Schooling the Daughters of Marianne

<p>This first book-length study of girls' primary education in France gives a concrete picture of how Frenchwomen were and are prepared for their roles in society.</p><p>Until the 1960s the primary school provided the only formal education for the majority of French children. Long recognized as a major inculcator of patriotic and moral values the French primary school also played the vital role of preparing girls for their expected adult lives.</p><p>Linda L. Clark describes in detail this socialization process. By analyzing a wide variety of documents from 1870 to the present-textbooks curriculum materials students' notebooks examination questions inspectors' reports and teachers' memoirs-she has uncovered not only what was taught to girls but the social and political assumptions that lay behind the primary school's messages about feminine personalities and activities.</p><p>The book goes on to establish the relationship of feminine images to important aspects of French social economic and political life. A chapter on the preparation of girls for the world of work for example reveals the discrepancy between formal teaching about femininity and women's actual participation in society.</p>