Abstract
When the French Third Republic was established, the academic policy conducted for public education contributed to develop scientific teaching in elementary classes. The nascent republic gave particular attention to teacher training colleges (écoles normales primaires), the mission of which was to provide masters for primary schools ; then public authority kept on exerting its action in order to set up scientific training in colleges for the following quarter century. Scientific training was meant to give future school teachers – men and women in separate entities – the ability to bring appropriate knowledge to the lower classes, through teaching processes that were in compliance with the standards required for public education. Knowledge, learnt from natural science, then taught in primary schools was supposed to be useful for the lives of future adults ; that specificity came out in teacher training as schemes including courses on agriculture, arts and crafts, home economics and hygiene. While it pertained to intellectual education in elementary schools, science teaching was also revalued in training colleges. Comparing documents of national significance to references collected at local level – from ten teaching colleges under the Montpellier Teaching Authority – leads to adopt an original approach for studying the ideals of scientific training for teachers. Alterations to the scientific curriculum together with the analysis of lines that were taken on training offered in colleges, at different times through that period, help to stress significant changes. Those changes resulted in redirecting the purpose of scientific training for future teachers. Respectively the status of each subject taught in training colleges evolved and urged public authority to relocate scientific applications in relation to physical and biological science. Teaching agriculture along with arts and crafts in colleges brought changes to the curriculum. Highlighting the changes and researching their causes in the historical conditions regarding the issue of duality between primary and secondary education, through the operating of colleges, are at the heart of this study on the ideals of scientific training for primary school teachers from 1880 to 1905.