Pierre-Jean Cabanis, Ideologie's physiologist, held to the ancient doctrine that nature when left to herself is the best remedy, provided, of course, that she has the occasional assistance of good doctors to cultivate her gifts. Agriculture has served humankind very well for thousands of years, hence we are not surprised to hear doctors of all professions resort to the agricultural metaphor. Dr. Cabanis applied the agricultural metaphor to education, which would "lead human inclinations back to nature." Of course that would lead them away from their superstitious reliance on the vain and absurd metaphysics of kings and priests: they might read God's natural book and think for themselves.
Dr. Cabanis of course was familiar with the opinions of his dear friend and only patient, the great statesman of the French Revolution, Mirabeau, on the subject of education, as well as the opinions of Adam Smith, whose notions corresponded with those of Mirabeau's tyrannical father, a leading physiocrat. The physiocrats, most of them landlords and real estate speculators, believed that land is the sole source of wealth, and opined that Land and only Land should be regulated, or politically cultivated by taxation. Manufacturing and exchange should be free of regulation; hence unrestrained manufacturing and free exchange of the agricultural and manufactured products. Adam Smith, however, also recognized Labour as a source of value.
As for education, Adam Smith and the young Mirabeau thought that the industry should not be unduly interfered with. Adam Smith believed that competition between educators and teachers (masters) should not be too disturbed, and proposed that students should always pay some portion of tuition so that schools would not be dependent on public or private endowments and teachers on salaries, for that would divert educators from their responsibility to their students and duty to the higher aims of education. Of course some guidance should be provided to curb abuses.
The conservative theory of schooling compromised with radical progressive proposals for compulsive, free public education for all citizens, and provided for some state supervision by means of rewards and punishments, licenses to teach, and so on. It is difficult to apply the tag "liberal" to either the conservative or progressive schools of thought, for both perspective would be liberated from something; the conservatives from the intervention of a dangerous republican (democratic) state, the progressives from repression by the traditional authorities. Suffice it to say that the modern school of education, influenced by the French ideologists, is now referred to as the "liberal school."
Destutt de Tracy, the moral and political ideologist who applied the name ideologie to the French sensationalist philosophy derived from Locke and Condillac, was ambivalent about public education. Although the French Ideologists are credited with favoring universal education, Tracy believed that an education higher than primary school should be limited to the children of a highly educated elite, whose scientific leadership the masses should follow; for Tracy, only the competent, trained legislator could understand the political and moral theory he called ideologie. Tracy would however provide all children with a primary education, first of all, in secular morality in order to free the child of the pernicious influence of irrational authority, and also primary-school courses in reading, writing, and arithmetic. His colleague Dr. Cabanis, also favored primary education, primarily for the purpose of breaking the monopoly on education owned by the wealthy. Of course a course in Ideologie, such as Tracy's course in political and moral science, would be indispensable to that end; furthermore, such a course, which would include logic or analytical thinking, was necessary to protect people from ignorance public officials of all types and for the development of technical proficiency.
In other words, all people should be subject to a common education, for that would force the same instruction on rich and poor. For him, no cost was too great to prevent a "nation deprived of enlightenment, from falling under the aristocracy of the rich, the most odious of all subjection." As for Smith's British liberal approach, which was more conservative, Dr. Cabanis wrote, "The ideas of Smith were... mine for some time... but I consider them not very solid in general... and... in no way applicable to the circumstances of the French nation."
Against publicly funded education, the extremists of the "classical" liberal school maintained their "laissez faire" stance to protect themselves against taxation and "dissolute morality." They argued for the morality of feeling and authority, not the reign of Reason, god of the Enlightenment. They feared that state surveillance and regulation of education would turn republicans (democrats) into a "ferocious sect" and teachers into political parrots rather than libertarian cultivators.
Napoleon of course was a traditional or 'Burkean' conservative, who shared Burke's repugnance for radical Jacobin ideas. He was not opposed to scientific education provided that the science was employed for military and administrative ends. Of course "political science", if there could be such a monstrous thing, was anathema to Napoleon, once he crowned himself with the Pope's blessing and became France's supreme power. The traditional secular power by arbitrary divine right is not a subject to be studied but one to be obeyed. And that was the end of popular secular education for awhile.
