| Authorship Notes |
In the very last period of the Jacobine regime, Louis Portiez came up with an idea to reform education: including travel into the training of the 'new man' of the Revolution. A first version of this idea is probably mentioned already in 1793; this bill, published mere weeks before the fall of Robespierre, never really had any chance of being implemented.
According to Portiez's proposals, in every class within the country, pupils should elect the most deserving of them. This democratically elected 'elite' will participate in a travelling programme, and will bring back what they have learnt to their peers, and to their parents.
The education programme is in two parts. The foreign part is poorly sketched, and is entirely unrealistic: it imagines these groups of students travelling through various, often enemy, states. They are to experience the imperfection of all other countries (the only possible allies are Poland and Holland). Having experienced the imperfection of all other states, they come home convinced of the superiority of revolutionary France. The idea of experiencing the Other to come back to the superiority of the Self clearly echoes the travel of Rousseau's Emile - but it is made political and collective here.
Within France, there is no itinerary set. They are to experience various signs of the tyranny of the Ancien Régime and the work of enemies within and outside of the country; the study of a battlefield is an opportunity to combine technical education with ideological indoctrination. They are also to visit the atelier of artists working on various representations of the heroes of the new era.
While it was possibly inspired by texts of the Lyon contest (Portiez must have known the winner of the 2nd prize there, Mathieu-Mirampal, fellow deputy of the Oise), Portiez's programme offers a radical novelty: although unrealistic and not fully developped, it is the first time that educational travel is imagined as a collective activity, and as part of the national curriculum. |
