SCHOOLS FOR ADULTS In the United States schools are provided for three main lines of educational effort : instruction in English; preparation for nat uralization and citizenship; educational service for individual, family and group adjustment. To meet the needs of the f oreign born in adjusting themselves to a new environment and to new culture patterns and forms of behaviour, special materials relating to American history, biography, institutions, traditions, customs, ways of living, geography, industry and other subjects are provided.
These schools range from elementary to higher education. Emphasis is placed upon elementary instruction because of much illiteracy and limited educational attainments among many immi grant groups. Educational facilities include public and institutional evening schools and classes; day classes in schools. libraries, churches, neighbourhood centres and homes ; classes in factories, industrial plants, hotels and other places of employment. Special attention is given to home and neighbourhood classes for women and mothers.
Schools for non-English-speaking people are direct results of immigration. Their rapid development is largely due to an Ameri canization movement during and immediately following the World War. They are regarded as distinct instrumentalities in nation making. For several years prior to the war, public evening schools, settlements, Y.M.C.A.'s, Y.W.C.A.'s, various social agencies, churches, corporations and other organizations conducted schools and classes for immigrants. Chief attention was devoted to in struction in English. Fear of the foreign-born during and after the war; comparative ignorance about their conditions and needs; the prominence of the foreign-language press and increasing de linquency among the second generation, coloured much of what was promoted as Americanization. Departments, divisions or bureaux of Americanization were created in numerous city and State departments of education. This nationalistic movement has been partially transformed into a definite educational movement for adults of foreign birth and speech with appropriate redirec tions on emphasis, organization, materials and methods.
Complete and accurate statistics for the country as a whole are difficult to secure. The U.S. Bureau of Education for the year 1925-26 reported 128 public school systems with Americanization , classes, employing 262 supervisors and principals and teachers. and enrolling 141,064 pupils. To these figures should be added the considerable number of schools and classes conducted by individuals, social organizations, private and semi-public insti tution:,, religious organizations, industries and other agencies. In certain communities, as for instance, New York city, where for eign-born men and women comprise about 90% of evening school enrolment., a large proportion of adults enrolled in schools are immigrants.
Community co-operation of various forms—between public and private agencies; between organizations and individuals represent ing the native and foreign-born—is necessary. Some cities have central co-ordinating organizations. Public responsibility for so cialized educational service is increasingly emphasized with larger provisions for schools under competent leadership. In general, local public educational authorities provide funds for supervision and full or part-time teaching according to local demand ; local appropriations are commonly supplemented by some form of State aid, in keeping with general educational fiscal policies of the several States.
See Sharlip and Owens, Adult Immigrant Education (1925) ; Cook and Walker, Adult Elementary Education (1927) ; Caroline A. Whipple, Course of Study for Non-English-speaking Adults (1927).
(R. T. Hi.) France (q.v.) presents the most complete type of a state sys tem of education organized under a strongly centralized adminis tration in all grades. This centralized administration in education, as in other departments, represents the Napoleonic heritage of the republic. The teaching profession, both in the primary and higher spheres—and the two are sharply marked off from one another—consists of a highly organized body of state function aries, united by a strong esprit de corps and actuated by ideals and aims which are inspired by the State. The importance of this condition of things lies in the fact that the republic is something more than a form of government ; it is the social and moral ex pression of the democratic ideal as conceived by a people pro foundly imbued by tradition with the sense of social solidarity, or collectivism; and nowhere has this expression been more characteristic or more complete than in the domain of public education. Yet the educational system of modern France is by no means exclusively the creation of the Third Republic, and the main stages in its development deserve to be traced histori cally.
Under the restoration education fell inevitably under the con trol of the church, but under the Liberal monarchy Guizot in passed a law which laid the foundations of modern primary in struction, obliging the communes to maintain schools and pay the teachers. It is also to the credit of Guizot as an educational reformer that he perceived the necessity for the higher primary as distinct from the secondary school. The higher primary schools which he founded were unfortunately suppressed by the Loi Falloux; their restoration constitutes one of the great positive services rendered by the Third Republic to the cause of popular education.
Loi Falloux.—The Loi Falloux of i 85o, passed by the Second Republic under the influence of the prince president, is chiefly memorable for its restoration of the liberty of teaching, which in a catholic country means in effect free scope for priestly schools. This law also made provision for separate communal schools for girls, for adult classes, and for the technical instruction of appren tices. In 1854 France was divided for purposes of educational administration into 16 academies, each administered by a rector with an academy inspector under him for each department. This organization survives to-day, with the difference that for each academy (except Chambery) there is now a local teaching univer sity.
The ministry of the well-known educationist, M. Duruy (1865 69) , corresponding to the period of the Liberal empire, rendered primary schools for girls obligatory in communes of over Soo inhabitants. Duruy also provided for the introduction of gratui tous instruction at the option of the commune.
