<b>The origin of the modern school: the legacy of Condorcet</b> - doi: 10.4025/actascieduc.v32i1.9771

Abstract

The contributions of Condorcet (1743-1794) on public education are discussed. Condorcet, an intellectual who participated in the French Revolution, established the doctrinal basis of the bourgeois education system and the Republican liberal educational project based on the Illustration theoretical and ideological premises and on the Enlightenment philosophers who influenced contemporary pedagogical thought. Condorcet's document "Report and Draft Decree on the General Organization of Public Instruction," submitted to the National Assembly on behalf of the Committee on Public Education (1792), is analyzed. Other shorter documents, such as (a) On Provincial Assemblies (1788); (b) Post-scriptum (1788); (c) the speech given to the National Assembly on behalf of the National Academy of Sciences (1790); (d) Overview of the Public Man's Library (1790); (e) On the Need of Public Education (1793), in which the author stresses the need to establish public education in the Republic, are also analyzed. The sources investigated show the insistence on people's moral formation, perceived as a radical union between reason and morality, based on the principle of absolute autonomy and independence from any religious or political influence. The texts suggest that all citizens should have access to free education at all levels for the physical, intellectual and moral formation of both genders.