The most radical formulation of the role of education came from the Jacobin, Lepelletier. Proceeding from materialist, environmentalist, and thoroughly statist assumptions, Lepelletier proposed that the greatest part of the socialization process be made public and relegated to state institutions. Children—boys and girls—were to be placed in state schools, supplied with food and clothing at public expense, and trained for an occupation useful to the general public. His plan was a response to his awareness of the sad economic plight of the families of the poor. "It's all very fine to educate the poor," he wrote, "but first of all they need bread." Still, his ideas also reflected the crudest environmentalist urge to regulate the child's early experience. "The totality of the child's existence belongs to us [that is, the state]; the material . . . should never leave the mold."

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes (Page 52)