Note 4 — Chapter VI · ETHICS
Reading edition
In 1848 Hippolyle Carnot had this plan ready. The fall of the Ministry, in which he was Minister of Education, was due partly to the discussion raised by Renouvier’s book (see p. 61 of the present work). With the fall of the Ministry, and in 1851, of the Republic, the scheme went too. France had to wait eleven years longer than England for free, compulsory education. Her educational problem has always been complicated by the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church to religious education and its hostility to “lay” schools. Brilliant as France is intellectually, there are numbers of her people who do not read or write owing to the delay of compulsory state education. The latest census, that of 1921, asked the question, “Savez-vous à la fois lire et écrire?” in order to estimate this number.