Daily Life During the French Revolution (24 page)

Professors within the colleges or universities took care
not to let new ideas disturb the established prejudices and order. The thoughts
of the eighteenth-century philosophers, who worked and created their ideas
outside the universities, were generally dismissed. The teaching profession’s
support for the monarchy and professors’ espousal of the concept of the divine
right of kings predisposed many of their students to become supporters of
absolutism. Higher education thus played a role in preserving such ideals. In
addition, professors were unwilling to remove God from their views and theories
.
By the beginning of the revolution, study
of the humanities generally remained unrewarding, as teachers did little more
than provide the same old commentaries on the same old texts they had been
using for years. New philosophical ideas were considered a nuisance to be
ignored if at all possible. In 1789, the sciences, physics, and medicine were
advancing from simple explanation to a more empirical approach but offered no
threat to church or state.

State Education

Once the revolutionary government was in place, control of
schools and education was transferred from the church to the state, whose
proclaimed goals were the promotion of intelligence, morality, and patriotism.
On May 4, 1793, Condorcet, the chairman of the Public Instruction Committee,
renewed an earlier proposal that claimed that the nation had the right to bring
up its children and could not concede this trust solely to families and their
individual prejudices. Education was now to be common and equal for all the
people. Thus, indoctrination by the Catholic Church was replaced by
indoctrination by the state, with nationalism becoming the religion.

In the same year, the Convention ordained that no
ecclesiastic could teach in state-run schools, which henceforth would be free
of charge, with attendance compulsory for all boys. Girls were to have private
governesses or tutors if the family could afford it. This practice was taken up
primarily by the bourgeoisie and might consist of instruction in music (piano),
art, reading, and reciting of the classics; otherwise, girls had to rely on
their mothers for instruction in needlework, care of the household, and the art
of being a good wife and mother. The revolutionary government always kept in
mind young men and the particular concern that their education prepare them for
future roles in the new society.

Sometimes the application of theories bordered on the
absurd: consider the following dialogue in which the mother of a patriot family
takes it upon herself to inflict upon her young child the questionnaire
included by Citizenness Desmarest in her
Elements of Republican Instruction.

“Who are you?”

“I am a child of the
Patrie.
”

“What are your riches?”

“Liberty and equality.”

“What do you bring to society?”

“A heart that loves my country
and arms to defend it with.”

For most members of the Convention, a new regime required a
new kind of education. Robespierre and Saint-Just were obsessed by this idea,
maintaining that, as a citizen, the child belonged to the state, and communal
instruction was essential. Until the age of five, they were their mother’s
concern (but only if she clothed and fed them). After that, they belonged to
the republic until their death. Pupils were to sleep on mats, dress in linen in
all seasons and weathers, and eat only roots, fruit, vegetables, milk foods,
bread, and water. According to Saint-Just, no one was permitted to either beat
or caress a child, who, in turn, was not allowed to play games that encouraged
pride or self-interest. Emphasis was placed on training students to express
themselves well and succinctly in the French language.

Schools were to be set up in the country, away from the
towns. Saint-Just wanted two kinds: primary schools, where children ages 5 to
10 would learn to read, write, and swim. Secondary schools were to serve
students ages 10 to 16 and deal with both theoretical and practical
agricultural sciences (whereby farmers would be helped during the harvest) and
military sciences, including infantry maneuvers and cavalry exercises. As part
of the military curriculum, the young men were to be divided into companies and
battalions each month, and the teachers would pick a promising student to lead
them. After reaching the age of 16 and passing the difficult endurance test of
swimming across a river before an audience on the day of the Festival of Youth,
a boy would be permitted to choose a trade and leave school, but he was not
allowed to see his parents before he reached the age of 21, at which time he
would be considered an adult. This program was not followed, however, and the
teaching and the educational system adopted by the Convention was, in fact, not
so radical. It was governed by three successive laws. The first, enacted in
December 1793, announced that all compulsory primary schools were to be free
for children ages 6 to 13, with the curriculum to emphasize politics and
patriotism (for example, study of the constitution, the decrees of the National
Assembly, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and Common Law). Schoolchildren
were also to concentrate on physical education, among other subjects, and were
to take part in civic festivals. This program was difficult to implement due to
lack of money and time, so, in November 1794, a second law was passed that made
education no longer compulsory and that permitted non-state-run schools to
operate.

As more attention was paid to reforming the educational
system, teacher training became one of the top priorities. Salary scales were
established, and committees of teachers were set up to run the schools and to
meet every 10 days. Educational policy became extremely centralized, and the
Committee for Public Instruction was to be responsible for the composition of
textbooks used in the central schools. Unfortunately, as money became harder to
find, teacher salaries soon became the responsibility of local governments, to
be paid by the parents.

A third law, passed in October 1795, required that students
pay a small fee to help pay for education in state schools; by then the
government under the Directory was in a state of financial collapse. The
parents were once again given the choice as to whether their children would
attend official institutions or be educated privately, and this meant that many
members of the clergy were able to maintain themselves by again opening schools
or becoming private tutors
.
To
strengthen attendance at state schools as opposed to religion-based
institutions, and to gain a competitive advantage over private schools, the
government announced that anyone who wished to work with the government must
have evidence that he had attended one of the republican schools.

In October of that year, the idea of schools for girls only
was conceived, but emphasis was placed on piety and morality, rather than on
academic subjects. By the late eighteenth century, in the south of France,
about two-thirds of boys were given some education, but only 1 girl in 50 was
schooled
.

