Suchergebnisse

Gisèle Ettori, State, Church, School and the Revolution.
According to the well known test of the signature on the marriage certificate, the author studied the evolution of literacy of children born at Tourcoing between 1769 et 1792 and married there. Although the shock produced by the revolutionary dismantling of religious instruction somewhat accentuated a decline in literacy rates, the process had actually commenced long before 1791. It then came to a stop with the generation which had learned to read and write between 1797 and 1802. Consequently, there are some factors not associated with the Revolution which are responsible for the decline — in particular, the change of the social composition of the population between 1770- 1780. The demand for literacy of the first generation of proletariat (of which the proportion was increasing at Tourcoing) was, in effect, weaker.