- Jules Ferry laws
The Jules Ferry laws are a set of
French law s, which established firstfree education (1881 ) then mandatory and laic education (1882 ). Proposed by the (Republican) Minister of Public InstructionJules Ferry , they were a crucial step in the grounding of the Third Republic (1871-1940), dominated until the16 May 1877 crisis by theCatholic Legitimist s who dreamed of a return to the "Ancien Régime ". These laws onpublic education are in part a consequence of the defeat of the 1870 war with Prussia: the German soldiers were considered to be better educated than Frenchmen,Fact|date=September 2008 and this was found to be one of the causes of the defeat. The Ferry laws would also be the basis of the "République des instituteurs" (Teachers' Republic): throughout its existence, the Third Republic, dominated by the Radical-Socialist Party, would rest in a large part on those middle-classcivil servant s, which included teachers.(In a striking manner,
Gustave Le Bon claimed in "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind" (1895) that public instruction and the large amount of teachers created for this mission was one of the causes ofanarchism ,socialism and other "subversive ideologies".)See also
*
Jules Ferry
*Education in France
*Guizot Act (1833)
*Falloux Act (1850)
*French Third Republic (1871-1940)
*Laicité
*Secular education
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