Teacher training in Catholic higher education

Father Chatelain's educational apostolate

François Chatelain was thirty years old when he was ordained a priest in 1926. He had a thesis in philosophy and theology, and his interest quickly turned to questions of psychology and pedagogy. In 1928, he went to the holiday course of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva where he met the main architects of the new education (Adolphe Ferrière, Pierre Bovet, René Nihard, Edouard Claparède). At the same time, he wrote reviews of psychological works for the Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques¹⁶ . The following year, he took part in the first International Congress of Psychology (Paris, 21-27 March 1929) during which he met, among others, Jean Piaget, Ovide Decroly and Charles Baudoin whom he considered to be his masters in experimental pedagogy. In view of his growing interest in these questions, Father Marie-Vincent Bernadot decided to entrust him with the "Education" section of the Dominican review La Vie Intellectuelle, which he had just founded. From then on, he never ceased to work for the dissemination of new educational methods. His reading of Pope Pius XI's Encyclical on the Christian education of youth (December 31, 1929) led him to examine them one by one and to retain the essential aspects in order to spread them among the personnel of Catholic education. This was his wish when he launched the collection Les Sciences et l'Art de l'éducation published by Le Cerf in 1931¹⁷. Directed by a group of Belgian and French specialists, this publishing enterprise aimed to

The aim is to "inform educators about the contemporary pedagogical movement, to appreciate it from the scientific point of view and in the light of Catholic doctrine, and thus to bring together, with a view to a true preparation of the child for life, the results of the educational sciences".

The same year, François Chatelain was appointed professor of pedagogy and child psychology at the Catholic Institute of Lille. With the collaboration of the geographer Pierre Deffontaines¹⁸, he founded the first Higher Institute of Pedagogy in France. At the same time as his activities in Catholic higher education, he was called upon to provide the general secretariat of the Union des Trois Ordres de l'Enseignement Libre¹⁹ (Union of the Three Orders of Free Education) within which he worked on the renewal of Christian pedagogy. These functions, to which must be added that of co-director with the writer Robert Garric²⁰ of the Nouvelle Revue des Jeunes, from 1932, led Mgr Bressolles, vice-rector of the ICP, to call upon him to set up the new Institut supérieur de Pédagogie which opened its doors, under the German occupation, on the 6th November 1941.

Training a new generation of teachers under the Occupation

The foundation of the PSI was born in a context where, under the Vichy government, the primary teacher training colleges were replaced by professional training institutes²¹. The latter were created with the aim of participating in the national recovery and compensating for the various supposed shortcomings (individual, family, social, patriotic) of the French teachers held responsible for the debacle of June 1940²². According to the formula of the columnist of the pro- Petainist magazine Education, Jean-François-Paul Leclercq, if the lack of education was the root cause of the defeat, the reform of education would be the primary condition for the recovery of France. It is therefore necessary to overhaul the school system. As Jacques Chevalier, Secretary of ²³State for Public Instruction, said in one of his radio speeches in January 1941, the mission of the latter was to train

We shall develop "free personalities without forgetting that freedom can only blossom on the condition that it is regulated by a strong moral and social discipline, and that obedience is necessary in order to learn to command. We shall develop intelligence as we shall temper character, by constantly reminding them of the meaning of reality²⁴.

The law of 15 August 1941 on the general organisation of public education came into force on 1^er October 1941 and expects future teachers to become part of French life. This was the wish of Jérôme Carcopino²⁵, the new Secretary of State for National Education, when he spoke to the French on 2 September 1941:

I have [...] refused to rebuild a caste, of which they [the masters] would be the victims; I want to promote an elite that will regain the audience of the whole country without any ulterior motive²⁶.

It is with this awareness of having an important role to play in the work of national renewal that PSI wishes to contribute to the formation and pedagogical improvement of primary and secondary school teachers as well as of all non-teaching educators within the framework of the technical progress of the Catholic educational institutions and works:

At a time when educational methods are undergoing profound transformations, it seemed necessary that a Higher Centre of Pedagogy should be able, from both the scientific and the Christian point of view, to guide with competence and authority those who assume the heavier but more essential task of educating youth²⁷.

