with boys as though they were grown-ups. It makes them feel the weight of the inflexibility of the law, the powerful impact of competition, the wounds inflicted on their self-love. But it also renders them well trained to confront evil and dangers. However it does not succeed in training them adequately, except by somehow exposing them to dangers and, at times, allowing them to fall and then it waits for them to get up again”.204
Thiers emphasised, once again, the same opposing set of ideas in his Rapport of July 13, 1844 when he introduced his own report admitting the legitimacy of the two types of education: paternal education which is good enough to reproducea family, while State education is good enough to form the citizen. Each could follow different ways, according to different goals. “For example, one father might like the strict, inflexible type of education used by the great public institutions, but another father might prefer the gentler, more intelligent type of education used by the private institutions”. Besides, a father will guide his son toward the profession that he prefers: but all “will aim at guiding their sons along the lines of tenderness and even the weakness proper to a father”. At this point the state comes into the picture, namely the political entity, society, the nation. And its legitimate commitment is that of making a citizen out of the young man imbued with the spirit of the constitutions and who loves the laws and his country, and is able to contribute to the greatness and prosperity of the nation”.205
Later on, Thiers confronted the problem of evaluating the two systems and entered into a debate with those who claimed that only the clergy were able to educate and instill a moral and religious spirit in the young, something that could not have been done by a secular boarding school.206 Each had its own style and a different educational value. The “character of Royal Colleges (boarding schools) is marked by their discipline: the rule prevails in everything”. “There is no indulgence towards the parents’ weakness; all pupils are equal whether they are from rich or from poor families, whether they are from high or ordinary families: the samelaw is imposed on everyone”. “When a serious fault has been committed, the school must expel the culprit without any weakness and the institution will receive an immediate benefit from it. The idea of the rule, of equality, stands above everything else. And we should also add: the idea of frankness in dealing with everyone, the exclusion of any delay. Loyalty is both respected and encouraged”. “This is the way men are fashioned into citizens and into honest men”.207 “We have to make upright citizens out of young men, good Christians too but also good Frenchmen”.208
In private and secular boarding schools instead, the “care provided is more on an individual basis”, children are followed up a lot more, people are more pleasantly inclined to accept their parents’ influence. Even in Catholic boarding schools, the “regime is less strict”, less capable of preparing a youngster to face his entrance into the world; even the religious formation itself, more intense yet more forced, is not necessarily the most suitable for creating more personal and lasting convictions in the area of freedom.209
3. Pierre Antoine Poullet's preventive system (1810-1846)
The director of the Institute St.Vincent of Senlis, Pierre Antoine Poullet (l810-1846) 210 argues against
204 In ‘Moniteur Universe’, 13 April, 1844, n. 106, 931. The extract was written by Camillo Cavour in one of his many
exercise books; cf. C. Cavour, Tutti gli scritti, edited by C. Pischedda and G. Talamo, vol 1 (Turin: Centro Studi
Piemontesi 1976), 326.
205A. Thiers Rapport. 9-10.
206 ibid.. 56-57.
207 ibid. 57-58.
208 ibid.. 62..
209 A. Thiers Rapport. pp. 59-62.
210 On Poullet, cf. E. Valentini, “L’abate Poullet (1810-1846)”, in Rivista di Pedagogia e di Scienze Religiose 2 (1964): 34-
52; ibid., “Il sistema preventivo di Poullet”, Ibid. 7 (1969): 147-192. Poullet’s pedagogical thinking can be found in
Discours sur l’éducation prononcés aux distributions des prix de son établissement, suivis de quelques autres éscrits du