles de Nice, 1887–1987 (Nice, 1987); and Cent ans du lycée de jeunes filles au collège Louise de Savoie, Chambéry (Chambéry, 1991).

Mayeur, L'Enseignement, pp. 36–37.

L'Enseignement secondaire des jeunes filles en France: 25^e anniversaire, 1880–1907 (Paris, 1907), p. 33.

Célestin Hippeau, L'Instruction publique aux Etats‐Unis (Paris, 1870); Ferdinand Buisson, Rapport sur l'instruction primaire à l'Exposition Universelle de Philadelphie en 1876 (Paris, 1878); D.J. Steyn Parvé, Organisation de l'instruction primaire, secondaire et supérieure dans le royaume des Pays‐Bas (Leyden, 1878); Patrick Kay Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858–1889 (Westport, CT, 1982), p. 102.

Citation of letter from Camille Sée, dated 30 May 1879, in Silvia Franchini, Élites ed educazione femminile nell'Italia dell'Ottocento: L'Istituto della SS. Annunziata di Firenze (Florence, 1993), p. 380n; Camille Sée, Lycées et collèges de jeunes filles (Paris, 1896), pp. 65–66, 149, 65–132, passim.

Sée, Lycées et collèges, p. 118.

Ibid., pp. 126, 128, 71–72; Gabriel Compayré, L'Enseignement supérieur aux Etats‐Unis (Paris, 1896), p. 54.

Sée, Lycées et collèges, pp. 60, 62, 132, 126–127, 81, 153.

Ibid., pp. 74, 101, 106, 111, 120, 161.

Ibid., pp. 69, 74, 84, 88, 132, 123; Steyn Parvé, Organisation, p. 137; Nelleke Bakker & Mineke van Essen, “No Matter of Principle: The Unproblematic Character of Co‐education in Girls' Secondary Schooling in the Netherlands, ca. 1870–1930”, History of Education Quarterly, XXXIX/4 (Winter 1999), pp. 454–475; and Nelleke Bakker, “A Curious Inconsistency: Coeducation in Secondary Education in the Netherlands, 1900–1960”, in C. Majorek, E.V. Johanningmeier, F. Simon & W. Bruneau (Eds), Schooling in Changing Societies Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Ghent, 1998), pp. 273–292 [Paedagogica Historica Supplementary Series, 4]. Steyn‐Parvé strongly supported the Middelbare Meisjesschool in the Netherlands.

On these institutions see Ruth Arlene Fluck Dudgeon, Women and Higher Education in Russia, 1855–1905 (Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, 1975), esp. chapters 2 and 3; and James C. Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women: Secondary and Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1989), pp. 117–120.

Sée, Lycées et collèges, pp. 100–102; Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, pp. 115–116; Sara Burstall, The Manchester High School for Girls (Manchester, 1911); Josephine Kamm, Indicative Past: 100 Years of the Girls' Public Day School Trust (London, 1971).

B.J. Baudart, Isabelle Gatti de Gamond et l'origine de l'enseignement secondaire des jeunes filles en Belgique (Brussels, 1949), pp. 15, 60, 62, 103–104.

Félix Dupanloup, Nouvelles oeuvres choisies de Mgr. Dupanloup, vol. 3: Controverse sur l'éducation des filles (Paris, 1874), p. 257.

Félix Pécaut, Deux mois de mission en Italie (Paris, 1880), pp. 169–170, 309, 256, 173, 297, 174. Mayeur did not cite this report. On the Florence school, see Franchini, Elites ed educazione.

Pécaut, Deux mois, p. 249.

The debates are reprinted in Sée, Lycées et collèges, pp. 164–435.

Ibid., pp. 188–190, 256–269, 247, 424–425.

Ibid., pp. 173, 275, 180–181, 291, 281.

Ibid., pp. 181, 201. On this alleged affinity between Protestantism and coeducation, see James C. Albisetti, “Catholics and Coeducation: Rhetoric and Reality in Europe before Divini Illius Magistri”, Paedagogica Historica, XXXV/3 (1999), pp. 667–698; and id., “European Perceptions of American Coeducation, 1865–1914: Ethnicity, Religion, and Culture”, Paedagogica Historica, XXXVII/1 (2001), pp. 123–138.

Sée, Lycées et collèges, pp. 216, 230.

Ibid., pp. 372, 383, 421, 440–454; Mayeur, L'Enseignement, p. 162; Mayeur, L'Education, p. 163; Salomon in 25^e anniversaire, p. 4.

Baudart, Isabelle Gatti de Gamond, pp. 65–68; Marijke Verbeke, Rijksmiddelbaar onderwijs voor meisjes: 100 jaar geleden een werkelijkheid (Gent, 1982), pp. 66, 69; Heinrich Bischoff, “Der Stand der Frauenbildung in Belgien”, in Gertrud Bäumer & Helene Lange (Eds), Handbuch der Frauenbewegung (Berlin, 1901–1906, 5 vols), III, pp. 377–379.

Albisetti, “Catholics and Coeducation”, pp. 686–689. I know of no specific Austrian reaction to the French girls' schools.

