Public instruction: a new pedagogy for a new politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Technical Instruction ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Public Instruction ◽  
Constitutional Regime ◽  
The Ideal

The coming of the French Revolution led to a dramatic reconsideration of what was possible and what was practical in eighteenth-century France and, with that, a rejuvenation of the debates over education. Intertwined with debates about the nature, legitimacy, and efficacy of representative government, the revolutionary debates over education gave rise to the ideal of “public instruction.” Public instruction transcended the Ancien Régime’s distinction between moral education and technical instruction, aiming instead to integrate the acquisition of skills, the cultivation of habits, and the development of politically-virtuous sentiments. This ideal underwrote ideas about active and contributory citizenship and reflected the ambitions and expectations of the constitutional regime being designed by the National Assembly.

Revolutionary politics à la plume: the public on education and politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
Political Society ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Revolutionary Politics ◽  
New Models ◽  
Participatory Politics ◽  
Public Instruction

This chapter analyzes the letters related to education sent to the National Assembly by citizens across France between spring 1789 and autumn 1792. It argues that this correspondence reveals a debate over public instruction and participatory politics that extended in meaningful ways beyond the Assembly and far beyond those arenas considered in most histories of education and the French Revolution. These letters also illustrate how people believed the new politics and new models of citizenship would work. Letter-writing allowed citizens an opportunity to intervene in political deliberations and disputes and to help realize the participatory promise of article 6 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. With that in mind, this chapter analyzes the letters sent to the Assembly as attempts to imagine and articulate new models of education and of political society and as practical expressions of the sort of politics for which education was supposed to be preparing French citizens.

In Pursuit of Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Participatory Politics ◽  
Private Citizens ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Public Instruction ◽  
The French Revolution

In pursuit of politics offers a new interpretation of debates over education and politics in the early years of the French Revolution. Following these debates from the 1760s to the early years of the Republic (1792-94), and putting well-known works in dialogue with previously-neglected sources, it situates education at the center of revolutionary contests over citizenship, participatory politics, and representative government.Education was central to how people thought about what was possible, desirable, and achievable in eighteenth-century France. With that in mind, In pursuit of politics uses the debates over education as a window onto one of history’s most dramatic periods of political uncertainty and upheaval, anxiety and ambition. It weaves together debates taking place among Enlightenment writers, philosophes, royal and institutional administrators and, later, among revolutionary legislators, private citizens, political clubs, and provincial schoolmasters. This book explores the relationship between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, highlights the emergence of “public instruction” as a revolutionary pedagogy, and allows us to think in new ways about how the citizens and statesmen of eighteenth-century France tried to navigate modern politics at their tumultuous start.

Liberty, Property and Popular Politics

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
British History ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Thomas Paine ◽  
Parliamentary History ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Scottish History ◽  
The University

Few scholars can claim to have shaped the historical study of the long eighteenth century more profoundly than Professor H. T. Dickinson, who, until his retirement in 2006, held the Sir Richard Lodge Chair of British History at the University of Edinburgh. This volume, based on contributions from Dickinson's students, friends and colleagues from around the world, offers a range of perspectives on eighteenth-century Britain and provides a tribute to a remarkable scholarly career. Dickinson's work and career provides the ideal lens through which to take a detailed snapshot of current research in a number of areas. The book includes contributions from scholars working in intellectual history, political and parliamentary history, ecclesiastical and naval history; discussions of major themes such as Jacobitism, the French Revolution, popular radicalism and conservatism; and essays on prominent individuals in English and Scottish history, including Edmund Burke, Thomas Muir, Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence. The result is a uniquely rich and detailed collection with an impressive breadth of coverage.

Une idée monstrueuse: Bicameralism in the Early French Revolution

1969 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Marrs
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Political Group ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Assembly Floor ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Constitutional Issue ◽  
The Revolution

In the spring of 1789, the members of the newly formed National Assembly tasked itself with the creation of France’s first Constitution. The Assembly set out to reform their country by incorporating enlightenment ideas and newfound liberties. Creating the constitution was not an easy process and the Assembly floor was home to many fierce debates, divides, and distrust amongst the Three Orders: the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commons.  One Constitutional issue was deciding what form the legislature would take. Mounier, Lally-Tollendal, and Clermont-Tonnerre, members of the Committee of the Constitution, who formed a political group known as the ‘Monarchiens,’ proposed a bicameral system that mirrored the two legislative houses of England. Their political opponents fought instead for a single chambered system. When the vote came to the house, bicameralism was defeated in a landslide.  My research aims at discovering the motivations of the deputies; Why did they reject Mounier’s bicameralism? Much of the work done on this question so far, particularly that of Keith Michael Baker, argues that the deputies were faced with a choice between radically different conceptions of the purpose of the revolution. However, the work of Timothy Tackett points to the smaller, more contingent issues at play. My work involves the analysis of the assembly debates and the political publications being written by the deputies. Similar to Tackett, I conclude that the deputies were immediately motivated less by grand revolutionary narratives, but instead based their vote on a deep distrust of the aristocracy and political factionalism.  

