PASTEUR LOUIS: (1822-1895) French chemist and microbiologist. A good autograph manuscript in the hand of Pasteur ...

PASTEUR LOUIS: (1822-1895) French chemist and microbiologist. A good autograph manuscript in the hand of Pasteur, unsigned, eight pages, 8vo, Lille, n.d. (c.1855), on the printed stationery of the Science Faculty at the Douai Academy, in French. The manuscript, with extensive corrections and deletions, is the draft of an important address Pasteur delivered to the Academic Council of the North as first Dean of the new Faculty of Sciences at Lille, regarding the reform of secondary education which had been imposed by the Fortoul ministry to ensure the equality of scientific and literary fields, stating, in part, 'In the almost unanimous tendency of the Council to blame the new study plan or at least to desire substantial modifications, I ask to make a few observations and to submit a few reservations. I can hardly believe that its legislators, acting at the start of a new reign, under the circumstances that everyone knows, in the middle of a century which scientific discoveries have transformed and will mark in the following ages of a ineffaceable sign, I can hardly believe I say that the legislators of the new study plan under the inspiration of a great politician, only have in view the more or less advanced science of the student who leaves the benches of college and its relative strength in an exam. They probably thought more of the man than of the child, of society than of college, of the century and its tendencies than of examination. And yet the method has been placed above the man, and the evaluation of the teaching staff has weakened since the application of the study plan', Pasteur continuing to enumerate the causes of this weakness, '1. The creation of departmental academies suddenly removed a number of distinguished professors. 2. The creation of many new faculties has led to the same result. 3. The modifications which obliged the pupils of the Normal School to have a two-year internship before undergoing the tests of the aggregation ... have seriously prejudiced a good recruitment of this School. 4. The number of professors has suddenly increased greatly in the field of science. We had to take very inexperienced teachers…..so the best teachers came out of high schools and colleges, even though we introduced the study of mechanics, cosmography, botany, zoology, and that for needs of the service, the history teachers were forced to teach logic or grammar, the professor of philosophy, rhetoric, and professor of mathematics, physics or natural history…..Conferences imposed on masters absorbed their leisure, and exhausted their zeal. Finally, what imperiously demanded the talent and experience of the masters was the study plan itself. One of the characteristics of this system is the sequence of successive studies, the solidarity of the teachings of the various teachers. From there these programs stopped imposed, down to the smallest details. But what is the use of indicating subjects without the in-depth knowledge of the science they are dealing with. How to choose when you don't have the taste for form. Who does not know that the summaries that new programs assume want more skilled teachers and require facts and theories. It is enough to cast eyes on the famous instruction of November 1854 to be convinced…..that the real reforms to be made must apply today to the teaching staff, and that what should attract above all the attention of the authority is the higher normal school and in general the recruitment of teaching staff....' VG In 1854, Pasteur was named Dean of the new faculty of sciences at the University of Lille, where he began his studies on fermentation. It was on this occasion that Pasteur uttered his oft-quoted remark 'dans les champs de l'observation, le hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares' ('in the field of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind').