Abstract of Project Funded for FY 1999
| Education in 19th and 20th Century France
Barry Bergen, History and Government I propose to travel to France to do research for revisions to my book manuscript, Molding Citizens: Ideology, Class and Primary Education in France, 1870-1914. The manuscript represents a major reinterpretation of the creation of France’s system of compulsory public primary education in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. My work constitutes a major addition to the knowledge of primary education in this period through its unusually detailed examination of the archival sources in the history of the public primary system, its foundation and its operation in the first decades of its existence. The manuscript was completed, thanks in part to previous generous support from GRI, and was submitted to an academic publisher. Specialists in the field of French educational and social history who have evaluated the manuscript have been uniformly positive. They have also made recommendations for strengthening the manuscript in ways that should help insure publication. Thus I am now seeking funds to work on recommended revisions in three areas: Official periodicals of the education ministry; newspapers; and the literature on private primary schools. In addition, I will also examine the latest French scholarship in this area which is not yet available in the U.S. |