PSI also has the mission of participating "with authority, in the name of Catholic science, in scientific circles as well as in the wider circles of educators" in the debate on education:

The extent of the research undertaken in the last twenty years, especially in the field of child psychology and experimental pedagogy, is well known. In all countries of the world, study and research centres and experimental schools have been set up to study the development of the child in a scientific manner [...]. Little by little, a new pedagogy has been developed, extremely complex and in which the most diverse materials are mixed: undeniable or fragile scientific data, debatable philosophical or sociological theses, doctrines that are tendentious or clearly hostile to Christianity. How can we discern, in such a complex mixture, the elements which will enable our Christian pedagogy to be enriched and to progress from those which would only tend to alter and destroy it? A delicate task of discrimination is therefore all the more urgent as the new doctrines and new pedagogical procedures proposed to educators in the name of experimental science are spreading rapidly in our country²⁸.

The complexity of the situation having been thus circumscribed, it remained to think of a sufficiently broad training offer to respond to the forces at work.

PSI's training offer

Called by Bishop Bressolles, Chatelain designed the new PSI on the basis of five sections. The first was intended to co-ordinate and encourage pedagogical work within a scientific research centre which he directed. To this end, he organised advanced courses in pedagogy based on the study of active methods, intended mainly for teachers already in post. Lectures and work sessions are offered to them in order to prepare them for the higher education diploma in pedagogy. The second university section, consisting of courses in pedagogy and child psychology, is dedicated to students who wish to sit for both public and free education examinations (Certificate of Psychology and Pedagogy; "Pedagogical Psychology" option of the Certificate of Psychology; Diploma of Higher Studies; tests for the degree in Scholastic Philosophy). The third section, organized in agreement with the Paris Free Education Department, prepares students for the Certificat libre d'aptitude à l'enseignement primaire (CLAEP)²⁹. This two-year training course in the normal primary section offers theoretical courses (introduction to child psychology, teaching methods, classroom management) alternating with internships ³⁰and practical courses. The fourth section, which lasts one year, is designed in the same way for teachers wishing to take the Free Certificate of Pedagogy for Secondary Education (CLPES). For this purpose, the theoretical courses cover the philosophy of Christian education, child psychology, methods and orientation in secondary education. The practical courses, given by Jean Calvet, deal with questions relating to classroom management, the pedagogy of each discipline as well as explanations of pedagogical texts. The section of religious pedagogy, the fifth and last section of this new ISP, trained in two years the teachers in charge of religious instruction in the colleges of young men and women by giving them, on the one hand, a religious culture (theology courses) and, on the other hand, a solid technical training (catechetical pedagogy courses completed by practical training).

With its ISP, the ICP confirms the first attempts initiated at the beginning of the 20th century by Jean Calvet and Gustave Jeanjean within the Faculty of Letters. More than an initiation to teaching, the ISP proposed to train new generations of teachers interested in new educational methods whose compatibility with Christian doctrine was quickly questioned by the leaders of this institution.

The strength of Christian orthodoxy

These sections and their contents are evolving rapidly in view of the "unexpected development"³¹ that this ISP is experiencing. Three years after its opening, it already had 917 students. Bishop Bressolles' wish to "give this teaching a much greater importance and influence"³² was quickly achieved thanks, on the one hand, to the obligation for teachers working in the primary schools of the Paris free education system who wished to be granted tenure to obtain their Certificat libre d'aptitude à l'enseignement primaire and, on the other hand, to the method of recruiting the teachers invited to teach there. The directors of the five sections, respectively François Chatelain (Scientific Research Centre Section and University Section), Canon Hamayon (Primary Normal Section), Jean Calvet (Secondary Normal Section) and Canon Charles (Religious Pedagogy Section), called on several new contributors to help train their students. As in the professional training institutes of the Vichy period, the educational team was centred around its director (in this case, around a clergyman). The number of full professors was small in relation to the number of lecturers. At the beginning of the 1944-1945 academic year, the primary normal section had eight lecturers for a single full professor (the head of the section). There were fifteen in the religious pedagogy section and twenty-three in the secondary normal section³³. In the secondary normal section, besides Father Jean Rimaud, director of the new family education section of the PSI³⁴, Jean Jaouen, known for his work on the social formation of adolescents³⁵, and Maurice Duprey, director of the school of Saint-Martin de Pontoise, a Catholic secondary school founded in 1929 on the model of the Ecole des Roches³⁶, were called in.

