Creating Catholics: Catechism and Primary Education in Early Modern France

Chapter 6: Learning to Read, Write, and Recite

C H A P T E R S I X Learning to Read, Write, and Recite The Petites Écoles and the Catholic Reformation i Students in the petites écoles were expected to learn to read, write, and recite their catechism and to practice Christian morals and behavior. These are the skills that Louis XIV emphasized in his 1698 edict, and the bishops and village notables who hired schoolmasters for their communities had similar aims as well. The potential for the existence of a considerable gap between prescription and practice leaves the historian with several questions, however. How effective were these schools in reality? Did the children who attended school actually learn and retain what their schoolmasters and schoolmistresses taught? Traditionally, the effectiveness of most premodern educational systems has been evaluated 198 through studies of literacy.1 Literacy in early modern France is usually calculated by counting signatures on marriage records, since both men and women from all social classes had a chance to sign their names when they married. Signature rates in Auxerre, Châlons-sur-Marne, and Reims increased significantly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—in one case by as much as 170 percent.2 Yet determining literacy rates based on signatures alone cannot provide a complete picture of the effectiveness of the petites écoles. Signature rates, as traditionally calculated, have a significant number of flaws that need to be addressed in order to gain a true picture of the petites écoles as an educational system. Most importantly, signature rates cannot measure the two most important skills taught in the schools— reading and religion. Historians have a tendency to assume that the issues that concern today’s educators—proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic—were the same issues that led early modern parents and authorities to establish and maintain primary schools. Increasing literacy was, in fact, a by-product of the petites écoles: their primary purpose was to teach children how to be good French villagers, and good French villagers were also good Catholics. In challenging the widely held view that an effective school always produced children who could both read and write—and thus sign their names on an acte de mariage—this chapter reveals how well Catholic Reformation principles, as taught in the petites écoles, had spread throughout rural parishes by the end of the eighteenth century. In fact, Catholics in Auxerre, Châlons, and Reims were better educated in Catholic doctrine than perhaps they had ever been. They participated in the sacraments and church services willingly and with regularity. They attended Mass, they sent their children to catechism, and they generally got along well with their curés. They even desired a greater clerical presence in their parishes, to ensure that they would be able to practice their religion as they wished. Although the laity did not conform to every rule that their bishops and curés laid down for them, the clergy and the laity found ways to compromise on many issues and bring about a great deal of reform at the parish level. From both clerical and lay perspectives , many of the goals of the Catholic Reformation had been achieved by the end of the eighteenth century, and the petites écoles deserve a great amount of credit for those achievements. Learning to Read, Write, and Recite 199 The Petites Écoles and Literacy Although communities employed schoolteachers to provide instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, they did not in fact teach these subjects with equal frequency.3 In modern primary schools children usually learn to read and write their letters simultaneously, and they begin learning basic math long before they are competent readers and writers. In contrast, in the early modern period students always learned each skill separately and in a specific order—only after a child had mastered reading could he or she move on to writing.4 Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, the founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, or petits frères, articulated strict rules for teaching writing in his Conduite des Écoles chrétiennes; the first paragraph of a chapter on writing begins, “It is necessary that the students know how to read perfectly both in French and in Latin, before teaching them to write.”5 In the seventeenth century children always learned to read in Latin before their native language, and this was accomplished in seven stages, or classes. Students in...