Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

Reforming education 

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LABOULINIERE, Pierre. ESSAI D'UN PLAN D'ENSEIGNEMENT PUBLIC... Turin: de l’imprimerie nationale, An X [1802]. £450

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FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. xiii, [1] blank, 99, [1] blank; double-page table on pp. 20 and 21; some light browning in places due to paper quality, but otherwise clean and fresh throughout; in later blue wrappers.

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First edition of this ambitious attempt to reform public education in Piedmont, by the French educationalist and administrator Pierre Laboulinière, written for General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, the French administrator of Piedmont, who in 1801 had approved the establishment of the Société libre d’instruction publique de Turin, a body to oversee a wholesale reconfiguration of education in the region, which included a number of prominent Piedmont jurists. The present essay, which likely arose from the discussions of this society, draws on the work of Duclos, Helvétius, and others to suggest an arrangement of education into three degrees: municipal, communal or general, and special schools; in each instance, he describes the ways in which schoolmasters would be selected, their salaries, and the nature of instruction offered, which is described in more detail in the second two cases. A two-page table in the centre of the work offers a useful overview of the course followed in the école communale over five years, divided into the categories of language and literature, physical sciences and mathematics, moral and political sciences, and the arts.

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The écoles spéciales was intended for in-depth study in natural history, physics, history and philosophy, fine art, veterinary science, economics, languages and literature, medicine, law, and mathematics, in effect twelve new university faculties, which were to be combined under the aegis of a newly formed Athénée national de Turin, whose structure and administration Laboulinière elaborates. Although the plan was never put into place, either in Piedmont or in France, ‘it is reasonable to assume that... the project, sent to Paris on October 7, 1801, by General Jourdain, was part of the debate which was developing on both sides of the Alps on the need for a profound (and comprehensive) renewal of the French education system, and its proposals were at least taken into consideration’ (Traverso, p. 48, translated). 

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See Matteo Traverso, ‘L’inizio dei corsi di Diritto penale nella napoleonica Académie de Turin’, Rivista di Storia dell'Università di Torino 6, no. 2, 45-58; outside Continental Europe, OCLC records a single copy, at Harvard; not in SBN. 

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