Recruitment difficulties

As head of the Higher Education Section, Chatelain continued his work of elaborating and developing a Christian active pedagogy. To this end, he devoted considerable energy to teachers in Catholic schools, most of whom were still unaware of the benefits they could derive from the study of active methods. The meaning of his commitment is also to be found in the context of the reform of public education which does not leave him indifferent:

The active methods, which had hitherto attracted the attention of only a relatively small number of educators, have now become a matter of general interest, even to the general public. The daily and weekly newspapers have devoted columns to it since the creation of the new sixth form³⁷.

More than ever, it is necessary to inform the community of Christian educators of the progress that can be made by the reasoned and adapted use of active methods, so that Catholic establishments can impose themselves by the real competence of their teachers and the quality of their teaching:

Free education is today faced with an urgent and pressing task, because of the rapid progress of public education. (…). There is a lack of educators who are aware of active methods (and who have not hitherto shown any interest in these methods), a lack of training centres, of trial classes, similar to these active sixth forms which will serve as training courses for the teachers who will be called upon next year to teach other active sixth forms or fifth forms. This tells you how necessary it is for us educators to study these methods seriously, and for free education to form competent cadres and not allow itself to be left behind³⁸.

However, this plea did not meet with the approval of François Chatelain's hierarchy, whose main concern was the number of students enrolled. Faced with the difficulties of recruiting students for this new formation³⁹, Bishop Bressoles wrote to the superiors of the many establishments in his diocese asking them to send congregants. The negative responses accumulated in the face of a formation whose workload was too heavy for the teachers in place:

The nuns or teachers for whom we think we can prepare the Certificate of Secondary Pedagogy are always either studying or teaching, and it seems difficult to us - at least for the time being - to envisage such a busy training course [...]. The first^ercould continue to follow one or other course in Psychology or Pedagogy to improve their skills, but it would be difficult for them to give all the time required⁴⁰.

Other difficulties are reported to him on this occasion, such as the absence of boarding facilities in the capital for Congregation members who do not live in Paris, or the requirement that this formation be given only to Sisters⁴¹, even though the number of men was very low during these first years⁴². Faced with these material constraints, a correspondence course was thought of, as early as 1942, before being discarded in the face of "the rather lively opposition of the Director of Diocesan Education"⁴³for fear of not being able to control its use and distribution⁴⁴. A session was then organised at Easter to enable practising Congregation members to prepare and pass the Certificate of Pedagogy⁴⁵. This formula, which was not a great success, was not repeated.

The gradual ousting of F. Chatelain from the leadership of PSI

Confined to the courses he gives in the higher education section and to occasional lectures given, on the one hand, to the students of the primary normal section and, on the other hand, to those, few in number, who frequent the scientific research centre he directs, François Chatelain knows that his action has little impact:

I would so much like the Institute of Pedagogy to have the aim of advancing our Christian pedagogy concretely in the schools, but I have no means of realising this wish since I have only students and almost no free teachers among my pupils⁴⁶.

Faced with these difficulties in mobilizing teachers in Catholic education⁴⁷, François Chatelain, together with Roger Cousinet⁴⁸, created the French New School (ENF) in the autumn of 1945. This pedagogical association, under the honorary presidency of Adolphe Ferrière, a tutelary figure of the New Education movement, set itself the goal of "the progress and extension of a new, disinterested education, alien to any other concern than that of the physical, moral and spiritual development of the child"⁴⁹. Surrounded by a group of specialists from different backgrounds⁵⁰, who are committed to rejecting any interference or political influence whatsoever, Father Chatelain does not make an open profession of Catholic faith in this review. This choice may be difficult to accept within his community, despite his efforts to explain the project:

it goes without saying that it (the magazine) contains nothing incompatible with our faith. But neither does it contain anything that might offend non-Catholic readers. It respects the convictions of all, while remaining, like all authentic new education, profoundly spiritualist. From the Christian point of view, one discovers a profound agreement between active pedagogy and the Gospel. The new pedagogy is really a return to the Gospel spirit, by giving respect to the personality willed by God for each child. Grace respects nature and perfects it. We often ask for miracles by the old methods, against the natural and therefore divine laws; and we lose strength by misusing the powers of development put by God in the child⁵¹.

