Historians have assumed a great deal when considering the impact that formal religious education had on the children of the Catholic Reformation, even though the relative absence of detailed studies of its specific features renders such summary judgements fragile. In her interesting investigation of catechesis and schooling in three north-eastern French dioceses (Auxerre, Châlons-sur-Marne and Reims) between 1650 and 1789, Karen Carter tackles the subject in a manner that examines catechetical method and content, and institutional structures, through the records of published catechisms, visitation reports and contracts for the foundation of petites écoles. Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, catechetical authors increasingly focused on children, partly because they, along with bishops, judged that the earlier a child was exposed to doctrine and virtue the better, and partly because they assumed that, as time went on, their parents had been adequately instructed. The seventy-eight catechisms that form the basis of Carter's analysis placed an emphasis on the standardisation of behaviour rather than the mastering of complex doctrines, with upright moral behaviour and regular recourse to the religious rituals of parish life deemed to be proof of belief. In that regard, Carter argues, the catechism taught in weekly lessons by the curé or his assistant was the ultimate instrument of social discipline. Its impact was somewhat compromised by the fact that there was no uniformity in the provision of classes, with curés and parents compromising on the reception of first communion as the time when children halted their attendance. Unfortunately, while Carter is able to point to figures taken from visitation reports to demonstrate the prevalence of classes in the dioceses, she cannot specify how many children actually took part. A similar absence of quantifiable certainty is apparent in her analysis of religious education in petites écoles. Again, her description of the multiplication of these schools is compelling. Carter admits, however, that attendance tended to be quite low, especially during specific dates of the agricultural calendar and amongst the poorer social groups, and that up to half of children did not attend at all. Her conclusion that primary education, in which religious formation was a dominant feature, had become a significant part of childhood for the majority of children by the later eighteenth century appears rather exaggerated as a result, and less indicative of the success of the schools in instilling Catholic beliefs than she contends. In her final chapter, Carter argues that the high levels of sacramental observance in the later eighteenth century confirm that catechesis in church and schools had fulfilled its purpose; this is a troublesome assumption, since the admittedly high figures for observance are not compared to figures from the period before 1730, in order to confirm that growth corresponded to the expansion of catechetical instruction. In compensation for these statistical and argumentative weaknesses, Carter offers a valuable corrective to traditional scholarly wisdom by arguing that neither the crown nor the state controlled primary education in the three dioceses that she examined, and that therefore the state did not wrest education from the Church in the nineteenth century, as is often assumed. Instead, it was local lay leaders in parishes who insisted that religious education form a key element of childhood for as many of their young as possible, and the religious curriculum reflected co-operation between churchmen and laity in answer to their common interest in social and religious order. In convincingly demonstrating the agency of both lay and clerical Catholics in this domain, Carter adds to the growing body of evidence that discounts the definition of confessionalisation as a process of social disciplining imposed by the institutional authority of the Church and the State.