Mozzoni's letter cited in Theodore Stanton (Ed.), The Woman Question in Italy (New York, 1884), p. 316n; Marino Raichich, “Verso la cultura superiore e le professioni”, in Ilaria Porciani (dir.), Le donne a scuola: L'educazione femminile nell'Italia dell'Ottocento (Florence, 1987), pp. 191–199, esp. 194–196; id., “Liceo, università, professioni: un percorso difficile”, in Simonetta Soldani (dir.), L'educazione delle donne: Scuole e modelli di vita femminile nell'Italia dell'Ottocento (Milan, 1989), pp. 147–181, esp. 162–163; Carmela Covato, “Educata ed educare: ruolo materno e itinerari formativi”, in ibid., pp. 131–145; Jürgen Charnitzky, Die Schulpolitik des faschistischen Regimes in Italien (1922–1943) (Tübingen, 1994), pp. 96–97.

Rodrigues de Freitas in Stanton (Ed.), Woman Question, pp. 359–360; Carolina Michaelis des Vasconcellos, “Frauenbildung in Portugal und Spanien”, in Bäumer and Lange (Eds), Handbuch, III, pp. 424–425.

Vasconcellos, “Frauenbildung”, p. 428; Concepción Arenal in Stanton (Ed.), Woman Question, p. 351; Rosa M. Capel Martinez, El trabajo y la educación de la mujer en España (1900–1930) (Madrid, 1986), p. 342; Carolyn P. Boyd, Historia Patria: Politics, History, and National Identity in Spain, 1875–1975 (Princeton, 1997), p. 241.

Friedrich Hofmann, Ueber die Errichtung öffentlichen höheren Mädchenschulen in Berlin: Bericht an dem Magistrat (Berlin, 1875), p. 58; Charnitzky, Schulpolitik, p. 96n. The figures for Berlin include more girls enrolled in elementary classes than do those for France, but they still suggest the modest numbers that the French lycées attracted more than three decades later.

“Women's Education in France”, Woman's Journal, XIV/35 (1 September 1883), p. 279; Stanton (Ed.), Woman Question, pp. 275–276.

Katharine de Forest, “Education for Girls in France”, Scribner's Magazine, XIV (November 1893), pp. 632–639, quotations on 634.

“Anna Tolman Smith”, in Woman's Who's Who of America, 1914–1915 (New York, 1914), p. 754; Anna Tolman Smith, “The Higher Education of Women in France”, The Forum, XXX (1900–1901), pp. 504–512, quotations on pp. 503, 507, 510. See also A.T.S., “Problems of Women's Education in France”, Education, XXI (1900–1901), pp. 444–447.

Frederic Ernest Farrington, French Secondary Schools (New York, 1910), pp. 318–319, 326, 328, 329.

Ibid., pp. 335, 343.

“The French Schoolgirl”, The Times, 11 October 1884, p. 10.

James Oliphant, “The Secondary Education of Girls in France”, in Great Britain Board of Education, Special Reports on Educational Subjects, XXIV: Secondary and University Education in France (London, 1911), pp. 395–469. Several of the contributions to this volume appear to date from about 1903, but Oliphant cites statistics from as late as 1908.

Farrington, French Secondary Schools, p. 329; Oliphant, “Secondary Education”, pp. 419, 422, 413, 414, 425; A.E. Metcalfe, “Notes on the Teaching of Mathematics in the French Lycées for Girls”, in Secondary and University Education, pp. 470–82.

Oliphant, “Secondary Education”, pp. 406, 438–439, 425–426, 442, 447.

Ibid., pp. 411, 409, 455, 450, 464.

On German influence on France in this period, see Claude Digeon, La crise allemande de la pensée française (Paris, 1959); Allan Mitchell, Victors and Vanquished: The German Influence on Army and Church in France after 1870 (Chapel Hill/London, 1984), esp. chapters 7 and 9; and Bernard Trouillet, “Der Sieg des preussischen Schulmeisters” und seine Folgen für Frankreich (Cologne/Vienna, 1992).

See Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, esp. chapters 2–4.

Bertha von der Lage, Ein Wort zur Frauenfrage (Berlin, 1882), pp. 78–84; id., “Frankreichs höheres Mädchenschulwesen”, Paedagogium: Monatschrift für Erziehung und Unterricht, VII (1885), pp. 769–777; id., Das höhere Mädchenschulwesen Frankreichs seit der Republik (Deutsche Zeit‐ und Streitfragen, CCXXI) (Berlin, 1885), pp. 21, 32–33.

Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, pp. 110, 113–114; Sée, Lycées et collèges, pp. 105–106.

Jakob Wychgram, Das weibliche Unterrichtswesen in Frankreich (Leipzig, 1886), pp. vii, 102–103, 120, 129, 139, 155.

Ibid., pp. 170, 172, 176, 195, 168–170. For the background to Wychgram's harsh attack on women teachers, see Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, pp. 147–149.

Jakob Wychgram, “Das höhere Mädchenschulwesen in Frankreich”, in Vorträge und Aufsätze zur Mädchenschulwesen (Leipzig, 1907), pp. 202–226, quotations on pp. 219, 222. See also idem, “Das Mädchenschulwesen in Frankreich”, in Bäumer & Lange (Eds), Handbuch, III, pp. 355–370.

Bernhard Heinzig, “Mädchenerziehung in Frankfreich”, Die Grenzboten, XLIX, no° 4 (Fall 1890), pp. 316–324, 350–355; Dr [Wilhelm] Büchner, “Die höheren Mädchenschulen in Frankreich”, Zeitschrift für weibliche Bildung, XXIV (1896), pp. 438–447, quotation on p. 445.

Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, pp. 238–273; Käthe Schirmacher, Die moderne Frauenbewegung: ein geschichtlicher Überblick (Leipzig, 1909), pp. 99–100.

Offen, “Second Sex”, esp. pp. 281–285.