Stay Farmers: Primary Education, Agriculture, and Rural Life in the Early Third Republic

What is a family to do when their child is sick? For the parents of Robert Dumont, the title character of Belin Frères’ agricultural textbook aimed at primary school students, the answer was to send him to stay with family in the countryside. Robert arrived at his uncle’s farm pale, short of breath, and unsure of himself. By the end of the summer he had regained his health and—perhaps just as significantly—gained a better understanding of rural life and the important role farmers played in society. The tale (and the textbook) closed with Robert’s parents promising to send him back to the country next summer.[2]

The story of Robert Dumont was one of many framing devices used by textbook authors in the first few decades of the Third Republic. Beginning with the premise that educational texts should appeal to the children that they were teaching, textbook authors turned to fictional narrators like Robert Dumont for agricultural tours of the countryside, scientific promenades, naval world tours, or explorations of the different regions of France.[3] Robert Dumont’s particular story filled two niches within the larger project of Third Republic primary education: improving French agriculture and reinforcing the notion of rural France as the nation’s true home. From the most elementary of primers to preparatory guides for the certificat d’études (certificate of studies), a happy and healthy daily life in France was presented as a rural one.

Historians often frame the Republican primary education project in terms of its creation of a secular national narrative, seeing the contrast between old and new most clearly in terms of Catholics and Republicans.[4] However, for reformers at the time, the contrast between old and new was drawn in almost every part of the primary school curriculum and the school day. Reformers stressed educating the whole child across the curriculum and the social impact of pedagogical change, one piece of which was improving agriculture. Historians have well documented the attention paid to the health and welfare of urban children in this period, particularly in the development of a social welfare system designed to protect vulnerable populations.[5] However, specific initiatives geared towards rural children—particularly young children—are less well documented.[6] Indeed, much of the work done on rural educational projects has focused on conceptual issues like the relationship between center and periphery in creating national identity.[7]

Reaching rural communities was, however, seen as critical to shaping a modern republic. The Third Republic needed farmers to fill their traditional role in society, but they also needed rural citizens to embrace modern agricultural techniques; to remain culturally connected to the land but to recognize their attachment to the broader national community. The presentation of rural life to students in the first decades of the Third Republic underscores the universalist and optimistic aims of pedagogical reforms. Shaping better farmers through scientific education, teaching children a shared national historical narrative: both parts of the school day were connected to stemming the tide of rural depopulation and improving “backward” rural life.

This article explores one element of the Third Republic’s attempts to strengthen rural France: the development of specialized pedagogical literature designed to transmit agricultural techniques to rural students and the complementary presentation of rural life to primary school children prior to 1914. Agricultural education was encouraged as part of the curriculum for rural schools as educators attempted to professionalize farming in the minds of its young citizens and discourage outmigration from rural communities. At the same time, both urban and rural students were presented with educational materials that contrasted urban and rural life, often extolling the benefits of life in the countryside. While modernizing French society as a whole was a priority for the government of the Third Republic, rural France in particular was viewed as in decline—both socially and economically—and as requiring new methods and initiatives to keep French agriculture competitive.[8] Primary education in the Early Third Republic was often asked to balance the local and the national; its efforts to discourage urban migration and to valorize rural life brought the local and the national together easily. In analyzing the image of rural France presented to its youngest citizens, we see how educators sought to reconcile the promotion of both tradition and modernity within primary school curriculum.

That children would leave their rural homes was a very real concern for the social and political establishment of the Third Republic. The 1880s saw a push for stability after a decade of political crises and critiques of demographic decline, economic weakness, and France’s perceived moral failings.[9] Although rural populations still made up over half of France’s total population in 1900, rural regions of the country had begun to lose residents during the Second Empire. An estimated 85,000 to 100,000 people left rural areas each year from 1881-1891, and contemporary commentators worried about what the rural exodus meant for both French agriculture and the important role that peasants played in the national imagination.[10] Historians point to a range of factors pushing rural residents out: overpopulation, stress on rural resources, sharp drops in prices for agricultural commodities, and crop-specific problems like phylloxera.[11] Departments with urban centers saw an increase in their populations, confirming fears that rural residents found the new opportunities and wage labor of cities more appealing than staying in rural communities.[12] Broader educational reforms, therefore, were an opening for advocates of agricultural education to diffuse knowledge about agriculture.