This interdenominational associative enterprise, whose irenic character was defended by Chatelain, was badly received by Bishop Bressolles. At a time when the PSI was thinking of a training programme adapted to the teachers of Catholic education in a context which saw the reopening of the teacher training colleges, this initiative did not correspond to the expectations of those in charge of the ICP who saw in it a dispersion of efforts or even a competing enterprise. This feeling was amplified when, in 1946, Father Chatelain's hierarchy was informed of his project to found a mixed, non-denominational experimental school attached to the ENF. The success of this new school, La Source, ⁵²which was set up in Meudon in 1948, to which must be added the success of the ENF review, partly explains why François Chatelain was progressively marginalized until he was excluded from the decision-making bodies, especially when it was a question of renewing the Steering Committee of the PSI. Making a transition to introduce Faure: Chatelain dismissed in favour of the Jesuit Pierre Faure.

Priority to orthodoxy: the appointment of Father Pierre Faure

Known for his positions in favour of the defence of free education within the Centre d'études pédagogiques (CEP) in Vanves from 1938 onwards, the Jesuit Pierre Faure acquired a solid reputation at the Liberation with his work L'École et la Cité (School and the City) ⁵³in which he dealt with the close link between the educational status of Catholic schools and the socio- economic context of his time. The following year, in Neutralité et laïcisme⁵⁴, the passages he devoted to the freedom of education gave him a certain notoriety among the French bishops. Mgr Bressolles, who, before leaving the ICP⁵⁵, was working for the return of a certain Christian orthodoxy in the pedagogical orientation of the ISP, saw in Pierre Faure his future director:

Bishop Bressolles [...] wanted to present me to Bishop Blanchet (...), as Director of the Pedagogical Institute of the Catholic Institute and its annexes... I objected that there were other prominent personalities who had been giving courses at the Catholic Institute for longer than I had. But in fact, with great simplicity, Bishop Bressolles told me that he could not and did not want to entrust pedagogy to Father Chatelain who would be assigned to research. His judgement is not good enough for him to be entrusted with public courses and especially with a position where there would be doctrinal orientation. […]. If Bishop Bressolles and Bishop Blanchet are thinking of calling on me, it is probably because for the past two years, I have been entrusted with a growing number of fairly important courses in the various sections of the Institute of Pedagogy. The nature of these courses did not deceive me. It was wanted that on rather delicate questions, the doctrinal positions be affirmed⁵⁶.

Unlike François Chatelain, Pierre Faure provides the necessary guarantees in this respect. As director of the new CEP journal Pédagogie, Éducation et culture⁵⁷, he

It is the aim of the booklet "Education in the World" to provide educators with a wide range of information and sound doctrine to help them form the man in the child and the Christian responsible for his brothers and sisters. All pedagogy is a spirituality. To become more aware of this would bring clarity to discussions, order and security to action. Among the objectives to be assigned to pedagogy in 1945, is this not the most important? The one on which the success of the reform undertaken and the future of France depend⁵⁸.

In this perspective, it studies the "active methods" by devoting five thematic issues to them in four years⁵⁹. In each of these issues, the relationship of these pedagogies with the foundations of Christian educational thought is analysed. In his articles, Pierre Faure shows that the sources of these methods can be found in Plato as well as in Mgr Dupanloup, Saint Augustine or even in the Ratio Studorium⁶⁰. The result is a discourse which resembles a kind of doctrinal justification in which the active methods are only the outcome, in fact, of very old Christian-inspired recommendations. Presented from this angle, the new education movement appears, no more and no less, as an avatar of the history of education. In this way, Father Faure acquired a more secure authority than that of François Chatelain, who was gradually dispossessed of his courses.

