Charles Péguy on The Crisis of Education

Short translation from Pour la rentrée (1904) by Péguy

Charles Pierre Péguy (1873 – 1914) was a prominent French essayist and poet. He played a major role in criticizing modernity, exploring mysticism, and in promoting a forgotten view on patriotism. Some of his major works are: Basic Verities. Prose and Poetry, The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, and The Mystery of the Holy Innocents.

Charles Péguy also wrote extensively on education and teaching, below a short translation from Pour la rentrée (1904) :

“ The crisis of education is not a crisis of education; there is not a crisis in education; there has never been a crisis in education; the crises of education are not education crises; they are crises of life. They denounce, they represent crises of life and are crises of life themselves; they are partial crises of life, they are eminent crises of life, which announce and accuse general crises in life; or general crises of life. When crises of social life worsen, cluster together, they culminate in educational crises, which seem specific or partial, but which in reality are total, because they represent the whole of social life. Indeed, it is within teaching where eternal trials await, so to speak, of the changing of humanities; the rest of a society can pass, can be rigged, can be made up; but teaching does not pass. When a society cannot teach, it does not mean that it accidentally lacks an apparatus or an industry; when a society cannot teach, it is because this society cannot teach itself. It is because it is ashamed, it is because it is afraid to teach itself; for all humanity, to teach, fundamentally, is to teach oneself. A society which does not teach is a society which does not love itself; does not esteem itself; and this is precisely the case of modern society. ”

(Source : Ed. Gallimard, coll. La Pléiade, Œuvres en prose complètes, tome I, pp. 1390)