FEENCH VIEWS OF AMERICAN SCHOOLb. 



In 1876, the French Government appointed F. Buisson with 

 six assistants, to examine and report upon the A merican school 

 system. The Commissioners were all educational experts, con- 

 nected with the Department of Public Instruction. They 

 made a careful inspection of the school exhibits at our Cen- 

 tennial Exposition, and visited schools in various states from 

 Massachusetts to Missouri. Repeated interviews with Monsieur 

 Buisson led me to expect a most valuable Report from an 

 observer of such culture, breadth and judgment, aided as he 

 was by such eminent associates. This expectation has been 

 amply met. Professor Swinton, who has translated a sum- 

 mary of this Report, fitly says: "We owe to a Frenchman 

 the best statement of the philosopby of American politics. 

 And now we shall have to credit to another Frenchman the 

 best statement of the philosophy of American education. If 

 this Report has not the monumental character of De Tocque- 

 ville's Democracy, it is by far the most comprehensive and the 

 most valuable analysis thus far made of public instruction in 

 the United States. It is our whole free school system, its 

 organization, working, methods and results, set forth in its 

 glories and in its faults, in its strength and in its weakness, by 

 a critic as sympathetic as he is acute. By those who personally 

 met the Commissioners, the Report of what they saw and what 

 they thought of what they saw, has been awaited with lively 

 interest. Well, we have at last after two years the Compte 

 rendu of their mission embodied in a great octavo of some 700 

 pages, published in Paris under the auspices of the French 

 Ministry of Public Instruction. The mere outlay that must 

 have attended the mission and the publication of so costly a 

 volume, enriched with plates, plans, etc., is a marked compli- 

 ment to American education." 



In condensing the following statements so as to read freely, 

 I have modified the language of the writer for the sake of brev- 

 ity. If the rhetoric has suffered, the thought is retained. 



A republican government needs the whole power of educa- 

 tion, said Montesquieu. This sentiment never found a fitter 



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