A comparison of the PSI curricula between 1944 and 1951 is significant of this evolution. Father Faure returned to the PSI during the 1944-1945 academic year and taught only one course on the major educational systems⁶¹. In 1951-1952, he taught eight courses⁶². During this same period, Father Chatelain saw the number of his lectures diminish until he taught only pedagogy and child psychology in the university section. At the beginning of the 1947-1948 academic year, his teaching on active methods was entrusted to Pierre Faure and three other collaborators of the CEP⁶³. At the same time, his hopes of being able to train apostle-scavengers in the service of a vanguard destined to transform "this milieu of educators, which was a bit routine, also very poor, and more and more "miserable" financially"⁶⁴, became more and more remote. Within the new training plan proposed by the PSI from the beginning of the 1948-1949 academic year⁶⁵, the higher education section, of which he remained director, was henceforth housed among the "Special Sections of Pedagogical Studies"⁶⁶. From then on, his teaching was offered as preparation for various certificates⁶⁷, thus limiting the scope of his propaganda work in favour of the study of active methods in Catholic education.

Reassuring without convincing

In spite of these difficulties, Chatelain continued his educational apostolate. He knew that it was necessary, above all, to reassure the community of Catholic educators and, in the first place, those who could accompany him in this task. In May 1949, he took the initiative of bringing together the professors of pedagogy of the Catholic faculties⁶⁸order to exchange with them on the respective conceptions and orientations of each of the PSIs. This meeting was a response to the doubts expressed by some of his colleagues:

I understand the impression of chaos that the theories of the educators you quote: Ferrière, Claparède, etc., can create; but, in my opinion, it is not on these books alone that the active school must be judged, but on the innumerable active classes with which it is necessary to have concrete and, if possible, thorough contact; practice here often modifies theory⁶⁹.

This meeting was also an opportunity for Chatelain to affirm Christian positions on some of the questions that were controversial at the time, such as the scientific orientations taken by the Institute of Psychology at the Sorbonne, which was working, according to him, to demonstrate biological determinism. He also reminds us of the need to be vigilant with regard to the communist influences in the speeches of these same researchers, Henri Wallon (an eminent member of the French Group of New Education) and René Zazzo:

"Our students are very helpless in Paris (...) in front of valuable professors who have a deserved authority in this or that particular field but who constantly mix their psychological data with their materialist philosophy. On the practical level, they [the students] find themselves faced with a complex pedagogical movement (...) without knowing their fundamental orientation, hence the embarrassment and sometimes false manoeuvres"⁷⁰.

Although this initiative was followed by another meeting organised by R. Jolivet and L. Barbey⁷¹ in Lyon on 8, 9 and 10 June 1950, it did not lead to the development of a standard training programme for educators. The failure of this project, on which Chatelain based the possibility of mobilizing his colleagues to promote the study of active methods within the framework of the new option of the same name proposed by the PSI from the beginning of the school year in November 1950⁷², was to sap his strength. Exhausted, he left his post in 1954.

Conclusion

The early years of the PSI show us how difficult it was for those in charge to anticipate the demand for professional training of teachers destined to work in private schools. Born as a reaction to the abolition of the teacher training colleges, the Parisian PSI did not immediately attract vocations. There were several reasons for this. Apart from the material difficulties, the programme was too dense for the superiors of the Houses of Christian Education to agree to release their teaching staff. At the same time, and contrary to the initial ambition to work on the scientific study of active methods, questions of Christian pedagogy were relegated to the background. In the context of the reform of public education, which was working to renew its pedagogy with reference to the practices and theories of the New Education, the PSI withdrew into itself in the name of Christian orthodoxy. Challenged in his project, François Chatelain was to make a change, not in the idea he had of the man to be educated, but in the environment in which he could carry out his apostolate. The creation of the French New School in 1945 and its application school in Meudon in 1948 should be interpreted here as the most effective way he found to extend his field of action. This choice was not without consequences. In a few years, the number of his teachings decreased. Moreover, his hierarchy preferred the Jesuit Pierre Faure, who, according to them, was better able to prove the theological foundations of this new education. At the beginning of the 1950s, several courses were shared as part of the basic and optional training of students. In ten years, the initial project of working towards the elaboration of a new Christian pedagogy gave way to structural considerations whose observance will accompany the future of this institution⁷³.