“Education is but habit”: Childhood, individuality, and self -control in France, 1762–1833

From 1762 to 1833, many French parents, philosophers, and legislators, following Locke, Condillac, and other Enlightenment thinkers, concluded that state-run public schooling was the solution to the problem of raising good people and better citizens. This refrain competed with a Rousseauan idea that insisted on private training in self-control before exposure to society. Virtue, after all, was harder to attain than mere knowledge, and for many contemporary thinkers, it was a parent\u27s job to provide the training that would achieve both. Importantly, both public and private approaches used similar educational methods, especially decreased physical coercion, more attention to mental development, and a clearer distinction between the duties of the child and those of the adult. By 1833, Rousseauan virtue became the domain of the family and the pre-rational child while public virtue was to be taught in the schools. Sources for this study, which range from philosophical treatises and educational legislation to children\u27s literature, clothing, and toys, manifest themes of self-control and external compulsion. Advice manuals taught women to be self-controlled, concerned with social norms, and focused on duties, just as their children should be. Alphabet primers, fables, and didactic stories developed children\u27s moral conscience and social understanding. They were designed to help children internalize social expectations and critical gender distinctions. Changes in clothing and toys show that children enjoyed ever-greater freedom to move and play. However, fashion and literature also attest to a greater focus on the gender and demeanor of even very young children. Even as children\u27s bodies became more free, greater attention to schooling meant that many children found themselves in schools designed to ensure uniformity. Educational plans, far from equalizing children and removing them from the community to ensure their goodness, guaranteed that society had a role equivalent to that of the family in raising gendered and self-controlled children. The paradoxes inherent in these examples demonstrate one of the fundamental problems with modernity: how it is that liberal ideas that emphasize the autonomy and equality of individuals lead to the development of centralized systems and an increased focus on the gender, discipline, and self-control of individuals