Schools in many areas were in run-down, inadequate
buildings. They were short-staffed with mediocre teachers, there was a lack of
books, and undisciplined children ran wild. Truancy, a major problem, was often
encouraged by parents who had no confidence in schools that were not run by
priests. In one town, mothers burned the few republican schoolbooks available.
In Puy de Dôme, the Ecole d’Ambert listed an inventory comprising “wretched
furniture, rickety tables, empty bookshelves, and dilapidated floors.” Finding
competent teachers was difficult. Some of the candidates who applied to teach
spelling, for example, could not themselves spell; some who applied to teach
mathematics could not add up half a dozen figures correctly. With few qualified
candidates available, the selection boards gave teaching certificates to many
whose own educational level went barely beyond that of the pupils.

The current uniform, highly centralized, secularly
controlled French educational system that was begun during the Terror was
completed by Napoleon, under whom teaching appointments based on the results of
competitive examinations were opened to all citizens regardless of birth or
wealth.

8 - HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND
CHARITY

In
large part because of the lack of hygiene and the poor living conditions, the
population in France in the early eighteenth century was faced with epidemic
diseases as a common occurrence. In large cities such as Paris, drains and
drinking water intermingled, animal and human dung in the streets filtered
through the soil into the groundwater with every rainstorm, and flies in summer
contaminated the food in the markets. Even those affluent enough to order water
brought by the bucketful to their doors were not safe, because the water came
from the river Seine. Daily living in Paris was not a healthy experience, and
smallpox and scarlet fever struck often and spread rapidly. Typhoid fever was
never far off, and malaria was a curse for those living near stagnant water and
its breeding mosquitoes. Further, dysentery was a major problem, and shortages
of fresh food often led to outbreaks of scurvy.

Among the poor, illness routinely cut a swath through the
young and old, sometimes leaving entire communities devastated. Such was the
case about 20 years before the revolution, when typhus raged through Brittany,
decimating the local population.

The health of workers in industry was affected by
employment conditions. Thread flax workers, for example, labored in damp
circumstances to safeguard the thread. Many of them not only developed
debilitating arthritis but also, often fatally, contracted pneumonia. Weavers
and lace-makers, who performed precise and intricate labor, often worked in
poor light that rendered them prone to serious eye problems, even blindness.
Tuberculosis took its toll of girls doing menial work in silk and paper manufacturing,
while those working with glass and metal were subject to lung diseases. Tailors
and shoemakers, after years of hunching over their work, were sometimes left
crippled.

At this time, people, especially the poor, had little use
for doctors. When they became ill, most took the matter into their own hands,
trying to improve their diet, drinking more red wine for its health benefits,
and putting their faith in the saints. The poor suffered great agonies before
going to a doctor or a hospital—the former was expensive, the latter usually a
place to die.

Common problems encountered by the poor included cataracts,
sprains, burns, and broken bones. Many men developed hernias from performing
heavy work, but unless the condition brought their ability to earn their
livelihood to a halt, they generally did not consult a doctor, who, to diagnose
the problem, would examine the patient’s stools, vomit, and spittle, prescribe
various powders and pills and then perform a bloodletting, the panacea for
nearly everything from recovery after childbirth to smallpox. Although ideas
about medicine were undergoing change, the practice, especially in rural areas,
was still medieval.

In the countryside, faith in physicians was rare, and when
an epidemic struck, a fatalistic apathy took hold. There were no effective pain
relievers and no antiseptics available, and for country people, care from
itinerant healers or quacks, with their plasters and ointments, a visit to the
village blacksmith, who set bones, or the drinking of mineral waters or potions
concocted by the local wise woman all were preferable to seeking outside
treatment. A tanner from the Perché region, for example, sold an eyewash
containing alum, green vitriol, and dog excrement in the 1780s. If outside
treatment was sought, it was more likely to be from a surgeon than a physician,
even though the surgeon might be barely literate and know only how to bleed,
purge, or shave the patient.

PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS

The best doctors were almost always to be found in cities,
and, with their superior university background, physicians were considered much
more distinguished than surgeons. Medical courses were still based on
centuries-old classical Latin texts and were far from arduous in any empirical
sense. It was entirely possible for a doctor to complete his medical studies
without ever visiting the bedside of an ill person. It cost some 7,000 livres
to be registered, but the majority of doctors were middle- or upper-level
bourgeois who were able to start fashionable practices and soon recoup their
expenses by charging high fees.

For common people, doctors were not only feared; they were
also economically out of reach. Doctors were traditionally represented as a
rapacious group whose few minutes of advice cost a worker several days’ pay.
The complaint was that all a doctor cared about was prestige and wealth. A
government survey, conducted as late as 1817 to assess the geographical
distribution of medical personnel, reported that there were still many rural
areas without doctors, who continued to be distrusted and avoided by the local
populace
.

Surgeons, on the other hand, were respected by the poor
because they worked with their hands. Before 1743, their training rarely
involved attendance at university. Instead, they were required to do an
apprenticeship under a tutor. Previously known as barber-surgeons, these men
once cut hair, shaved clients, pulled teeth, stitched up or cauterized wounds,
treated dislocated bones, and handled a host of other maladies for which the
lofty physician would not dirty his hands. For many years, surgeons strove to
combat their perceived association with barbers. A small percentage of those
living and working in the capital earned good money, but most surgeons lived on
much less. In the provinces, the average income of a surgeon was only around
1,000 livres. While the poor preferred to go to the quack, they might consult
the surgeon on occasion for some kind of treatment.