Two Models of Public Opinion: Bacon's ‘New Logic’ and Diotima's ‘Tale of Love’ (The Prothero Lecture)

1974 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 79-96
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Beer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Work Done

It is appropriate that an American should address himself to the subject of public opinion. For, in terms of quantity, Americans have made the subject peculiarly their own. They have also invested it with characteristically American concerns. Most of the work done on the subject in the United States is oriented by a certain theoretical approach. This approach is democratic and rationalist. Both aspects create problems. In this paper I wish to play down the democratic problem, viz., how many of the voters are capable of thinking sensibly about public policy, and emphasize rather the difficulties that arise from modern rationalism. Here I take a different tack from most historians of the concept of public opinion, who, taking note of the origin of the term in the mid-eighteenth century, stress its connection with the rise of representative government and democratic theory.

scholarly journals Trump, memes and the Alt-right: Emotive and affective criticism and praise

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 789-809
Author(s):  
Lyndon C.S. Way
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Authority Figures ◽  
Critical Discourse Studies ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
The Ideal

Internet memes are the most pervasive and malleable form of digital popular culture (Wiggins 2019: vii). They are a way a society expresses and thinks of itself (Denisova 2019: 2) used for the purpose of satire, parody, critique to posit an argument (Wiggins 2019, see also Ponton 2021, this issue). The acts of viewing, creating, sharing and commenting on memes that criticise or troll authority figures have become central to our political processes becom[ing] one of the most important forms of political participation and activism today (Merrin 2019: 201). However, memes do not communicate to us in logical arguments, but emotionally and affectively through short quips and images that entertain. Memes are part of a new politics of affectivity, identification, emotion and humour (Merrin 2019: 222). In this paper, we examine not only what politics memes communicate to us, but how this is done. We analyse memes, some in mainstream social media circulation, that praise and criticise the authoritarian tendencies of former US President Donald Trump, taken from 4Chan, a home of many alt-right ideas. Through a Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies approach, we demonstrate how images and lexical choices in memes do not communicate to us in logical, well-structured arguments, but lean on affective and emotional discourses of racism, nationalism and power. As such, though memes have the potential to emotionally engage with their intended audiences, this is done at the expense of communicating nuanced and detailed information on political players and issues. This works against the ideal of a public sphere where debate and discussion inform political decisions in a population, essential pillars of a democratic society (Habermas 1991).

scholarly journals Slaves’ dress between representation and materiality

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 221
Author(s):  
Isabela Cristina Suguimatsu
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Social Barriers ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Ideal

Since the 1960s the focus of historical research about dress and clothing turned from a purely descriptive approach to a semiotic one: researches have started aiming at the representations and tried to understand the symbols behind the objects. Resting on the so called material culture studies, the objective of this article is to conceive dress no more subordinate to the dimension of the ideal meanings, but rather as materiality actively used in the process of signifying and making of social life. In the article I try to understand the role of dressing for “being a slave” in eighteenth-century Brazil: a society that valued ideals expressed in European fashion, but imposed social barriers for accessing them – for the slaves wear the materiality linked to such ideals. O vestuário dos escravos entre representação e materialidade Desde a década de 1960, os estudos sobre a indumentária e o vestuário passaram de uma abordagem puramente descritiva para outra baseada na semiótica: buscou-se atingir as representações e entender os símbolos por trás dos objetos. Com base nos chamados estudos da cultura material, o objetivo desse artigo é pensar o vestuário não mais subordinado à dimensão dos significados ideais, mas como materialidade ativamente usada no processo de significação e conformação da vida social. Para tanto, busca-se entender o papel do vestuário na constituição do “ser escravo” no Brasil oitocentista: em uma sociedade que valorizava ideais expressos na moda europeia, mas que criava barreiras para o acesso irrestrito a esses ideais e para o uso, pelos escravos, da materialidade a eles associada.

scholarly journals Linguistic culture and politics in France

enadakultura ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Revishvili
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
French Language ◽  
National Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
French Academy ◽  
Long Period ◽  
The Status ◽  
Classical Language ◽  
High Level ◽  
Public Instruction

The rise of the French national politics was taking place simultaneously with the rise of the French power and territories in Europe. The first evidence of the emergence of the French language distinguished from Latin is the text of the ‘’French’’ version of the 842-nd Strasbourg Oath. France is an example of how ideas and myths about a language become ideologies and how it forms a part of a language policy, along with language planning and language practices.The French language was being established over a long period of time. From the 17th century onwards, increasing attention was paid to this issue. It is especially interesting to establish a high level of French spelling, the expression of good spelling in the French language has become an object of social values. On October 19 and 20, 1794, the Public Instruction Committee introduced a new project to teach French to all. French became the language of writing before it set foot in education.The 17-th and 18-th centuries became a period of legalization of the French language. The greatest philosophers and writers of this time legalized the French language in poetry and fiction. At the same time, it became the language of scientific writing. French gained the status of the most brilliant language in Europe over the last two centuries through the French Academy and the French Revolution. It was a new ‘’classical“ language.

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