The national school system that promoted this education was part of a larger push to centralize, modernize, and strengthen France. As Republicans took control of the government in the 1880s, educational policies focused on concrete measures to expand state control as well as instilling a national, Republican political culture. While the articulation of Republican values like universalism and laïcité had their detractors, state policies also sought to address issues that concerned individuals across the political spectrum: France’s ability to compete in global markets, its demographic decline, and the need to project a strong global presence.[13]

At the core of both ideological and practical efforts lay an expansion of primary education, which included by definition an expansion of education in rural France. The commitment to primary schools in every commune meant that rural schools—frequently coed, more often mixed levels with a single teacher—formed a larger proportion of the total schools in France even while urban schools expanded their reach to working class populations.[14] It also meant that educational materials were often geared towards rural populations but used in all primary school classrooms. Therefore within urban classrooms, children learned the functions of farm equipment, identified seasons through their place in the agricultural calendar, and memorized poems evoking nostalgia for lost homesteads. The development of a specialized pedagogical literature focused on agriculture was aimed primarily at rural students but rural spaces and rural labor became a central part of the national curriculum through its inclusion in reading materials throughout the primary school curriculum.

Although primary schools had been required in communes of 300 or more since the 1833 Guizot Law, and separate girls’ schools in towns of over 500 since the Second Empire, the nationalization and centralization of primary education begun under the direction of Jules Ferry in the 1880s created new incentives for the foundation of state-sponsored schools in rural areas. For educational reformers, requiring primary education of all children was an opportunity to improve the education rural residents while promoting a stable social order.[15] Educational reformers sought to modernize pedagogical techniques, encouraging teachers to move away from rote memorization towards the Socratic Method and experiential education in all subject areas.[16]

The emphasis on rural life started at the beginning of children’s time in school with a presentation of life based around agriculture as the “norm” to children throughout the country. Books intended for use by the youngest students in an école primaire (primary school), such as Fournier’s Le Vocabulaire des Petits (Vocabulary of the Little Ones), contrasted urban and rural through images and text. This image-based reader taught vocabulary through illustrations, including a chapter devoted to town and country. For the countryside, children learn to identify different locations (a vineyard, an orchard, a meadow) as well as professions that went along with these places (sower, winegrower, farmer). Urban vocabulary was more impersonal, focused on the places and services in town: the theater, the hospital, the prison, the omnibus.[17]

The contrast between town and country continued in the choice of settings for exercises about the seasons. Spring, summer, and fall were set in the countryside and the images were bright, filled with active people and colorful scenes. Questions about these seasons centered on actions: how do you cut wheat? Why do you trim fruit trees? By contrast, winter was represented in town and both the image and the questions emphasized the cold weather—what do you see on the roofs? Why do we love chestnuts in the winter? This simple scene created a contrast with the open and active images of the other seasons—and by extension the countryside.[18]

The images of rural life initially presented to students were reinforced by later texts as children progressed through the école primaire. Eugène Cuissart, himself a Parisian school inspector, included texts designed to familiarize students with rural life in his readers. In Premier Degré de Lectures Courantes (First Level of Daily Readings), the farm was held up as a model for the rest of society: “At the farm, everyone works. They are happy, because one is content and in good health. The profession of farmer is one of the most honorable and the most secure. It is the work of the earth, the work of the fields that makes the wealth of our country.”[19]

For older, more advanced students, praising the benefits of rural life took precedence over familiarizing students with the rhythms of rural life. In La Première Année d’Instruction Morale et Civique (The First Year of Moral and Civic Instruction), Pierre Laloi (a pseudonym for Ernest Lavisse) called on students to remain in the countryside and choose a vocation that best suited their social status. The text at once validated the profession of farmer and rejected notions of social and physical mobility:

A poem included in the textbook Lectures faciles à l’usage des Commençants (Easy Readings for Beginners), intended for beginning readers, calls on students to love their birthplace: “Paris is beautiful, Paris is large; / yet, my brother, would you believe it/ In this Paris boredom takes me;/ I regret our cottage.”[21]

These lessons were part of the regular classroom curriculum, with farming, animals, and rural seasons appearing in student work recorded in notebooks kept from year to year. At the École Michelet in Elbeuf, an industrial city along the Seine just south of Rouen, agriculture seemed an unlikely topic for working class boys. However a survey of cahiers de roulement, notebooks which rotated among students within the same classroom, from the 1895-96 school year confirms that farming and animals were among the most common themes of written work for students in the elementary and intermediary classes (cours élémentaire and moyen).[22] While falling under the rubric of learning about the different pieces that make up the French nation, the specificity of these lessons in an urban context links these writing exercises to a broader attempt to valorize rural life (and perhaps inspire return migration).

In a dictation from February 26, 1896, for example, the students in the intermediary class absorbed “The Qualities Necessary for a Farmer”: intelligence, organization, and frugality. Most interesting given the location of this school was the emphasis on staying in rural areas that appeared in writing assignments like this one: “[That] the sons of farmers do not abandon the countryside for the town where they will most often find nothing more than a mediocre or precarious position. If however they are not completely disappointed.”[23] Earlier in the year students were asked to write an essay describing the types of animals that live around them and the services those animals provide.[24] The student wrote about a number of animals which it seems unlikely he would have had regular contact with—donkeys, sheep, pigs— as well more likely animals such as dogs, cats, and rabbits, indicating at least theoretical familiarity with farm animals.[25] These students probably had more in common with Robert Dumont’s fictional experience of the city in Robert Dumont Lectures Agricoles à l’usage des écoles primaires, and yet industry and urban life figured very rarely in their written work, particularly in the elementary class.[26]

The experience of Robert Dumont’s family from rural to urban and back again reflected both known migration patterns and anxieties about those patterns. According to the 1899 text, Robert’s father followed a common nineteenth-century narrative, farming family land until a series of bad harvests and his growing family led him to take up an offer to inherit a restaurant in Paris. In making the move to Paris Mr. Dumont ignored the possible pitfalls: “...that living in town had its inconveniences, that the hygienic conditions there are notably worse than in the countryside.”[27] Indeed, this decision had significant consequences for Robert, the youngest and frailest of the Dumont children.

His family’s decision to send him to the countryside soon effected a transformation. From the first morning, Robert was up early and enjoyed asking questions about the countryside, learning along with the readers of the textbook. Robert’s lessons emphasized the different forms of cultivation found throughout France: sheep, cereals, viticulture, dairy farming, and crops like potatoes and beets. The narrative followed a familiar pattern for French textbooks, veering between “story” and “lesson.” For example, while exploring with his cousin Fernand, Robert met a shepherd named Joseph. Joseph was shearing sheep, a situation which allowed Robert’s uncle to provide an in-depth explanation of the process for shearing sheep as well as the types of meat that come from sheep. In addition to discussing shearing sheep, Robert’s uncle explained the wool market and its history.[28] In each instance, rural relatives and friends made sure Robert understood the agricultural process he was witnessing as well as its connection to the broader economy. In connecting agricultural products to commercial goods (like sheep and wool), the lessons of Robert Dumont would—hopefully—connect with children whose parents made the same choices as Robert’s.

Agriculture curriculum for the école primaire was designed to combat the difficulties of cultivation faced by farmers like the fictional Robert’s father. Educational administrators put a particular emphasis on agricultural education in the 1890s, promoting available prizes and competitions for both teachers and students and issuing several directives on the subject. Teachers such as Blanche Fournier, who taught in the Norman town of Martin-Église and whose agricultural lessons included “the domestic economy of agriculture and horticulture,” received special medals from the Ministry of Agriculture and her students competed in departmental competitions.[29] In 1897 the Ministry of Public Instruction announced that teachers should be given leeway in agriculture curriculum, allowing individual teachers to create lessons which fit the specific location of their school—something never countenanced for history or arithmetic.[30]

Teachers in the Canton of Darnétal, near Rouen, took on agricultural education in their quarterly pedagogical conference in April of that year. Teachers were encouraged to use their own gardens for hands-on lessons and develop a “concentric” curriculum that would allow the same topic to be taught at different levels. These lessons were equally important for boys, who would be “armed for the fight against foreign competition,” and girls who would be inspired to “do well, with intelligence and method” their tasks on the farm.[31] In 1898 teachers were asked to integrate agriculture into the rest of the curriculum, especially science lessons.[32] Pavette’s slightly earlier 1895 introduction to his Notions élémentaires et méthodique d’agriculture, d’horticulture, et d’arboriculture (Elementary Ideas and Methods of Agriculture, Horticulture, and Arboriculture) encouraged teachers to use the short lessons in the textbook as both reading material and dictations, thereby integrating agricultural elements into more than one lesson during the day.

In general the Ministry of Public Instruction wanted teachers to think of agricultural lessons in terms of an apprenticeship, encouraging hands-on lessons with the aim of “teaching him [the student] the why of cultivation with explanations of accompanying phenomena; not details of the process, much less a list of precepts, definitions, or agricultural yields.”[33] Experiential learning and practical applications of lessons were key for textbook authors as well: Pavette suggested to teachers that students have a special notebook devoted to their agricultural lessons. This notebook could then be consulted once they had taken up their own cultivation of the land. He also advised experiential activities like schoolyard gardens and visits to well-run farms to provide students with “healthy ideas” about farming.[34] While much of this advice was aimed at teachers in rural schools, the general Instruction Spéciale pour la construction des Écoles primaires élémentaires (Special Instructions for the Construction of Primary Schools) mandated the construction of a for students “wherever possible” and proponents of a more active style of learning had long advocated for the inclusion of in schools.[35]

Despite these directions, popular agricultural textbooks (including Pavette’s) bombarded students with detailed information on cultivation, types of plants, and the regulation of farm economies. While the Ministry of Public Instruction’s call for experiential learning still applied, students were to progress beyond identifying crops to understanding the science of their cultivation. Barillot, the author of Robert Dumont, also authored several successful agricultural textbooks without framing devices like Robert’s story. Barillot’s Cours élémentaire d’agriculture à l’usage de l’enseignement primaire supérieur et de l’enseignement secondaire (Elementary Course of Agriculture for Use by Upper Primary Schools and Secondary Schools) stressed the importance of countering useless and dubious theories of agriculture.[36] Instead, farming was both an industry and a science and farmers needed to understand the rationale behind their actions. It is through observations a farmer “becomes a good practitioner; on the contrary the ignorant [simpleton] who works without observing, who does not seek to instruct himself, remains for his whole life a routinier [stick-in-the-mud].”[37] To achieve this, students began with the structure of plants and the soil before moving on to detailed sections on agricultural implements, the cultivation of grains, fruits, and vegetables, and various forms of animal husbandry. Motivating such a detailed and wide-ranging study were the concurrent views that French agriculture was central to a strong French economy and that agriculture was in the middle of a crisis.

French agriculture was, authors of agriculture textbooks argued, the most important industry in France, and therefore agricultural progress was of the upmost importance in the context of increasing international competition. Textbook authors stressed that their instruction was a natural complement to the farmer’s preexisting aptitude for and interest in his profession. While formal instruction in agriculture could be construed as condescending—wouldn’t farmers already know how to cultivate the land?—authors argued it would improve the experience of farming by “increasing the charms of life in the country; all the things of nature that are attractive once you know how observe and interpret them.” [38] The full charm of the country, these authors stressed, was best enjoyed by farmers who took seriously the business and financial side of their operations.

Agriculture textbooks stressed not only the proper type of fertilizer to use but also the most effective way to keep accounts and predict the financial health of the farm. As Barillot’s Cours élémentaire put it, “it is not suitable to produce, by chance, either vegetables or animals.”[39] The textbook devoted an entire section to “Rural Economy” including a chapter on best practices for accounting complete with sample records that farmers should keep. If only farmers got in the habit, the authors cajoled, of taking an inventory, accounting for money spent and received, and logging hours spent on each task they would find that “[i]ts utility is unquestionable.”[40]

While textbooks like Pavette and Barillot’s targeted boys between about eleven and thirteen, there existed complementary texts for girls who were likely to become the wives of farmers. Indeed, given the insistence on the rationalization and financial management of farms in boys’ textbooks, and the broader commitment to separate sex education whenever possible, the existence of parallel advice for girls is unsurprising.[41] Barillot’s corresponding La ménagère agricole à l’usage des écoles primaires (The Agricultural Housewife for the Use of Primary Schools) was geared specifically towards rural students. In his preface, Barillot argued that agricultural training for girls was equally significant for the rural economy: “it is difficult for the rural housekeeper to accomplish discerningly her tasks if she does not have adequate ideas about the cultivation of a garden, the animals of the poultry-yard (basse-cour), the dairy, etc.”[42] The textbook mirrored some of the information presented to their male counterparts—most notably in terms of soil and fertilizers—but focused on parts of a farm traditionally seen as the domain of women: the vegetable garden, the dairy, the basse-cour, and the home itself. While Barillot’s La ménagère agricole followed a similarly scientific outline as Cours élémentaire, some textbooks aimed at girls downplayed the scientific side of the subject. Les jardins et les champs: notions de culture et d’économie domestique à l’usage de jeunes filles (Gardens and Fields: Ideas of Cultivation and Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Women) stressed the complementary nature of good housekeeping to a well-run farm, mixing lessons on growing flowers and raising livestock with literary excerpts.[43]

The final lesson of La ménagère agricole, “Stay in the country” (“Restez aux champs”), reinforced the larger purpose of agricultural education. Many of the arguments were familiar—industry paid less than agriculture when the cost of living is figured in, the country was healthier in any number of ways—but this text closed with an evocative image of the rural worker as a happier, more fulfilled worker. Barillot leaned on the notion that farming families possessed unique knowledge: “The residents of the country have a simple and frugal life that costs them little... The country each day offers them a new scene, always spectacular and full of charm for those who understand it.”[44] Both Barillot’s La ménagère agricole and Cours élémentaire were, however, quick to remind students that these benefits would only come to farmers who were careful and professional, educated in the skills needed for their métier (profession). The conclusion of Cours élémentaire expressed this sentiment most clearly, writing that with progress “...agriculture is no longer a simple métier manuel (manual profession) like it was before; it demands an expanded knowledge, an intelligent direction” and that with this new knowledge farming continued to “assure a free and independent life.”[45]

The development of agricultural curriculum in the Early Third Republic as well as primary school textbooks more broadly allows us to see the integral role that rural life played in primary school curriculum. Primary school pedagogy encouraged teachers to move from the known to unknown, from concrete to abstract, and those principles were applied in the evolution of agricultural education throughout a student’s time in school. Preparatory and elementary classes (cours préparatoire and élémentaire) were presented with rural scenes from the beginning of their time in school. In the same way that entry-level readers sought to socialize children into the classroom, these books also sought to normalize the people, places, animals, and practices of rural life through images and stories. As students progressed, they were introduced to the national importance of agriculture and rural communities—and their potential role in improving those communities. Finally, upper level classes were taught principles of agricultural cultivation and the care of animals, encouraging teachers to combine abstract knowledge with hands-on experience. For both urban and rural students, the countryside, the labor of those who lived there, and the goods produced in those communities were central to a strong republic.

Educators’ appeals to rural children to stay farmers called on them to embrace a traditional vocation using modern scientific techniques. For Third Republic reformers this was an easy blending of tradition and modernity, one necessitated by a decades long decline in agricultural production and rural population. Incorporating agriculture and the rhythms of rural life into a range of subjects allowed educators to connect with rural students as well as remind urban students of their heritage. In the scientific emphasis of upper level agricultural texts and the validation of rural occupations presented to lower level students, the universalist Republican educational project sought to convince France’s youngest citizens that a prosperous and modern life could indeed be a rural life.

1. The author would like to thank Clare Crowston and a second anonymous reader for their comments on this essay.

2. V. Barillot and L. Lévy, Robert Dumont Lectures Agricoles à l’usage des écoles primaires (Paris: Belin Frères, 1899).

3. André and Julian’s La tour de la France par deux enfants is probably the best-known example of this genre: G. Bruno, La Tour de France par deux enfants (Paris: Belin, 1878). See among others books like Abbé Lucien Bailleux and Abbé Victor Martin, Nouveau manuel d’enseignement moral et d’enseignement civique (Paris: Putois Crette, 1896); Gabriel Compayré, Yvan Gall, Le pupille de la marine (Paris: Librairie Classique Paul Delaplane, 1908); and Émile Doyen, Promenades Agricoles d’un instituteur avec ses élèves ou Guide Pratique pour l’enseignement de l’agriculture dans les écoles primaires (Paris: Librairie Ch. Delagrave, 1882).

4. For a classic general narrative of French primary education see the extensive scholarship of Antoine Prost, beginning with Histoire de l’enseignement en France 1800-1967 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1968), as well as Pierre Albertini, L’École en France XIXe-XXe siècle de la maternelle à l’université (Paris: Hachette, 1992) and Maurice Crubellier, L’école républicaine, 1870-1940: Esquisse d’une histoire culturelle (Paris: Éditions Christian, 1993). On the development of laïcité in terms of education see Jean Baubeìrot, La morale laïque contre l’ordre moral (Paris: Seuil, 1997) and Phyllis Stock-Morton, Moral Education for a Secular Society: The Development of Morale Laïque in 19th Century France (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988).

5. For a general historical survey of French childhood see the work of Colin Heywood, including Childhood in Nineteenth-Century France: Work, Health and Education among the ‘classes populaires’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). On specific initiatives aimed at urban children see Laura Lee Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land: Working Class Movements and the Colonies de Vacances in France, 1880-1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002); Yannick Marec, Pauvretéì et protection sociale aux XIXe et XXe siècles: des expériences rouennaises aux politiques nationales (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006); and Sylvia Shafer, Children in Moral Danger and the Problem of Governance in Third Republic France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

6. For monographs specifically dealing with rural primary education, see Robert Gildea, Education in Provincial France, 1800-1914: A Study of Three Departments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) and Laura Strumingher, What Were Little Girls and Boys Made Of?: Primary Education in Rural France, 1830-1880 (Albany: State University of New York, 1983). Rural primary education appears in, but is not the focus of, regional studies like Sarah Curtis, Educating the Faithful: Religion, Schooling, and Society in Nineteenth-century France (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000) or Stephen Harp, Learning to Be Loyal: Primary Schooling as Nation Building in Alsace and Lorraine, 1850-1940 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998). On secondary agricultural education, see the work of Stéphane Lembré including “L'expérience de l'enseignement agricole ambulant dans la région du Nord (1900-1939),” Histoire & Sociétés Rurales 43 (2010): 149-180.

7. See, for example, Jean-François Chanet, L'école républicaine et les petites patries (Paris: Aubier, 1996) and Anne-Marie Thiesse, Ils Apprenaient La France: L'exaltation des régions dans le discours patriotique (Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 1997).

8. On the cultural and political discourse surrounding peasants in this period, see James Lehning, Peasant and French: Cultural Contact in Rural France during the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). The classic analysis of pre-Third Republic perceptions of rural France can be found in Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: the Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976).

9. Jean-Marie Mayeur and Madeleine Reberioux, The Third Republic from its Origins to the Great War, 1871-1914, trans. J.R. Foster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

10. Annie Moulin, Peasantry and Society in France since 1789, trans. M.C. and M.F. Cleary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 101.

11. Phylloxera is an insect-born disease that caused large numbers of grapevines to die throughout wine-producing regions of France in the 1870s. Mayeur and Reberioux, 62-3.

12. Raymond Jonas, Industry and Politics in Rural France: Peasants of the Isère, 1870-1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 100-103. Jean-Marie Mayeur, Les débuts de la Troisième République, 1871-1898 (Paris: Seuil, 1973), 57, 59-60, 80-83. Moulin, 90-101.

13. For a recent synthesis of these ideas, see Chapters 5 and 6 of Tyler Stovall, Transnational France: The Modern History of a Universal Nation (Boulder: Westview Press, 2015).

14. On the quantitative expansion of French primary education, see Raymond Grew and Patrick Harrigan, School, State, and Society: The Growth of Elementary Schooling in Nineteenth-Century France: A Quantitative Analysis (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1991). On the pedagogical shift in this period, see Eleanor L. Rivera, “Crucifixes and Chalkboards: Republicans, Catholics, and Primary Schooling in France, 1880-1914” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2015).

15. On these tensions throughout the nineteenth-century, see Lehning, Chapter 6.

16. Changes to curriculum and the movement to obligatory primary education also raised the question of state-sponsored vocational education. State-sponsored vocational education remained an urban phenomenon, often mixed with private charitable ventures, and straddling primary and secondary systems. For an example of private vocational training, see Paul Seeley, “Catholics and Apprentices: An Example of Men's Philanthropy in Late Nineteenth-Century France,” Journal of Social History, 25, No. 3 (1992), 531-545. On changes to child labor, definitions of childhood, and their relationship to vocational education see Miranda Sachs, “Child's Work: The Transformation of Childhood in Third Republic Paris” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2017) and Lee Shai Weissbach, Child Labor Reform in Nineteenth-Century France: Assuring the Future Harvest (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989).

17. M. Fournier, Le Vocabulaire des Petits (Paris: Librairie Gédalge, 1907, 3^rd édition), 45.

18. Ibid., 48.

19. Original emphasis. Eugène Cuissart, Premier Degré de Lectures Courantes (Troisième Livret) (Paris: Librairie d’éducation nationale A. Picard, c. 1890), 71.

20. Original emphasis. Pierre Laloi, La Première Année d’Instruction Morale et Civique (Paris: Armand Colin, s.d. [11th édition]), 48.

21. J. Baudrillard and M. Kuhn, Lectures faciles à l’usage des Commençants (Paris: Fernand Nathan, 1910), n.p. (leçon 52).

22. The Archives départementales de Seine-Maritime (hereafter ADSM) include thirteen cahiers de roulement from the École Michelet in Elbeuf. The holdings consist of four cahiers from the second year of cours élémentaire, one cahier from the first year of cours moyen, and eight cahiers from the second year of cours moyen. In my survey of these cahiers, I identified nine themes present in both cours élémentaire and cours moyen dictées and rédactions. Of 91 exercises from this year, animals were the subject of 31, farming or industry (including rural industries like cider production) were the subject of 24, and nature was the subject of 11. École Michelet Cahiers, 1895-1896, ADSM 1T 2189.

23. It is difficult to do justice in translation to these children’s phrasing: “Que les fils des cultivateurs n’abandonnent pas la campagne pour la ville où ils ne trouvent le plus souvent qu’une position médiocre et précaire. Si toute fois ils ne sont pas complètement déçus.”

    Cours Moyen 2^e, No. 8, École Michelet Cahiers, ADSM 1T 2189.

24. Cours Moyen 2^e, No. 3, École Michelet Cahiers, ADSM 1T 2189.

25. Ibid.

26. For a general overview of migration in Seine-Inférieure during this period see Nouvelle Histoire de la Normandie: entre terre et mer, Ed. Alain Leménorel (Paris: Privat, 2004), 222-244.

27. Barillot, Robert Dumont, 18-19.

28. Ibid., 56-7.

29. Blanche Fournier received a bronze medal from the Ministry of Agriculture in 1893 while her students received honorable mentions at departmental competitions in 1890 and 1891. Situation de l’École, Martin-Église, 1890-1893, ADSM 1T 2263.

30. Bulletin de l’Enseignement primaire, Département de Seine-Inférieure, 1897, No. 1. ADSM JPL 354/18, 22.

31. Conférence pédagogique, Canton de Darnétal, April 1897. ADSM 1T 2170.

32. This subject does appear to have been one field in a larger movement to make primary education applicable to specific populations. The same issue of the Bulletin de l’Enseignement Primaire contains an announcement about special courses on “pêche maritime” to be taught in coastal primary schools and approved for fifteen schools in Seine-Inférieure. Bulletin de l’enseignement primaire, Département de Seine-Inférieure, 1898 No. 7, 182. ADSM JPL 354/19.

33. Bulletin de l’enseignement primaire, Département de Seine-Inférieure, 1898 No. 7, 183. ADSM JPL 354/19.

34. O. Pavette, Notions élémentaires et méthodique d’agriculture, d’horticulture, et d’arboriculture (Paris: Belin, 1895), 13.  

35. Instruction Spéciale pour la construction des Écoles primaires élémentaires, c. 1882, ADSM 1T 81, Preface, Title VII, Article 35. On the usefulness of gardens in school design, see Félix Narjoux, Écoles Primaires et Salles d’Asiles: Construction et Installation à l’usage de MM. les Maires, Délégués Cantonaux et Membres de l’Enseignement Primaire (Paris: Librairie Ch. Delagrave, 1879).

36. The sixteenth edition was revised after Barillot’s death and the individual updating the edition, P. Sagourin, stressed in his preface that the new edition was “loyal” to Barillot’s commitment to teaching agricultural principles based in science. Updates were made, however, to the sections on soil analysis, fertilizers, farm machines, animal feed, and the role of mutualité in agriculture. V. Barillot and P. Segourin, Cours élémentaires d’agriculture à l’usage de l’enseignement primaire supérieur et de l’enseignement secondaire (Paris: Belin Frères, 1909), 3.

37. Ibid., 5.

38. Ibid., 7.

39. Ibid., 398.

40. Barillot, Cours élémentaires, 411.

41. On the primary education of girls, see Linda Clark, Schooling the Daughters of Marianne: Textbooks and the Socialization of Girls in Modern French Primary Schools (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1984) and, in terms of its connection to work, Patricia Tilburg, Colette’s Republic: Work, Gender, and Popular Culture in France, 1870-1914 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009).

42. V. Barillot, La ménagère agricole à l’usage des écoles primaires (Paris: Belin Frères, 1896), 5.

43. Aristide Dupuis, Les jardins et les champs: notions de culture et d'économie domestique à l'usage des jeunes filles (Paris: A. Boyer, 1880).

44. Barillot, La ménagère agricole, 226.

45. Barillot, Cours élémentaires, 421.