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chapter six: On the Contribution of Government to Education - Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments [1815]

Edition used:

Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003).

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chapter six

On the Contribution of Government to Education

Education can be considered under two headings. We can see it in the first place as a means of transmitting to the nascent generation the knowledge of all kinds gained by previous generations. In this respect it is entirely within the jurisdiction of government. The conservation and growth of all knowledge is a positive good. The government must guarantee us the enjoyment of these.

We can also see education, however, as the means of seizing men’s opinions, in order to shape them to the adoption of a certain number of ideas, whether religious, moral, philosophical, or political; and it is above all as leading to this end that writers in all centuries heap their eulogies on it.

We might first of all, without calling into question the facts which serve as the basis of this theory, deny that these facts could apply to modern societies. The domain of education, in the all-powerful sense attributed to it, and if one admitted that all-powerful sense as demonstrated in antiquity, might with us even be thought a reminiscence rather than an existing fact. People fail to recognize times, nations, and epochs and apply to modern societies what was practicable only in a different era of the human spirit.

Among peoples who, as Condorcet15 says, had no notion of personal freedom and where men were only machines, whose springs the law regulated and whose movements it directed, government action could have a more efficacious effect on education because nothing resisted that constant and uniform action. But today the whole society would revolt against government pressure; and individual independence, which men have regained, would react forcefully in the case of children’s education. That second education, worldly and circumstantial, would very soon undo the work of the first.16

It might be the case, moreover, that we mistake for historical facts the romancing of some philosophers imbued with the same prejudices as those who in our time have adopted their principles. Then instead of formerly at least having been a practical truth, this conceit would be only a perennial error.

[371] Where in effect do we see this marvelous power of education? Is it in Athens? But there the public education sanctioned by government was confined to subaltern schools restricted to simple instruction. Furthermore, there was complete freedom of teaching. Is it in Sparta? The uniform and monkish spirit of the Spartans depended on a whole group of institutions of which education was only one part, and in my view the ensemble would be neither easy nor desirable for us to set up anew. Is it in Crete? But the Cretans were the most ferocious, troubled, and corrupted people in Greece. The institutions are separated from their effects and they are admired on the basis of what they were intended to produce, without consideration of what in reality they did produce.

People cite the Persians and Egyptians. We know them very imperfectly, however. Greek writers made Persia and Egypt the theater of their speculations the way Tacitus did with the Germans. They put into action among these far-off people what they would have liked to see established in their fatherland. Their dissertations on Egyptian and Persian institutions are sometimes proven false by the simple, manifest impossibility of the facts they contain and almost always rendered doubtful by irreconcilable contradictions. What we know beyond question is that the Persians and Egyptians were despotically governed and that cowardice, corruption, and degradation, those eternal consequences of despotism, were the portion of these wretched peoples. Our philosophers acknowledge this in the very pages where they propose them as exemplary, for example in matters educational. A bizarre weakness of the human mind, which, noticing only objects in detail, lets itself be so dominated by a cherished idea that the most decisive effects do not enlighten it as to the impotence of causes, whose power it is disposed to proclaim. Most historical proofs resemble those which M. de Montesquieu advances in support of gymnastics. The practice of wrestling enabled the Thebans to win the battle of Leuctra. But against whom did they win this battle? Against the Spartans, who had practiced gymnastics for four hundred years.17

[372] The argument which entrusts education to government rests on two or three cases of petitio principii.

The first supposition is that the government will be a desirable one. People think of it as always an ally, without reflecting that it can often become an enemy. They are unaware that sacrifices imposed on individuals may not result in advantage to such institutions as they believe to be perfect but to that of any institution whatsoever.

This consideration applies with equal force to the holders of all viewpoints. You regard absolute government as the supreme good, for the order it maintains, the peace you see it as demonstrating. If government claims the right to control education, however, it will not claim it only in the calm of despotism, but in the midst of factional violence and rage. Then the result will be quite different from what you expect. Surrendered to government, education will no longer inspire in nascent generations those peaceful habits, those principles of obedience, that respect for religion, that submission to visible and invisible powers you regard as the basis of happiness and social tranquillity. Once education is their instrument, factions will make it serve to spread in the minds of the young exaggerated views, wild maxims, pitiless axioms, contempt for religious ideas which will seem to them like hostile doctrines, bloodlust, hatred of pity. Is this not what the Revolutionary government would have done if it had lasted longer, and was not the Revolutionary government a government too?

This reasoning would be just as forceful if we put it to the friends of wise and moderate freedom. You wish, we will say to them, for government to control education in a republic, in order to school the children at the youngest possible age in the knowledge and maintenance of their rights, to teach them to defy despotism, to resist unjust government, to defend innocence against oppression. But despotism will use education to put its docile slaves under the yoke, to break every noble and courageous sentiment in our hearts, to overturn every notion of [373] justice, to mantle with obscurity the most obvious truths, to push into the darkness or sully with ridicule everything which connects with the most sacred and inviolable rights of the human race. Is this not what they would do today, if they had power, these ardent enemies of all light, these calumniators of any noble idea, who, finding the career of crime cleaned out, compensate for this, at least amply, with careers in baseness?

One could think the Directory was intended to give us some memorable lessons on all objects of this nature. We saw it for four years, seeking to direct education, harassing the teachers, reprimanding them, displacing them, degrading them in their pupils’ eyes, submitting them to the inquisition of its most inferior agents and men of the least enlightenment, hindering individual teaching, and worrying state education with endless and puerile actions. Was not the Directory a government? I would like to know the mysterious guarantee people have received, that the future will never be like the past.

In all these hypothetical cases, what people want the government to do for the better, it may do for the worse. Thus hopes can be disappointed and the government which has been indefinitely extended on the basis of unfounded suppositions can march in the opposite direction from the purpose for which it was created.

Education supplied by the government ought to be limited to simple instruction. Government can multiply the channels and resources of instruction, but it must not manage it. Let it ensure that the citizens have equal means, let it make sure that the various occupations get taught real knowledge which facilitates their practices, let it clear the way for individuals freely to get access to all proven factual truths18 and to reach the point where their intelligence can spontaneously dash forward to new discoveries, let it bring together for the use of all inquiring minds, the major works of all opinions, all the [374] inventions of all the centuries, the discoveries of all methods, let it, finally, organize instruction in such a way that each person can devote to it the time appropriate to his interest or desire and perfect himself in the occupation, the art or science to which his tastes or his lot call him. Let it not appoint teachers; let it only pay them a salary which, assuring them the necessaries of life, nevertheless makes it desirable for them to have lots of pupils, let it provide for their needs when age or illness has put an end to their active careers, let it never sack them without grave cause and without the agreement of men independent of it.19

Teachers subject to the government will be at once negligent and servile. Their servility will serve to excuse their negligence. Subject only to public opinion, they would be both active and independent.20

In managing education, government is claiming the right and assuming the duty to maintain a body of doctrine. The word itself tells you the means of which it is obliged to make use. If we allow that it might choose the gentlest ones at first, it is still at least certain that it will not permit the teaching in its schools of any save its preferred opinions.21 There will therefore be rivalry between state education and private education. State education will be salaried; there will therefore be opinions invested with privilege. But if this privilege is not enough to secure dominance for the favored opinions, do you believe that government, jealous by nature, will not resort to other means? Do you not see as the final outcome persecution, more or less disguised, but the constant companion of all unnecessary activity by government?

We see governments, which seem not to trouble individual education in anything, nevertheless favoring always the establishments they have founded, by demanding of all candidates for appointments in the state schools, a kind of apprenticeship in these establishments. Thus the talent which has followed the independent route, and which by solitary work has perhaps assembled as much knowledge and probably more originality than it would have done under classroom routine, finds its natural career, the one in which it can communicate and reproduce itself, suddenly closed before it.22

[375] It is not that, all things being equal, I do not prefer public education to private education. The former makes the rising generation undergo a novitiate of human life, more useful than all the lessons of pure theory, which never replace reality and experience save imperfectly. Public education is salutary above all in free societies. Men brought together at any age and above all in their youth, naturally contract from their reciprocal dealings a sense of justice and habits of equality, which prepare them to become courageous citizens and enemies of despotism. We saw, even under the despotism, schools dependent on the government, reproducing in spite of it seeds of freedom which it strove vainly to stifle.