Organization by the State.—The task of educational reform imposed itself upon the republic by a twofold necessity. The wars of i866 and 187o were victories for the Prussian school-master, and aroused western Europe to the national importance of popular education. For France the reform of popular education was an essential part of the work of national restoration. For the republic, too, menaced by older and hostile traditions, the creation of a national system of education inspired by its own spirit was an es sential condition of the permanence and security of its government and the social ideals of which that government was the expression. Hence the energy with which the republican state addressed itself to the organization of primary instruction, "obligatory, gratuitous, secular." By the law of June i, 1878, there was imposed upon the com munes the obligation of acquiring their school buildings and as a grant in aid a sum of f 2,400,00o was set aside for this purpose by the State. In 1879 a law was passed compelling every department to maintain a training college for male and female teachers re spectively. The two higher normal schools of Fontenay and St. Cloud were also founded tc supply the training colleges with pro f essors. During the same period, among other certificats or profes sional diplomas, there were established the certificat d'aptitude pedagogique, which qualifies probationer-teachers (stagiaires) for appointment as teachers in full standing (titulaires), and the cer tificat d'aptitude for primary inspectors and heads of normal schools. The law of June 16, 1881, rendered obligatory for all teachers, whether public or private, the brevet de capacite. It was found, however, impracticable to carry this law into immediate effect, though conditions have improved.
The laws making primary education gratuitous, compulsory, and secular are indissolubly associated with the name of Jules Ferry. The law of June 16, 1881 abolished fees in all primary schools and training colleges, the law of 1882 established compulsory attend ance, and finally the law of Oct. 30, 1886 enacted that none but lay persons should teach in the public shools, and abolished in those schools all distinctively religious teaching. In the boys' schools members of religious communities were to be displaced within five years, but in girls' schools the religieuses might remain till death or resignation.
Moral Instruction.—Religious teaching was replaced in the state schools under the Ferry law by moral instruction according to official curricula. As regards the character of this instruction, it would seem to have shifted from a Kantian mainly to a socio logical basis. Roman Catholic opinion is at least not unanimous in regarding the "lay" or neutral school as essentially or necessarily anti-religious, and plainly there is no inherent reason why the neutrality should not be a real neutrality, but with the existing relations between the catholic church and modern thought in France the influence of the normalist teachers is in fact to be anti religious, and moreover no system of independent moral doctrine, whether based upon a priori or inductive reasoning, can be accept able to the Roman Catholic church. In whatever degree the blame may be rightly apportionable between church and state, the fact is that the two find themselves in acute conflict. It may be that the mischief would have been mitigated had more moderate coun sels prevailed at the time of the Ferry law, and had the church been willing to accept (as the republic might have been willing to concede) right of entry for the clergy into the schools. In the meantime the religious difficulty in the schools divided the nation into two hostile camps (les deux Frances, as a Swiss Protestant writer put it) in the shape of the state secular schools on the one side and the private religious schools on the other.
Administration.—In 1889 an important change was made in educational finance by transferring the cost of teachers' salaries in primary schools from the communes to the state, a right conse quence of the change which made the teacher a state official. Thus the state assumed the greater part of the burden of primary in struction, leaving to the communes merely the cost of fabric, and to the department the maintenance of the fabric of the normal schools.
Central Authorities.—The minister, the head of the entire hierarchy, is assisted by a conseil superieur consisting of 57 mem bers, of whom the majority are elected by the higher teaching profession. Practically the ordinary work of the council is carried on by a sub-committee consisting of the nine nominees of the president and six others designated for this purpose by the minis ter. The council has administrative, judicial, and disciplinary, as well as advisory, powers which enable it to exert a direct influence upon the internal organization of schools. There is also a peda gogic comite consultatif and a legal comite contentieux, whose re spective functions are purely advisory.
The inspecteurs generaux should "act as the eyes and ears of the central authority.".Their main duties are to inspect the normal schools and supervise the work of the ordinary inspectorate. For the purpose of general inspection France is divided into seven districts.
Local Authorities.—As already indicated, for the purpose of educational administration, the departments of France, to which must be added Algiers, are grouped in 17 divisions called academies. At the head of each academy is the rector. He is ap pointed directly by the president and is not only the head of the local teaching university, but is also charged in a general way with the oversight of all three departments of education—superior, secondary, and primary. The direct share of the rector in adminis tration is mainly confined to the normal schools and the higher primary schools. The rector is assisted by an academic council composed almost exclusively of pedagogic elements.
Each department of France has an academy inspector appointed by the minister. The duties of the academy inspector embrace both higher and primary education. In the latter sphere he is the real head of the local administration, and the primary inspectors are his subordinate officers. He appoints the probationer-teachers and nominates the regular teachers for appointment by the pre f et.
The pre f et, the chief administrative officer of each department, not only appoints the teachers upon the proposition of the acad emy inspector, he is also, as president of the conseil departemental, concerned generally with the externa of school administration, including the supply of schools. As regards its constitution, the conseil departemental is in no sense a municipal body, the repre sentatives of the conseil general of the department being greatly outnumbered by the pedagogical members.
The inspectors of primary schools, as has already been stated, act under the academy inspector. They are appointed upon the result of examination, and not by direct nomination as in England. The examination is severe, and it is from the body of the profes sors of the normal schools rather than from the ranks of the pri mary teachers that the successful candidates are chiefly drawn.
Very limited powers are entrusted to certain communal and cantonal authorities. The commission scolaire is a committee or ganized in each commune for the purpose of improving school attendance, to which end they administer a caisse des ecoles or school fund for supplying clothing and meals to needy children. The maire of the commune has the right of visiting the schools, but neither he nor any of the minor local authorities can interfere with the teaching. Similar duties are assigned to the delegues can tonaux who are appointed by the conseil de partemental for each canton (a wider area than the commune), and can best be de scribed as local visitors or visiting committees rather than man agers in our sense of the word.
In the single department of the Nord there are no less than 6o of such schools, more than in all England at the present time. In fact, for all France, the number of pupils in these schools in 1923 24 was