EDUCATION IN FRANCE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1714, 3 April 1913, Page 6

EDUCATION IN FRANCE.

PARENTS' SEVERE CRITICISM. 1 The ..French Minister for Justico recently received a. letter from "The Association of' Parents of Scholars Attending the i Schools of Lille" (says the London "Daily. News"). It is certain to causa comment r.nd discussion, for the parents express themselves very stron'ly on tho subject of what is being taught, or, rather, not being taught to their offspring in tho secondary schools.' "You aro always perfecting your curricula," say tho parents; "you teach our children more and nioro subjects, and yjet they aro more ignorant than ever. They aro put under five different professors every day, thoy aro saturated with abstruse and out of the way subjects, and they know less than, in our young days, the meanest dunce could not help learning, in spite of himself. They have lost , all cense of orthography; they know nothing 'of tho value and meaning of the most commonplace words. "They- can stammer out a little English or a little German, but the names of the great classic authors of other countries aro as unknown, to them as those of tho Egyptian kings of tho third dynasty. If they go into a museum their lack of mythological knowledge . and of Biblical history renders most of what they seo ,inooinprehensiblo to them. But they never go to museums. Art and literature leave them cold. They don't think, they don't reason, they don't read, they don't feel. What do they do?" ■ Thus the parents. To see for himself how much justification. they havo a Parisian schoolmaster drew up a lest, and-sub-jeeted his class to it. There were fifty boys, ranging in ago from thirteen to fifteen years. Tho first question was "Define antinomy, sophism, hygiene, therapoutic, democracy.' Only one boy knew tho meaning of antinomy; two understood a sophism. The rest, with a few exceptions, answered nothing at all. One said that sophism meant tho philosophy of .Sopolin. Therapeutics, said another, was something to do with baths. Antinomy, wrote 0110 genius, meant two very old men. Tho next question was, "What do you know of. Goethe, Dante, Petrarch, Lulli, lleethoven, Pindar?" Goethe was do- . scribed as a German priest, a celebrated musician, and as a poet who plays in "Faust"; lie lived in tho 17th, 14th, and 13th centuries. Dante was variously described as a painter, a Giwk sculptor, a French politician, an Italian famous for his beauty, and as an English philosopher. Petrarch fulfilled tho roles of a Greek, a poet, a sculptor, a historian, a philosopher, a painter of the Renaissance, a King of Rome, and a tyrant noted for his eccentricities. Similar erudition marked the description of tho other porsons ill tho questionPindar would probably ba diocked to see himself described as a "personage comique." Biblical history was tho subject of another question. None of tho young hopefuls could identify Saul or Gideon. Abraham was a Philistine, and Samson "was a kind of Hercules, who slew Delila with 111" jawbono of an ass." I From other.answers ono learns that Kenan, Alexander tho Great, Joan of Arc, and Cleopatra were all ornaments of the tenth century, that the first railway ran in Franco in tho fourteenth century, and that tho Budget is tho plaeo where business men foregather. Asked to name five living painters or musicians, only three could reply, the rest writing nothing, or merely writing Mozart, Chopin. Bizet. Tlie last question. however was splendidly answered. "Cite five cafe-concert actors and somo athletic rccord-holdors." The erudition litre was faultless. It looks as though the parents' of Lille havo a good deal of justification for their plaints, if their offspring know no mora than those examined by tho Paris schoolmaster. No wonder parents are agitating for shorter holidays! "