In 1880, Baron Pierre de Coubertin graduated from the Jesuit college of Saint-Ignace with a bachelor of letters and science in hand and a burning desire to serve France in his heart.  His heroes at the time were the leaders of the ten-year old Third Republic—Gambetta, Ferry and Simon—but he followed his parents guidance and enrolled in Saint-Cyr, the great French military academy where his older brothers had shaped their careers.  That year, Prime Minister Jules Ferry pushed through France’s first laws on mandatory public education for the young—and the Baron felt a calling.  Dissatisfied with garrison life, he decided to join the cause and focus his life and energies on helping his nation reform its system of education. It wasn’t long before he was driving forward the integration of sports into French schools, an initiative that would lead directly to his long Olympic campaign.  The passage below comes from the opening of his earliest memoir, “Une Campagne de vingft-et-un ans,” (The 21 Year Campaign), which was published in 1908 with the subtitle, “The Battles for Physical Education.”

“A new change, a restoration, or something else, seemed to me to be an expedient without a future … but as far back as I can remember, I felt that there was only one effective remedy: in a modified, transformed education capable of producing a collective calm, wisdom and thoughtful strength. Half-way into Saint-Cyr, and foreseeing a long period of peace, with before me all the monotony of garrison life, I decided suddenly to change my career in the desire to attach my name to a great educational reform.”