Describes the secularization of French secondary schools ("colleges") between 1761-63 when the Parlement expelled Jesuits from their schools and disallowed the order's teaching function. Administrative authority was given to local municipalities who struggled to staff and fund the schools. French universities reluctantly assumed…

After defining three broad positions adopted in the long-standing French polemic about secularism and education, the author describes how traditional boundaries between conflicting positions have been blurred by interventionist policies in education as well as by the evolution of Catholic attitudes. He illustrates his comments from recent…

Draws on Weber to argue that clear and persistent differences between French and English primary education arise from deeply embedded cultural traditions through which fundamental value orientations are mediated and that these contrasting value orientations represent secularized educational versions of French Catholicism and English Protestantism.…