212 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
ime. Three of these lycées are in Paris,* and one of them is attended 
oy some six hundred pupils. 
It was not sufficient to have lycées; we wanted teachers. A normal 
school was opened in Sévres, for the training of teachers for girls’ col- 
leges. To enter this normal school, young women must be at least eighteen 
years old, must possess either the higher grade of the primary education, 
viz.: the ¢ Brevet Supérieur ” or the ¢“ Baccalauréat,” and must undergo 
some severe examinations, for letters or sciences, according to their 
choice. They remain three years in the school ; after the first two years 
they have to pass an examination to obtain the ¢¢ Certificat d’aptitude a 
Enseignement Secondaire,” and if they succeed, they have to pass next 
year the <¢ Agrégation,” which enables them to be appointed as professors 
in a lycée for girls. Let me remark that it is not absolutely necessary to 
enter the normal school to become a teacher in a girls’ college ; the essen- 
tial condition is to have the < Agrégation,” and it is not at all impos- 
sible to take this grade without the preparation in the normal school. 
What this Agrégation is would take too long to explain ; it will be suffi- 
sient to say that—though it requires no Greek and Latin—it is a higher 
grade than what is called here the B.A. 
We not only have women to teach in our girls’ colleges ; we have men, 
who are generally teachers in lycées for boys at the same time. Itisa 
question often discussed among us whether it is better for a girl’s mind to 
se trained by men or women. And if she is to be trained by men, when 
must this training begin ? When a girl is twelve years old, younger or 
older ? The question is not quite solved, but we generally think, and we 
wet accordingly, that when a girl is fifteen or sixteen years old it is good 
‘or her to be trained by both men and women ; by men, because she must 
acquire some of the strong qualities of man’s mind, method, faculty of 
abstraction, power of grasping ideas and generalizing; but not only by 
men, because she might lose some of the qualities of her sex. 
Some words about the time devoted to work and the division of studies 
seem necessary now. The girls have generally two lessons of an hour each 
in the morning, and two in the afternoon. After the lessons, they can 
ceturn home or stay in the lycée, where they have grounds to play, dining- 
room for their lunch, and studying rooms where they can prepare their 
lessons under the supervision of special teachers. In the evening, at six 
or half-past, they must return home, for, as a rule, we do not admit any 
soarders into our lycées for girls. The course of secondary education 
lasts five years, from the age of twelve to seventeen. The children are in 
the preparatory classes” connected with the lycée until they are twelve 
years old ; then they are admitted, after an examination, into the second- 
CB E—— TY —— ET — A —— = EE 
* Since this discourse was delivered, a fourth lycée—the Lycée Lamartine—has been founded in 
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