I think, however, that this advantage can be obtained without constraint. The good never needs privileges, and privileges always disfigure the good. It is important, furthermore, that if the educational system the government favors is vicious, or seems so to some people, they can seek refuge in private study or in schools with no government connections. Society must respect individual rights, including parents’ rights over their children.23 If its actions harm them, a resistance will grow which will render government tyrannical and corrupt individuals by obliging them to elude it. There may be objections perhaps to this respect we demand from government for parents’ rights, that the lower classes, reduced by their poverty into making use of their children, once the latter are capable of helping them in their labors, will not have them instructed in the most basic knowledge, even if the instruction were free, if the government is not authorized to constrain them to this. This objection rests, however, on the hypothesis of such poverty among the people that no good can exist alongside it. What is needed is for this poverty not to exist. Once the people enjoy the affluence due to them, far from retaining their children in ignorance, they will hasten to get them schooled. Their vanity will play a part. They will sense the interest in it. The most natural inclination of parents is to raise their children to a higher status. We see this in England, and it is what we saw in France during the Revolution. During that period, though it was disturbed and the people had to suffer a lot from their government, nevertheless simply because there was more affluence, education made astonishing progress [376] among that class. Everywhere the education of the people is proportionate to its affluence.

We said at the beginning of this chapter that the Athenians subjected only workaday schools to official inspection. Schools of philosophy remained always absolutely independent, and this enlightened nation has left us a memorable example on this subject. Sophocles the demagogue having proposed the subordination of philosophy teaching to the authority of the Senate, all these men, who, despite their numerous mistakes, ought to serve forever as models, both for love of truth and for respect for tolerance, resigned their positions. The whole nation solemnly declared them exempt from inspections and condemned their absurd opponent to a fine of five talents.24

You will answer, however, that if there were set up an educational establishment resting on immoral principles, you would fight for the right of the government to check that abuse. This is to forget that for such an establishment to form and survive, it needs students, and parents who place them there, and putting aside, which is not at all reasonable, actually, the parents’ morality, it will never be in their interests to leave those with whom they have the most important and intimate relationships of their whole lives, to be misled in judgment and perverted in their hearts. The practice of injustice and perversity may be useful fleetingly, in a particular situation, but the principle can never have any prerogative. The principle will never be professed save by fools whom a hostile general opinion will repudiate, without government getting involved. There will never be a need to suppress educational establishments where lessons in vice and crime are given, because there will never be such establishments, and if there were, they would hardly be dangerous, because the teachers would remain on their own. For lack of plausible objections, however, people lean on absurd suppositions, and the calculation is not without guile, since there is a danger of leaving suppositions unanswered, and it appears in a sense foolish to refute them.

I hope for much more, for the perfecting of the human race, [377] from private educational establishments, than from the best-organized public instruction by government.

Who can limit the development of the passion for enlightenment in a free country? You attribute governments with a love of learning. Without examining here the extent to which this tendency is in their interest, I would simply ask you why you assume a lesser love in cultivated individuals, in clear minds and generous spirits. Everywhere government does not weigh on men, everywhere it does not corrupt wealth, conspiring with it against justice, then letters, study, science, the growth and exercise of the intellect will be the favorite pastimes of the opulent classes in society. Look how they carry on in England, forming coalitions, rushing eagerly from all sides. Think of those museums and libraries, those independent learned societies devoted solely to the pursuit of truth, those travelers braving every danger to take human knowledge a step further.

In education as elsewhere, government should be watchful and protective, but always neutral. Let it remove obstacles and make smooth the roads. We can leave it to individuals to walk them successfully.

[15. ]See Constant’s Note D at the end of Book XIV.

[16. ]See Constant’s Note E at the end of Book XIV.

[17. ]Constant has drawn the example of this so-called error of Montesquieu from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, pp. 150–151: “M. de Montesquieu says that the practice of wrestling caused the Thebans to win the battle of Leuctra; but he has forgotten that this battle was joined in the 102d olympiad; such that it was then four hundred years that the Spartans had also practiced wrestling, which did not, however, save them from a total defeat.” De Pauw gives no reference, and it seems probable that Montesquieu never alluded to this anecdote.

[18. ]See Constant’s Note F at the end of Book XIV.

[19. ]See Constant’s Note G at the end of Book XIV.

[20. ]See Constant’s Note H at the end of Book XIV.

[21. ]See Constant’s Note I at the end of Book XIV.

[22. ]See Constant’s Note J at the end of Book XIV.

[23. ]See Constant’s Note K at the end of Book XIV.

[24. ]See Constant’s Note L at the end of Book XIV.

[D. [Refers to page 308.]]Mémoires sur l’instruction publique.27

[[379] E. [Refers to page 309.]]Helvétius, De l’homme.28

[F. [Refers to page 311.]]One can teach the facts parrot fashion, but never the arguments.

[G. [Refers to page 312.]]For the details of the organization of state education which are not within the scope of this work, I refer the reader to the Mémoires of Condorcet, where all the questions relating to this matter are examined and resolved and to whose views I doubt whether anything could be added.29

[H. [Refers to page 312.]]Smith, Richesse des nations.30

[I. [Refers to page 312.]]Condorcet, 1er Mémoire, p. 55.31

[J. [Refers to page 312.]]“Everything which obliges or engages a certain number of students to remain at a college or university, independently of the merit or reputation of the masters, such as on the one hand the necessity of [380] taking certain degrees which can be conferred only in certain places and on the other hand the scholarships and grants given to poor scholars, has the effect of slowing down the zeal and rendering less necessary the knowledge of the masters privileged thus under any system at all.”32

[K. [Refers to page 313.]]Condorcet, 1er Mémoire, p. 44.33

[L. [Refers to page 313.]]Diogenes Laertius, Vie de Theophraste.34

[D. [Refers to page 308.]]Mémoires sur l’instruction publique.27

[[379] E. [Refers to page 309.]]Helvétius, De l’homme.28

[G. [Refers to page 312.]]For the details of the organization of state education which are not within the scope of this work, I refer the reader to the Mémoires of Condorcet, where all the questions relating to this matter are examined and resolved and to whose views I doubt whether anything could be added.29

[H. [Refers to page 312.]]Smith, Richesse des nations.30

[I. [Refers to page 312.]]Condorcet, 1er Mémoire, p. 55.31

[J. [Refers to page 312.]]“Everything which obliges or engages a certain number of students to remain at a college or university, independently of the merit or reputation of the masters, such as on the one hand the necessity of [380] taking certain degrees which can be conferred only in certain places and on the other hand the scholarships and grants given to poor scholars, has the effect of slowing down the zeal and rendering less necessary the knowledge of the masters privileged thus under any system at all.”32

[K. [Refers to page 313.]]Condorcet, 1er Mémoire, p. 44.33

[L. [Refers to page 313.]]Diogenes Laertius, Vie de Theophraste.34

[27]In the Bibliothèque de l’homme public, op. cit., p. 47: “The ancients had no notion of this kind of liberty; they seemed indeed to have no purpose in their institutions save to annihilate it. They would have liked to allow men only ideas and feelings found in the legislator’s provision. For them nature had created only machines, whose springs law alone must regulate, whose actions law alone direct.”

[28]Claude-Adrien Helvétius, De l’homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son education, London, 1776. Constant refers the reader above all to the first section of the work, entitled: Que l’éducation nécessairement différente des différents hommes est peut-être la cause de l’inégalité des esprits, jusqu’à présent attribuée à l’inégale perfection de leurs organes.

[29]Constant is evidently referring to Mémoires sur l’instruction publique in Bibliothèque de l’homme public, t. I, Paris, Buisson, 1791.

[30]Adam Smith, op. cit., Book V, Ch. 1, t. IV, pp. 143–145.

[31]Condorcet, op. cit. Condorcet says here: “It is much more important that the government does not dictate the common doctrine of the moment as eternal truth, lest it make of education a tool for consecrating prejudices it finds useful, and an instrument of power out of that which should be the most certain barrier against all unjust power.”

[32]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, p. 146.

[33]Condorcet, op. cit., p. 44.

[34]The anecdote of the demagogue Sophocles and the reference to Diogenes Laertius are in Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Grecs, op. cit., t. I, pp. 232–233.