Vassalli and education

Abstract

The expulsion of the Jesuits from Bourbon lands in the 1760ʼs which left several colleges without teachers made many writers address themselves to education. Rousseau (1712-1778) published Émile in 1762 and Pietro Verri’s ʻL’Educazioneʼ appeared in Il Caffè two years later in 1764. In Parma, the Theatine Paolo Maria Paciaudi (1710- 1785) published in 1768 the Costituzione per i nuovi Regi Studi. These constitutions or statutes signalled the start of various education measures in many other countries and earned the praise of Firmian in Lombardy and the Spanish reformers. In Naples, Ferdinand IV (1759-1825) set up twenty-one elementary schools and reprimanded the barons for ‘trying to keep the poor away from any civil institution’. In 1774 education was made compulsory at Milan for children between five and twelve years of age. Joseph II (1780-1790) in Austria extended in practice what was already compulsory on paper; and in Prussia Frederick II (1740-1786) built on the educational system founded by his father. From the moment she seized power in Russia Catherine the Great (1762-1796) was passionately interested in education which she firmly believed could remodel human nature. On 5 August 1786 the Russian statute of national education provided for the setting up of a network of primary and secondary schools.