in those days a
professor of history needed a more than common share of energy and
initiative to rise above the routine of _redaction_ and summary.

II. In recent times the general movement of educational reform, which
began in the Department and the Faculties, has at last extended to
secondary instruction. The professors of history have been emancipated
from the jealous supervision which weighed on their teaching under the
government of the Empire, and have taken the opportunity to make trial
of new methods. A system of historical pedagogy has been devised. It has
been revealed with the approbation of the Department in the discussions
of the society for the study of questions of secondary education, in the
_Revue de l'enseignement secondaire_, and in the _Revue universitaire_.
It has received official sanction in the _Instructions_ appended to the
programme of 1890; the report on history, the work of M. Lavisse, has
become the charter which protects the professors who favour reform in
their struggle against tradition.[237]

Historical instruction will no doubt issue from this crisis of
renovation organised and provided with a rational pedagogic and
technical system, such as is possessed by the older branches of
instruction in languages, literature, and philosophy. But it is only to
be expected that the reform should be much slower than in the case of
the higher instruction. The _personnel_ is much more numerous, and takes
longer to train or to renew; the pupils are less zealous and less
intelligent; the routine of the parents opposes to the new methods a
force of inertia which is unknown to the Faculties; and the
Baccalaureate, that general obstacle to all reform, is particularly
mischievous in its effect on historical instruction, which it reduces to
a set of questions and answers.

III. It is now possible, however, to indicate what is the direction in
which historical instruction is likely to develop in France[238] and the
questions which will need to be solved for the purpose of introducing a
rational technical system. Here we shall endeavour to formulate these
questions in a methodical table.

(1) _General Organisation._--What object should historical instruction
aim at? What services can it render to the culture of the pupil? What
influence can it have upon his conduct? What facts ought it to enable
him to understand? And, consequently, what principles ought to guide the
choice of subjects and methods? Oug