In an unscripted speech to the Conseil in 1806, which he made only because his education minister, Antoine Fourcroy, hadn’t brought his report to the meeting, Napoleon was almost poetic about how education was the most important of all the institutions, since everything depends upon it, the present and the future. It is essential that the morals and political ideas of the generation which is now growing up should no longer be dependent on the news of the day or the circumstances of the moment … Men already differ enough in their inclinations, their characters and everything that education does
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