This paper analyzes the debate on the proposals Condorcet presented, in 1792, on behalf of the Education Commission of the French Legislative Assembly. It deals with organizing the public education conceived by the revolutionaries to form the people and create a new man who could carry out the Revolution they had begun. As they said, the issue was to regenerate the mother country and ensure that the principles of a truly democratic society became effective. Therefore, education was supposed to be one of the priorities for nationality building. The Legislative Assembly thus drew up an education plan establishing the levels and teaching methods, the education organization, the selection criteria for the education professionals, and the public policy procedures to assess the school network. It was a prospective model for the setting up of the national education, which would be implemented from the XIXth century on. Above all, this pedagogical reference constitutes our heritage, especially when we collectively defend a form of school that is still public, universal, standard for everybody, tolerant and free. In a sense, understanding this school model in its social and historical roots also offers an analytical matrix to think the possibility of also defending public university as the major crowning achievement of the promised equality of opportunities.
Enlightenment; Social history; Public education; Condorcet; French Revolution