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.

New wine in old bottles? Ancien Régime schools imagine the future

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Educational Reform ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Revolutionary Politics ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Public Instruction ◽  
Role Of Religion

While the Assembly and the public debated the possible reform of education, the administrators, instructors, students, and others affiliated with the schools were left navigating uncertain political, social, and institutional terrain. They too participated in the wide-ranging debate over educational reform discussed in the preceding chapters, proposing their own answers to questions about whether the educational institutions inherited from the Ancien Régime could be integrated into the new society and new politics, whether they could be turned into instruments of “public instruction.” This chapter examines local attempts to accommodate and realize the new politics in and through education by analyzing letters, proposals, memoranda, requests, and programs for reform generated by or for universities, collèges, petites écoles, and other educational institutions during the years of the constitutional monarchy. These sources reveal institutions and individuals trying to anticipate, accommodate, and influence the course of revolutionary politics, show mounting frustrations as the delayed promise of educational reform and as controversies over the role of religion in politics complicated the process of actually running schools, and remind us of the entanglement of practical, political, and ideological imperatives that characterized the work of revolution.

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.

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.

Building the collections of the Musée académique de Genève: the contribution from Odessa of Léonard Revilliod

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hollier ◽  
Anita Hollier ◽  
Alice Cibois
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Early Form ◽  
Kinship Networks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
Systematic Effort ◽  
Collection Data ◽  
Public Instruction ◽  
The City

The attempt to found a museum in Geneva faced many challenges, but the nature of the city also provided some unusual opportunities. Against a background of the French Revolution, political upheaval, war and the creation of a new Swiss state, a few members of the academic and scientific community, led by Henri Boissier and Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle, created an institution in 1818 that was to become famous. Harnessing the patriotism of the population, the presence of eminent scientists, the interest of wealthy patrons, and local and international networks, they began to build a collection. The aim was to establish an educational resource, both for the formal teaching at the Académie de Genève and for public instruction. To attract the public, the donation of spectacular objects was of great help, and many individuals and institutions gave specimens in an early form of crowdsourcing. The academic ambitions required a more systematic effort and detailed collection data to augment the value of the specimens. To achieve this, the friendship and kinship networks of Geneva were brought into play; a comparison of the letters from the museum administration preserved by Léonard Revilliod (1786–1867) and entries in the museum's acquisition register provides a case study of how this interaction worked in practice.

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.

Eventful Transformations: Al-Futuwwa between History and the Everyday

2007 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 689-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilson Chacko Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Original Study ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Public Figure ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gender Norm ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Historical Relationship

A special correspondent for the leading Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram wrote from Alexandria on 28 May 1936: “One of the effects of the Al-Bosfur nightclub murder in Cairo is that its circumstances have led to an interest in the problem of ‘al-futuwwat’ [sing., al-futuwwa] and how much power and influence (al-sat˙wa) they have in the capital and in other Egyptian cities.” The murder referred to was that of a popular singer and dancer, Imtithal Fawzi, by a band of assassins led by failed businessman and weight-trainer Fuad al-Shami. I argue here that this murder can be read as an instance of a larger event, which might be inscribed in the following way: a moment that irrevocably branded the public figure of futuwwa with the additional meanings of thug, mobster, and nefarious villain—bal ˙tagi. This is not the conventional way of registering this moment; indeed, the modern transformation of al-futuwwa is rarely considered as a historical event. It is not my aim here to affirm or deny the outcome of this transformation, nor am I suggesting that the normative conception of al-futuwwa as an Islamic ideal of masculinity had never before had any negative connotations. Rather, I posit—and want to interrogate—a changed historical relationship in the constitution of al-futuwwa, in which the nature of history itself was radically transformed and contributed to the formation of a new politics and a new subject of politics. As part of the hegemonic rise of this field of politics and its subject, history typically shows, or simply presumes, that other life-worlds, like that of the futuwwat and their particular form of power, were rendered exceptional and ultimately obsolete. In a larger project from which this article is drawn, I explored the gendered constitution of that new cultural and political hegemony. I labeled the gender norm that emerged at the intersection of colonial modernity and nationalism as effendi (bourgeois) masculinity, which I located in a new constellation of practices and discourses around the desirable, modern body. The present essay is in part an effort to de-center this bourgeois figure and the terms of its narration, which I unwittingly reproduced in the original study by rendering the event of the futuwwa's transformation as a bit part within a larger story of ostensibly greater national and historical import.

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.  

National Foresight in Korea: History of Futures Studies and Foresight in Korea

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 232-244
Author(s):  
Kyungmoo Heo ◽  
Yongseok Seo
Keyword(s):  
National Development ◽  
Futures Studies ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Public Interests ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of

Public interests in coming futures of Korea continue to be increasing. Fears on uncertainties and pending challenges as well as demands on a new but Korea-own development model trigger a quantitative increase of futures research and relevant organizations in both public and private. The objective of this paper is to review history of futures studies and national development plan and strategy linked with foresight along with its challenges and recommendations. This paper identifies drawbacks and limits of Korea foresight such as misapplication of foresight as a strategic planning tool for modernization and economic development and its heavy reliance on government-led mid- and long-term planning. As a recommendation, an implementation of participatory and community-based foresight is introduced as a foundation for futures studies in Korea. A newly established research institute, the National Assembly Futures Institute, has to be an institutional passage to deliver opinions of the public, a capacity-building platform to increase the citizen’s futures literacy, and a cooperative venue for facilitating a participation and dialogue between politicians, government officials, and researchers.

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