Propos on education is a collection of thoughts of Alain concerning the education, published in 1932.

The book is composed of 86 chapters, or remarks, indicated in Roman numerals.

Alain develops his ideas to with it on the education, drawn from his own experience of Professor; he rather recommends for example the reading as well as the personal child work than the lectures, the study of the scientific bases (by the Mathématiques and the Algèbre) to render comprehensible the physical phenomena rather than to explain them directly, and the study of large literary texts (in spite of their possible difficulty) rather than of texts designed for teaching, and this for all the children, whatever their origin or their condition. This thought is to be brought closer to the development since the end of the 19th century of obligatory teaching for all (Jules Ferry, Jules Grévy).

Indeed, Alain rises, not without humor, against the appreciated methods of the Inspecteur S of the State education of the time. He considers that it is the child who must work above all, directed by the Master, who on its side must have the most possible spare time to organize his Classe and to cultivate himself. From where its critic of the lectures where the Master works and the pupils listen, i.e. nothing learns and “somewhat scorn” this Master who seeks to interest them at all costs (see the quotations representative from this point of view below). Alain takes again (matter) the word of Napoleon on the Enseignement, according to which there are only two things to know perfectly: Geometry and Latin - Alain widens the teaching of Latin to large literary works. “The child has this ambition to be a man; it should not be misled; even less to give him to choose in what he is unaware of” (matter).

Quotations

• “the defect of what is interesting by oneself, it is that one does not have a sorrow to be interested in it, it is that one does not learn how to be interested in it by will. ” (II)
• “And finally it has progress there, for no schoolboy in the world, neither in what it hears nor in what he sees, but only in what he does. ” (VI)
• “If the Master keep silent himself, and if the children read, all is well. ” (XXV)