Historians who have studied French primary education during the nineteenth century, Maurice Gontard, Jacques and Mona Ozouf, and Peter Meyer, have noted the great gains made by the instituteurs and their growing professional-ization from the time of the law of 1833 to the law of the 1880s. Improvements in the quality of teaching derived mainly from the introduction of a national system of normal schools (écoles normales primaires) by the Law on Primary Education of 1833. This article will discuss the history, programs, and organization of these schools and the origin and backgrounds of their students. It will also examine 280 essays written by schoolmasters in 1861 on the state of primary education in the towns and villages of France; these mémoires, written for the most part by graduates of the normal schools, provide first-hand insight into the teacher himself, his professional goals and sense of mission, and how he viewed the world around him in the middle of the last century.
