PARISH SCHOOL. A term applied to in stitutions located in the district called the parish.
In the eapitulary of 7s9 Charles the (rent directed every monastery to have its school where boys might be taught the Psalms, the system of musical notation, singing. arithmetic. and gram mar. Such schools would, of course, reach only a very little beyond those designed for the Chord!, but in 790 Thcodulphus. Bishop of ()Wan., issoed a similar capitulary to the clergy of his dioeese, requiring them to give gratuitous in.truction to the children of the laity in every town and village. From time to tulle other by both Chiliad' and State attempted to render more effeetive the popular instruction that the clergy of Frame were supposed to give. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes Louis decreed that there should be in every parish a school to teach the Roman Catholic religion, reading. .1 even writing. The 'Brethren of the Christian Schools,' founded in 1679 by La Salle. a Panel] of
the vathedral church at In watts, afforded a most etb-ctive means of education tor the common people.
The early Protestant reformer-. Luther, Alelanchthon, Zwingli, Knox. and were anxious that CO)1111)011 people should hale proper religious instruction. and to this end tiny deemed the rudiments of reading and writing of the greatest importance. They urged upon the pastors the duty of attending to this matter, and the early Protestant parish schools either were taught by the pastor, or their assi-tants or were at least under their supervision, As the schools were taken in hand by the state, eccle siastical supervision was retained, and it been done away with very slowly, vestiges of a remaining in Prussia even to-day.
Consult : Arnold, Popu /a r Education of France (London, 1:41il), and Balfour. Educa tional Systems of Great Britain and (Oxford. ISUS).